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THE 


•       HISTORY 


OF 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


OF 


NORTH  AMERICA, 


FROM    THE 


PLANTATION  OF  THE   BRITISH  COLONIES 


THEIR  ASSUMPTION  OF  NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE. 


Br  JAMES   GRAHAME,  LL.  D, 


IN   TWO    VOLUMES. 

.  VOL...1L    :;■ 

SECOND  EDEflQN,  Er'jL5>lR'iE:0  .i-Nfj,  ASCENDED. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
LEA   AND   BLANCHARD 

1848. 


Entered  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1845,  by 
Lea   and    Blanc  hard, 
in  the  Clerk's  office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsylvania. 


;PE^n*^r.b#'T.^K;  4-  p.nj.,f;oiims» 


CONTENTS 

OF 

THE    SECOND    VOLUME 


BOOK   VIII. 

PROGRESS  OF  THE    STATES    OF  NORTH  AMERICA,  TILL  THE  FOUNDA- 
TION   OF   GEORGIA,  IN  1733. 

CHAPTER  I. 

The  American  Provinces  dissatisfied  with  the  Fruits  of  the  British  Revolution.  —  Affairs 
of  Virginia  and  Maryland.  —  Character  and  Policy  of  Governor  Nicholson.  —  Affairs 
of  Massachusetts.  —  Administration  of  Lord  Bellamont  —  and  of  Dudley.  —  dueen 
Anne's  War.  —  Policy  of  New  York.  —  Affairs  of  Connecticut.  —  Attempts  to  subvert 
her  Charter.  —  Invasion  of  South  Carolina.  —  Progress  of  the  War  in  New  England. — 
Indian  Embassy  to  Britain.  —  Conquest  of  Port  Royal  and  Acadia.  —  Invasion  of  Can- 
ada by  a  British  and  Provincial  Force.  —  Failure  of  the  Expedition.  —  Indian  War  in 
North  Carolina.  —  Affairs  of  New  York.  —  Peace  of  Utrecht.  —  Effects  of  the  War  in 
New  England.  —  British  Legislation 1 

CHAPTER  II.  y 

Affiiirs  of  Virginia.  —  Passage  across  the  Appalachian  Mountains  ascertained.  —  Affairs 
of  New  England.  —  Attempt  to  subvert  the  New  England  Charters.  —  Indian  War  in 
South  Carolina.  —  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  —  Administration  of  Sir  William  Keith.  — 
Affairs  of  Carolina.  —  Piracy  on  the  American  Coasts.  —  Theach,  or  Blackbeard,  the 
Pirate. — Revolt  of  South  Carolina  against  its  Proprietary  Government.  —  Affairs  of 
New  York.  —  Administration  of  Burnet.  —  South  Sea  Scheme  and  commercial  Gam- 
bling in  Britain.  —  Affairs  of  New  England.  —  Administration  of  Shute.  —  Disputes  — 
and  War  with  the  Indians.  —  Massachusetts  incurs  the  Displeasure  of  the  King  —  and 
receives  an  explanatory  Charter.  —  Dispute  respecting  fixed  Salary  between  the  Assem- 
bly and  royal  Governor  —  terminates  in  Favor  of  the  Assembly.  —  Affairs  of  New  York. 
—  Transactions  in  Carolina.  —  Surrender  of  the  Charter  of  Carolina  to  the  Crown.  — 
Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  —  British  Legislation.  —  Bishop  Berkeley's  Project.  .        41 


APPENDIX    II. 

State  of  PoDulation,  Laws,  Trade,  and  Manners  in  the  North  American  Provinces.  —  Vir- 
ginia.—  New  England.  —  Comparison  of  New  England  and  Canadian  Manners. —  Ma- 
¥land.  — Carolina.— Nerw  York.  —  New  Jersey.  —  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware. - 
heTunkers 90 


229436 


iv  CONTENTS. 

# 

BOOK    IX. 

•  PLANTATION  AND  PROGRESS  OF  GEORGIA,  TILL  THE  YEAR  1752. 

Unpeopled  and  defenceless  State  of  the  southern  Frontier  of  Carolina.  —  Situation  of  im- 
prisoned Debtors  in  England —  Colonization  of  Georgia  suggested  for  their  Relief — by 
Oglethorpe.  —  The  Moravian  Brethren  —  agree  to  send  a  Detachment  of  their  Society 
to  Georgia.  —  Royal  Charter  of  Georgia.  —  First  Resort  of  Emigrants  to  the  Province.  — 
Oglethorpe's  Treaty  with  the  Indians.  —  Legislative  Constitutions  enacted  by  the  Trus- 
tees of  Georgia.  —  Negro  Slavery  prohibited.  —  John  and  Charles  Wesley  —  accompa- 
ny Moravian  Emigrants  to  the  Province.  —  Emigration  of  Scotch  Highlanders.  —  Dis- 
contents in  the  Colony.  —  The  Scotch  Colonists  remonstrate  against  Negro  Slavery.  — 
Negro  Insurrection  in  South  Carolina.  —  Spanish  War.  —  The  Moravians  forsake  Geor- 
gia.—  Oglethorpe's  Invasion  of  Florida.  —  The  Spaniards  invade  Georgia  —  and  are 
foiled  by  Oglethorpe  —  who  returns  to  England.  —  Change  in  the  civil  and  political 
Constitution  of  Georgia.  —  Flourishing  State  of  South  Carolina. —  Surrender  of  the 
Charter  of  Georgia  to  the  Crown  —  and  Introduction  of  Negro  Slavery.  —  Condition 
of  Georgia  —  Trade,  Manners,  &c 109 


BOOK    X. 

PROGRESS  OF  THE  STATES  OF  NORTH  AMERICA,  TILL  THE  PEACE  OF 

PARIS,  IN  3763. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Affairs  of  New  York.  —  Zenger's  Trial.  —  Prosperous  State  of  New  England.  —  Contro- 
versy between  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  —  Intrigues  for  the  Removal  of 
Governor  Belcher.  —  New  England  Missions.  —  Jonathan  Edwards.—  David  Brain- 
erd.  —  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  —  Benjamin  Franklin. —  George  Whitefield.  —  Disputes 
respecting  a  military  Establishment.  —  Discontent  of  the  Indians.  —  War  with  France. 

—  Louisburg  —  the  Invasion  of  it  projected  by  New  England — and  undertaken. — 
Siege  —  and  Surrender  of  Louisburg.  —  Jealousy  of  Britain.  —  Effects  of  the  Enterprise 
in  America.  —  Rebellion  in  Behalf  of  the  Pretender  in  Britain.  —  Armament  despatch- 
ed from  France  against  the  British  Colonies  —  discomfited.  143 

CHAPTER  II. 

Progress  of  the  War. —  Tumult  excited  by  naval  Impressment  in  Boston.  —  Peace  of  Aix- 
la-Chapelle. —  Regulation  of  Paper  Currency  in  New  England.  —  Policy  of  the  British 
Government  relative  to  America.  —  Political  Sentiments  and  Speculations  of  the  Amer- 
icans. —  Condition  of  America,  and  miscellaneous  Transactions.  —  Origin  of  Vermont. 

—  The  Ohio  Company.  —  American  Science  and  Literature.  .        .        .        .        .'182 

CHAPTER  III. 

View  of  the  colonial  Dominion  and  Policy  of  Britain  and  France  in  America.  —  Renewal 
of  Disputes  between  the  French  and  English  Colonists.  —  Hostilities  on  the  Virginian 
Frontier.  —  Benjamin  Franklin  —  his  Plan  for  a  federal  Union  of  the  American  Prov- 
inces.—  Discontents  in  Virginia — North  Carolina — and  New  York.  —  Preparations 
of  France  and  Britain  for  War 218 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Hostilities  in  Nova  Scotia  —  Expulsion  of  the  French  Neutrals.  —  Braddock's  Expedition 

—  and  Defeat.  —  Battle  of  Lake  George.  —  Transactions  in  South  Carolina.  —  Dissen- 
sions in  Pennsylvania.  —  Resignation  of  political  Power  by  the  Quakers.  —  Quaker 
Proceedings  respecting  Negro  Slavery.  —  War  declared  between  France  and  Britain. 

—  Success  of  the  French  at  Oswego .        ,  240 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  V. 


Incapacity  of  the  British  Commander  in  America.  —  Loss  of  Fort  William  Henry. — 
Dispute  between  Massachusetts  and  the  British  Commander.  —  State  of  Parties  in  New 
England.  —  Change  of  the  British  Ministry  and  Measures.  —  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  — 
PoUtical  Exertions  of  Franklin  in  England.—  Conquest  of  Cape  Breton.  —  Repulse  at 
Ticonderoga.  —  Reduction  of  Fort  Frontignac  —  and  Fort  Duquesne. —Effect  of  the 
British  Successes  upon  the  Indians.  —  Plan  of  the  Campaign  of  1759.  —  Reduction  of 
Ticonderoga  —  and  Crown  Point.  —  Battle  of  Niagara  —  and  Capture  of  Fort  Niagara. 
—  Siege  of  Quebec.  —  Battle  of  the  Heights  of  Abraham  —  and  Surrender  of  Quebec.  262 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Progress  of  Hostilities  in  America. —  Entire  Conquest  of  Canada.  —  War  with  the  Chero-^ 
kees.  —  Affairs  of  Massachusetts.  —  Death  of  George  the  Second.  —  Conclusion  of  the 
Cherokee  War.  —  Affairs  of  South  Carolina.  — Discontents  in  Massachusetts —  and  in 
North  Carolina.  —  Peace  of  Paris.  —  Affairs  of  Virginia.  —  Patrick  Henry.  —  Indian 
War.  —  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  300 


APPENDIX    III. 

Condition  of  the  North  American  States  —  Virginia  —  New  England  —  Maryland  —  the 
Carolinas  —  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania  —  Georgia.  —  Political  Feelings 
and  Ideas  in  Britain  and  America.  —  Benjamin  West.  —  Indian  Affairs.  —  Moravian 
Missions.  ...............  336 


BOOK    XI. 

PROGRESS  OF  THE  STATES  OF  NORTH  AMERICA,  TILL  THEIR  ASSUMP- 
TION OF  NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

Relative  Position  of  Britain  and  her  Colonies.  —  Policy  of  the  British  Court  —  Severe 
Enforcement  of  the  existing  commercial  Restrictions  —  Aggravation  of  the  commercial 
Restrictions. — Project  of  the  Stamp  Act.  —  Remonstrances  of  the  Americans. — Idea  of 
American  Representatives  in  the  House  of  Commons.  —  The  Stamp  Act  debated  in 
England  —  and  passed.  —  Act  for  quartering  British  Troops  in  America.  —  Proceedings 
in  Massachusetts  —  and  Virginia.  —  Ferment  in  America.  —  Tumults  in  New  England. 

—  The  Stamp  Officers  resign.  —  Convention  at  New  York.  —  Political  Clubs  in  Ameri- 
ca.—  Tumult  at  New  York.  —  Non-importation  Agreements.  —  The  Stamp  Act  dis- 
obeyed. —  Deliberations  in  England  —  Act  declaratory  of  parliamentary  Power  over 
America  —  the  Stamp  Act  repealed 363 

CHAPTER  II. 

Sentiments  of  the  Americans.  —  Leading  Politicians  in  America  —  Randolph  —  Jefferson 

—  Adams  —  Hancock  —  Rutledge,  and  others.  —  Renewed  Collision  between  British. 
Prerogative  and  American  Liberty.  —  New  York  resists  the  Act  for  quartering  Troops. 

—  Acts  of  Parliament  taxing  Tea  and  other  Commodities  in  America  —  and  suspending 
the  Legislature  of  New  York.  —  Policy  of  France.  —  Progress  of  American  Discontent. 

—  Circular  Letter  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Governor  Bernard's  Misrepresent- 
ations. —  Royal  Censure  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Riot  at  Boston.  —  Firmness 

—  and  Dissolution  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Convention  in  Massachusetts.  — 
Occupation  of  Boston  by  British  Troops.  —  Violence  of  the  British  Parliament.  —  Reso- 
lutions of  the  Virginian  Assembly  —  and  Concurrence  of  the  other  Provinces.  —  Re- 
monstrance against  British  Troops  in  Massachusetts.  —  Miscellaneous  Transactions  — 
Dr.  Witherspoon  —  Dartmouth  College — Methodism  in  America  —  Origin  of  Kentucky 

~  Daniel  Boon .413 


y\  CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER   III.     . 

Impolicy  of  the  British  Measures.  —  Affray  between  the  Troops  and  the  People  of  Boston 

—  Partial  Repeal  of  the  Tea-duty  Act  —  unsatisfactory  to  the  Americans.  —  Perplexity 
of  the  British  Ministry.  —  Tucker's  Scheme. —  Writers  on  the  American  Controversy. 

—  Insurrection  of  the  Regulators  in  North  Carolina.  —  Resistance  in  Rhode  Island. — 
Governor  Hutchinson.  —  Proceedings  in  Massachusetts  —  and  in  Virginia.  —  Attempt 
of  Massachusetts  to  abolish  the  Slave-trade  —  resisted  by  the  British  Government.  — 
British  Attempt  to  exact  the  Tea-duty  —  successfully  resisted  in  America  —  tumultuously 
defeated  at  Boston.  —  Disclosure  of  Hutchinson'^  Letters.  —  Dismissal  of  Franklin  from 
the  British  Service.  —  Taunting  Language  in  England. — The  Shakers.  —  European 
Emigrations  to  America.  ... 449 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Boston  Port  Bill  —  and  other  British  Measures  —  their  Effects  in  America.  —  Proposition 
of  a  general  Congress.  —  Suffolk  Resolutions.  —  Meeting  of  the  first  American  Con- 

fress  —  its  Proceedings.  —  Transactions  in  New  England.  —  Proceedings  of  the  British 
linistry  and  Parliament.  —  Defensive  Preparations  in  America.  —  Affair  of  Lexington. 

—  The  Americans  surprise  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point.  —  Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill. 

—  Second  American  Congress  —  prepares  for  War  —  elects  a  Commander-in-chief  — 
George  Washington.  —  Transactions  m  Virginia.  —  Progress  of  Hostilities.  — American 
Invasion  of  Canada 483 

CHAPTER  V. 

Popular  Feeling  and  public  Policy  in  America.  —  American  Negotiations  with  France.  — 
La  Fayette.  —  Condition  of  the  American  Army.  —  Operations  of  Washington.  — Re- 
treat of  the  British  Army  from  Boston.  —  Hostilities  in  South  Carolina.  —  The  Amer- 
icans declare  their  Commerce  free.  —  Conduct  of  the  American  duakers.  — Proceedings 
in  Congress.  —  Declaration  of  American  Independence.  —  Conclusion.         ,        .        ,530 

NOTES.  .  557 


THE 

HISTORY 

OF 

NORTH    AMERICA 


BOOK     VIII. 


CHAPTER   I. 

The  American  Provinces  dissatisfied  with  the  Fruits  of  the  British  Revolution. — Affairs  of 
Virginia  and  Maryland.  —  Character  and  Policy  of  Governor  Nicholson.  —  Affairs  of  Mas- 
sachusetts.—  Administration  of  Lord  Bellamont  —  and  of  Dudley.  —  Queen  Anne's  War. 
—  Policy  of  New  York.  —  Affairs  of  Connecticut.  —  Attempts  to  subvert  her  Charter. — 
Invasion  of  South  Carolina.  —  Progress  of  the  War  in  New  England.  —  Indian  Embassy 
to  Britain.  — Conquest  of  Port  Royal  and  Acadia.  —  Invasion  of  Canada  by  a  British  and 
Provincial  Force. — Failure  of  the  Expedition.  —  Indian  War  in  North  Carolina.  —  Affairs 
of  New  York.  —  Peace  of  Utrecht.  —  Effects  of  the  War  in  New  England.  —  British  Legis- 
lation. 

When  the  first  agitations  of  hope  and  fear  that  were  engendered  by  the 
British  Revolution  had  subsided,  this  great  event  proved  least  satisfactory 
in  the  very  quarters  in  which  its  operation  was  the  most  beneficial.  The 
church  of  England,  which  owed  its  preservation  as  a  Protestant  estabhsh- 
ment  to  the  revolt  which  it  had  countenanced  against  its  own  temporal  head, 
received  the  boon  with  a  sullen  acquiescence  in  disagreeable  necessity  ; 
and  continued,  for  many  years,  estranged  more  or  less  from  a  government, 
whose  origin,  however  disguised  by  the  theories  of  political  sophists,  practi- 
cally confessed,  or  at  least  forcibly  suggested  to  mankind,  the  legitimate 
control  of  popular  will  and  reason  over  the  most  authoritative  principles 
and  the  most  venerable  institutions  of  national  pohcy.  It  was  not  from  love 
of  civil  or  religious  liberty,  but  for  the  protection  of  their  own  special  priv- 
ileges and  emoluments,  that  the  English  prelates  abetted  the  revolutionary 
movement ;  for  their  deep  desire  was,  that  kings  should  reign  by  a  divine 
right,  which  laymen  were  not  entitled  to  scan,  and  of  which  the  ecclesias- 
tical expositors  of  the  divine  will  were  the  sole-,  or,  at  least,  the  most 
competent,  judges.  The  Scottish  Covenanters,  who  were  rescued  by  the 
Revolution  from  the  extremity  of  barbarous  oppression  and  political  degra- 
dation, less  rejoiced  at  the  signal  deliverance,  than  repined  at  the  inadequate 
compensation  they  obtained  ;  and,  thankless  for  a  bare  toleration,  without 
triumphant  ascendency  of  those  principles  which  heroic  sacrifice  and  the 
glory  of  their  martyred  friends  had  so  mightily  endeared  to  them,  they  re- 
garded the  revolutionary  government  with  anger  and  aversion,  and  even  in 
some  instances  conspired  with  the  partisans  of  their  deposed  oppressor  to 
accomplish  its  overthrow.  From  the  peculiar  sources,  however,  of  these 
domestic  discontents  there  was  derived  a  reasonable  prospect  of  their  pro- 
gressive mitigation.     The  lapse  of  time,  as  it  invested  the  remodelled  mon- 

VOL.    II.  1  A 


2  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIH 

archy  of  Britain  with  a  semblance  of  antiquity,  tended  to  abate  the  jealousy 
of  the  Tories  and  prelates,  by  veiling  what  they  deemed  its  dangerous 
features  from  the  grossness  of  the  general  gaze  ;  and  the  descendants  of 
the  Covenanters,  even  when  they  inherited  the  principles  of  their  fathers, 
lost  a  portion  of  that  enthusiastic  zeal,  which,  like  the  ardor  of  maternal 
affection,  must  originate  from  a  personal  experience  of  trouble,  anguish,  and 
danger. 

In  no  part  of  the  British  empire  did  the  Revolution  of  1688  produce 
more  beneficial  consequences  than  in  the  provinces  of  North  America  ;  yet 
nowhere  did  the  immediate  fruits  of  that  revolution  excite  greater  or  more 
general  disgust.  Some  of  these  colonies  had  been  previously  reputed  pe- 
culiarly loyal  to  the  fallen  dynasty ;  others  had  always  regarded  it  with  appre- 
hensive dislike  ;  some  had  endured  but  httle,  and  others  had  endured  a 
great  deal,  of  molestation  from  its  tyranny.  Several  of  the  provinces  had 
suffered  only  the  apprehension  occasioned  by  a  threatened  abrogation  of 
their  privileges  ;  others  had  been  actually  deprived  of  them  all.  Virginia, 
though  devoid  of  the  safeguard  of  a  charter,  had  been  merely  subjected  to 
a  tyrannical  governor,  without  being  deprived  of  her  representative  assembly. 
The  New  England  States,. though  possessing  chartered  systems  of  liberty, 
had  been  deprived  both  of  their  charters  and  their  assemblies.  Various, 
however,  as  the  sentiments  consequently  were,  which  the  first  tidings  of  the 
British  Revolution  excited  in  these  several  provinces,  they  were  all  per- 
vaded by  common  feelings  of  disappointment  and  discontent,  after  a  very 
short  experience  of  the  dominion  of  the  new  authorities  that  had  arisen  in 
the  parent  state.  From  the  reasonableness  of  these  feehngs,  and  the  rela- 
tive prospects  of  the  two  countries,  a  mutual  estrangement  of  regard  was 
more  likely  to  be  increased  than  diminished  by  the  lapse  of  time. 

The  insurrections,  by  which  some  of  the  provinces  cooperated  with  the 
revolutionary  proceedings  in  England,  were  provoked  not  by  English,  but 
by  American,  grievances  ;  the  purpose  of  the  insurgents  (except  in  Mary- 
land) was  to  obtain  the  restoration  of  American  liberty  ;  and  the  approbation, 
which  King  William  at  first  bestowed  very  readily  on  every  province  and 
every  party  which  took  arms  against  the  authority  of  his  father-in-law,  was 
interpreted  by  the  colonists  into  a  sanction  of  the  objects  to  which  their 
movements  had  been  immediately  directed.  Considering  their  own  interests 
associated  with  the  cause  of  Wilham,  they  expected  from  his  triumph  a 
willing  and  immediate  restitution  of  every  provincial  privilege  which  had 
been  unjustly  w^ithheld  or  tyrannically  invaded  by  his  predecessor.  But  their 
expectations  were  completely  disappointed.  The  establishment  of  William's 
authority  induced  a  manifest  alteration  of  his  regard  for  the  promoters  of 
popular  insurrection  ;  the  acquisition  of  power  had  no  tendency  to  concihate 
his  patronage  of  claims  for  its  limitation  ;  and  the  expediency  of  retaining 
those  functionaries  of  the  old  government,  who  were  willing  to  transfer  the 
benefit  of  their  official  experience  to  the  new,  prompted  him  to  engage  the 
service  and  embrace  the  counsels  of  men  who  had  signalized  themselves 
by  overthrowing  liberal  institutions  and  administering  tyranny  in  North 
America.  Not  one  of  the  aggrieved  provinces  received  an  entire  redress 
of  its  wrongs  ;  nor  did  any  of  them  succeed  in  procuring  even  a  partial 
restoration  of  its  violated  hberties,  without  an  arduous  struggle  against  the 
opposition  of  the  court.  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  which  were  en- 
abled by  the  Revolution  to  resume  the  charters  of  which  they  had   been 


CHAP.  I]  AMERICA  DISAPPOINTED  IN  WILLIAM  III.  5 

deprived,  were  compelled  to  defend  them  against  the  envy  of  the  revolu- 
tionary government  in  the  parent  state,  whose  ineffectual  hostility  at  once 
diminished  her  own  influence,  and  endeared  to  the  colonists  a  system  of  lib- 
erty exposed  to  continual  peril  and  jeopardy,  and  only  preserved  by  their 
own  firmness  and  vigor  against  the  encroachments  of  superior  power.  Ac- 
cording to  the  dictates  of  hberal  justice,  Massachusetts  was  equally  enti- 
tled to  the  restoration  of  her  old  charter  ;  and  her  claim  was  strengthened 
by  the  gallant  stand  which  she  had  made  in  defence  of  those  principles  of 
liberty  which  the  British  Revolution  professed  to  vindicate.  But  the  tech- 
nical formalities,  which  her  virtuous  inflexibility  had  compelled  the  oppressor 
of  her  liberties  to  employ,  furnished  a  legal  pretext  for  obstructing  her 
claims,  whicn  King  William  and  his  ministers  did  not  hesitate  to  embrace. 

Though  the  English  parliament,  in  its  first  revolutionary  fervor,  prepared 
a  bill  for  restoring  the  old  charter  of  Massachusetts,  this  act  of  national  jus- 
tice was  defeated  by  the  dexterity  of  the  court ;  and  though  a  new  charter 
was  extorted  from  the  king  by  the  interest  and  importunity  of  the  colonists, 
it  withheld  from  the  people  some  of  the  most  valuable  privileges  which 
they  enjoyed  under  their  original  constitution.  New  Hampshire,-  which 
earnestly  petitioned  to  be  annexed  to  Massachusetts,  was  erected  into  a 
separate  jurisdiction,  without  obtaining  a  charter,  —  for  the  convenience 
of  a  wealthy  merchant  of  London,  who  purchased  the  vexatious  claims  of 
Mason  against  the  occupiers  of  the  soil.  New  York  had  been  deprived  of 
its  assembly  and  defrauded  of  its  promised  charter  by  .Tames  the  Second. 
The  restoration  of  the  assembly  was  accomplished  by  the  popular  insurrec- 
tion promoted  by  Leisler.  But  no  charter  w^as  procured  from  the  crown  ; 
and  Leisler,  for  an  act  importing  rather  folly  than  guilt,  was  condemned  to 
the  fate  of  a  traitor  by  Dudley,  who  had  been  chased  from  New  England 
for  abetting  the  tyranny  of  King  James,  and  w^hom  William,  nevertheless, 
appointed  chief  justice  at  New  York.  Though  William  was  encouraged 
by  his  advisers  to  lay  claim  to  every  advantage,  however  unfairly  acquired, 
which  might  be  supposed  legally  to  accrue  to  him  as  the  successor  of  the 
British  crown,  he  was  far  from  acknowledging  a  corresponding  obligation  to 
fulfil  the  engagements  which  had  been  tyrannically  violated  by  his  predeces- 
sors. Though  a  charter  was  promised  to  Virginia  by  Charles  the  Second, 
this  promise  obtained  no  more  respect  from  the  government  which  suc- 
ceeded than  from  that  which  preceded  the  Revolution ;  and  though  Lord 
Effingham  had  been  guilty  of  such  tyranny  in  Virginia  that  the  people  confi- 
dently expected  his  di.smissal  even  from  the  justice  of  King  James,  he  was 
retained  in  his  office  by  the  policy  of  William.  The  same  expediency, 
however,  which  prolonged  his  dignity,  forbade  the  exasperating  measure  of 
his  return  to  Virginia, — where  his  personal  presence  w^as  supphed  by  the 
lieutenancy  of  Francis  Nicholson,  another  agent  of  King  James,  who,  flying 
from  the  revolutionary  commotion  at  New  York,  received  welcome  and 
patronage  from  the  revolutionary  sovereign  of  England. 

By  what  arguments  Lord  Effingham  was  enabled  to  prevail  over  the 
complaints  of  the  Virginians  at  the  court  of  King  William  w^e  have  no 
means  of  ascertaining  ;  but  the  presumptive  credit  of  his  vindication  of 
himself  is  impeached  by  the  notorious  fact,  that  he  was  permitted  to  stipulate 
with  Nicholson  that  no  legislative  assembly  should  be  convoked  in  Virginia, 
unless  this  measure  were  commanded  by  the  most  urgent  and  palpable  ne- 
cessity.^    The  promotion  of  Dudley  and  of  Nicholson  served  to  pave  the 

'  Beverly.     Burk. 


4  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

way  to  a  measure  by  which  King  William  loaded  his  own  administration 
with  all  the  odium  and  jealousy  that  the  government  of  his  royal  prede- 
cessors had  excited.  This  was  the  appointment  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros, 
in  the  year  1692,  to  the  office  of  supreme  governor  both  of  Virginia  and 
Maryland.  Andros,  as  the  superior  officer  both  of  Nicholson  and  Dudley, 
had  been  appointed  by  King  James  to  conduct  his  arbitrary  system  of  gov- 
ernment in  New  England  and  New  York,  and  had  excited  the  unanimous 
hatred  of  the  people  over  whom  he  presided.  Deposed,  imprisoned,  and 
impeached  by  the  colonists  of  New  England,  he  was  acquitted  by  King 
William  ;  and,  after  a  little  prudential  delay,  was  despatched  to  assume  the 
government  of  Maryland.  Here,  from  the  oppression  to  whic|^  the  Roman 
Catholics  were  doomed  by  the  policy  of  Britain,  he  found  himself  once 
more  the  delegate  of  injustice  and  tyranny  ;  and,  tempted,  perhaps,  by  the 
distracted  state  of  the  province,  he  endeavoured  to  enrich  himself  by  pec- 
ulations that  enlarged  his  own  disgrace  and  dishonored  his  new  master.^ 
The  temporary  usurpation  by  King  William  of  the  rights  of  the  proprietary 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  the  arbitrary  proceedings  of  Fletcher,  to  whom  he 
committed  the  presidency  both  of  that  colony  and  of  New  York,  tended 
still  farther  to  impeach  the  justice  and  diminish  the  popularity  of  the  British 
government  in  the  American  provinces. 

Yet  many  gratifying  circumstances  contributed  at  the  time  to  countervail 
the  sense  and  restrain  the  expression  of  the  colonial  discontents.  The  ben- 
efit of  actual  deliverance  from  oppression  and  danger  was  universally  ac- 
knowledged ;  and  the  general  effect  in  America  of  the  British  Revolution 
was  an  increased  attachment  to  liberty,  and  a  jealousy  rather  prudent  and 
vigilant,  than  bitter  or  indignant,  of  the  designs  and  policy  of  the  parent  state. 

In  Virginia,  however,  a  good  deal  of  address  and  concihation  was  neces- 
sary to  reduce  the  prevailing  sentiments  of  disaffection  to  this  moderate 
strain.  The  continuance  of  Lord  Effingham  in  office,  and  the  appointment 
of  another  instrument  of  King  James's  tyranny  to  act  as  the  lieutenant  of 
this  nobleman,  created  so  much  disgust  and  irritation  [1690],  that  Nichol- 
son, on  his  arrival  in  the  province,  clearly  perceived  that  his  commission 
was  insufficient  to  administer  effectual  support  to  his  authority,  and  that  the 
colonists  were  actually  ripe  for  revolt.  Nicholson,  who  now  resumed  in 
America  a  career  which  was  to  procure  him,  for  many  years,  a  conspicuous 
place  in  its  history,  though  naturally  headstrong,  restless,  and  impetuous,  was 
yet  endowed  with  considerable  shrewdness  and  address  ;  devoured  by  vani- 
ty and  immoderate  ambition,  he  was  destitute  of  steady  principle  and  com- 
prehensive wisdom.  With  skilful  and  assiduous  exertions,  he  strove  to 
soothe  and  conciliate  the  minds  of  the  Virginians,  who,  remembering  the 
haughty  and  sullen  austerity  that  characterized  the  deportment  of  his  pre- 
decessors, Culpepper  and  Effingham,  were  the  more  captivated  by  the  oblig- 
ing and  affable  demeanour  of  Nicholson,  from  its  dissimilarity  to  the  man- 
ners which  they  were  accustomed  to  associate  with  tyranny.  In  order  to 
extend  the  influence  of  his  courtesy,  as  well  as  to  ascertain,  without  ex- 
pressly demanding,  the  sentiments  of  the  planters  on  the  important  point  of 
a  representative  assembly,  he  made  a  tour  through  the  several  counties 
of  the  province  ;  lavished  attentions  and  commendations  on  the  people  and 
all  their  establishments  ;   solicited  their  opinions  with  regard  to  local  im- 

*  Oldmixon.  Formerly,  the  first  edition  of  Oldmixon's  work  is  referred  to,  unless  when  the 
second  is  expressly  specified.  Now,  and  hereafter,  reference  is  made  to  the  second  edition 
alone.     The  two  publications  differ  not  a  little  in  their  contents  from  each  other. 


CHAP.  I]  NICHOLSON'S  POPULAR  ARTS.  v^^  .  /  5 

provements  ;  and  seemed  cordially  to  embrace  the  views  and  suggestions 
which  they  imparted.  To  promote  the  gayety  and  amusement  of  the  colo- 
nists, and  divert  their  leisure  hours  and  stirring  spirits  from  political  debate 
and  inquiry,  he  instituted  pubhc  games,  and  distributed  prizes  to  those 
who  excelled  in  riding,  running,  shooting,  wrestling,  and  backsword. 

Finding  that  the  erection  of  a  college  was  a  favorite  object  of  the  planters, 
he  zealously  promoted  their  wish,  and  gained  a  great  accession  of  popularity 
by  procuring  and  delivering  to  them  the  royal  donative  which  contributed  to 
the  estabhshment  of  William  and  Mary  College. ^  But  amidst  all  the  re- 
spect and  good-will  which  his  elaborate  civihty  and  politic  benevolence  at- 
tracted, he  discerned  a  deep-seated  and  vigilant  jealousy ;  and  was  made 
sensible,  by  many  unequivocal  symptoms,  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  hinl 
to  gain  the  general  confidence  or  preserve  the  public  tranquillity,  without 
restoring  to  the  colonists  their  representative  assembly  ;  and  thereupon, 
with  equal  prudence  and  promptitude,  he  scrupled  not  to  disappoint  the 
wish  of  Lord  Effingham,  and  to  allay  the  prevalent  solicitude,  by  a  regular 
convocation  of  assembhes.  Before  the  close  of  his  first  presidency,  which 
lasted  only  two  years,  his  efforts  to  compose  the  dangerous  ferments  by 
which  Virginia  was  agitated  at  the  period  of  his  arrival  [1691]  were  crowned 
with  a  success  equally  creditable  to  his  own  dexterity  and  to  the  modera- 
tion and  placability  of  the  people.  His  popularity,  however,  was  latterly 
somewhat  impaired  by  a  sudden  change  of  sentiment  which  he  displayed 
in  relation  to  a  matter  which  excited  much  interest  in  the  colony.  The 
richer  class  of  planters  had  for  some  time  entertained  the  design  of  establish- 
ing manufactures  in  Virginia  ;  and  this  project  was  eagerly  espoused  by 
the  leading  politicians  of  the  province,  who  regarded  it  as  a  measure  cal- 
culated to  diminish  the  dependence  of  their  country  on  the  parent  state. 
To  this  end,  it  was  necessary  that  the  system  of  straggling  inhabitation 
that  prevailed  in  the  colony  should  be  abandoned,  and  the  people  induced 
to  live  together  in  villages  or  towns.  After  an  obstinate  struggle  with  the 
current  of  popular  inclination  in  this  respect,  the  promoters  of  the  design 
succeeded  in  obtaining  from  the  assembly  what  was  termed  an  Act  of  Co- 
habitation^ proposing  encouragements  to  the  formation  of  towns  and  the 
introduction  of  manufactures  ;  and  Nicholson  endeared  himself  not  a  little 
to  a  powerful  party  by  zealously  abetting  the  scheme  and  affirming  the  act. 
A  present  of  three  hundred  pounds  was  voted  to  him  shortly  after  by  the 
assembly,  who  entreated  him  to  accept  it  as  a  testimony  of  the  deep  sejise 
they  entertained  of  his  virtues  and  obliging  demeanour.^  But  no  sooner 
did  he  learn  that  the  measure  which  he  had  thus  supported  was  disagreea- 
ble to  the  king,  than  he  hastened  as  zealously  to  retract  his  declarations  in 
its  favor  ;  with  ineflJectual  and  ungracious  importunity,  he  labored  to  per- 
suade the  assembly  to  rescind  its  enactment  ;  and  impaired  his  own  credit 

'  The  plan  of  the  college  buildings  was  the  composition  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren.  Wynne. 
"There  was  a  commencement  at  William  and  Mary  College  in  the  year  1700,  at  which  there 
was  a  great  concourse  of  people  ;  several  planters  came  thither  in  their  coaches,  and  several  in 
sloops  frofn  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland  ;  it  being  a  new  thing  in  America  to  hear 
graduates  perform  their  academical  exercises.     The  Indians  themselves  had  the  curiosity  to 


relish  of  learning."      Oldmixon.    Fifty-eight  years  before,  a  similar  ceremonial  was  performed 
in  the  younger  province  of  Massachusetts. 

^  King  William's  instructions  about  this  time  to  the  American  governors  having  strictly 
prohibited  their  acceptance  of  donatives,  an  address  was  presented  to  him  by  the  Virginian 
asserablj,  beseeching  that  Nicholson  might  have  leave  to  accept  their  present)  and  the  royal 
permission  was  accordingly  granted.     Beverly.  ' 


Q  HISTORY  OF  WORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

by  demonstrating  to  the  people  that  his  interest  in  their  prosperity  would 
ever  be  subordinate  to  his  obsequious  devotion  to  the  pleasure  of  the  crown 
and  the  policy  of  the  parent  state. ^ 

The  continuance  of  Lord  Effingham  in  the  office  of  governor  of  Virginia, 
which  at  one  time  was  deeply  resented  by  the  colonists,  had  latterly  been 
rendered  a  matter  of  indifference  to  them  by  the  mild  administration  of 
Nicholson  ;  and  when  the  event  of  that  nobleman's  dismission  at  length  oc- 
curred [1692],  it  w^s  rendered  even  unwelcome  to  Virginia  by  the  con- 
comitant intelligence  that  the  vacant  dignity  was  conferred  on  Sir  Edmund 
Andros.  After  a  short  stay  in  Maryland,  of  which  also  he  was  appointed 
governor,  and  where  he  appears  to  have  again  indulged  his  wonted  severity 
and  rapacity,  Andros,  repairing  to  Virginia  [1692],  resumed  the  govern- 
ment of  a  people  who  regarded  him  with  alarm  and  dislike,  and  were  pre- 
pared to  watch  his  conduct  with  the  most  jealous  attention.  Nicholson 
straightway  repaired  to  Maryland,  where,  in  the  station  of  lieutenant-govern- 
or, he  continued  for  six  years  ;  during  which  he  is  said  to  have  displayed 
a  spirit  more  eager  and  intemperate  than  stern  or  illiberal,  and  to  have  pro- 
moted measures  that  happily  conduced  to  the  encouragement  of  industry 
and  the  advancement  of  religion.^ 

Whether  in  consequence  of  information  communicated  by  Nicholson, 
or  from  a  sagacious  discernment  and  appreciation  of  his  own  altered  interests 
and  circumstances,  Andros  now  evinced  a  remarkable  change  of  deport- 
ment ;  and  during  his  presidency  in  Virginia,  he  extorted  the  public  appro- 
bation both  of  the  liberality  of  his  sentiments  and  the  mildness  of  his  man- 
ners. Prompt,  judicious,  and  methodical,  he  introduced  into  all  the  offices 
and  institutions  of  government  improvements  that  contributed  to  the  sim- 
plification and  despatch  of  public,  business.  He  promoted  the  cultivation 
of  cotton  in  the  province  ;  and  though  he  succeeded,  by  the  auxiliary  influ- 
ence of  the  merchants  of  London  who  traded  with  Virginia,  and  the  concur- 
rent habits  and  inclinations  of  a  majority  of  the  colonists,  in  persuading  the 
assembly  to  suspend  the  Act  of  Cohabitation^  he  was  yet  celebrated  for  his 
active  patronage  of  every  other  feasible  project  for  the  introduction  and  do- 
mestication of  manufactures.  Devoid  of  Nicholson's  inordinate  vanity  and 
ambition,  and  greatly  his  superior  in  talent  and  understanding,  Andros  con- 
tented himself  with  endeavouring  to  redeem  his  public  character,  and  associ- 
ate his  administration  with  provincial  improvement  and  prosperity,  —  without 
studying  to  extend  his  influence,  or  greedily  courting  popularity  by  supple- 
ness and  intrigue.  His  useful  labors  were  interrupted  by  the  revocation  of 
his  commission  after  an  endurance  of  six  years  ;  when  Nicholson,  promoted 

*  Oldmixon.     Burk. 

'  A  letter  written  to  the  Royal  Society  of  London  by  an  intelligent  Englishman,  who  visited 
Maryland  during  the  administration  of  Nicholson,  contains  the  following  statements  :  — "  The 
church  of  England  is  now  pretty  well  established.  Churches  are  built ;  and  there  is  an  annual 
stipend  allowed  to  every  minister  by  a  perpetual  law  ;  which  is  more  or  less,  according  to  the 
number  of  taxables  in  each  parish.  Every  Christian  male  sixteen  years  old,  and  negroes,  male 
and  female,  above  that  age,  pay  forty  pounds  of  tobacco  to  the  minister ;  and  this  makes  their 
revenues,  one  with  another,  about  two  thousand  pounds  of  tobacco,  or  one  hundred  pounds 
sterling,  a  year.  It  has  been  the  unhappiness  of  this  country,  that  they  had  no  Protestant  min- 
isters, hardly,  among  them,  till  the  time  of  Governor  Nicholson,  who  has  been  a  great  pro- 
moter and  encourager  of  the  clergy."  "  Now,  by  Colonel  Nicholson's  protection,  the  orthodox 
churches  are  crowded  as  full  as  they  can  hold.  The  people  grow  sensible  of  the  Romish  su- 
perstition and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Quakers.  Indeed,  the  Quakers  struggle  hard  to  maintain 
their  footing;  and  their  teachers  (especially  of  the  female  sex,  who  are  the  most  zealous)  are 
very  free  of  their  reflections  and  scandal  against  the  orthodox  divines  and  professors."  Old- 
mixon. 


CHAP.  I]  NICHOLSON'S  AMBITIOUS  SCHEMES.  7 

to  the  vacant  dignity,  returned  once  more  to  preside  in  Virginia.  [1698.] 
In  the  government  of  Maryland,  Nicholson  was  succeeded  first  by  Colonel 
Blackiston,  and  afterwards  [1703]  by  Colonel  Seymour,  —  whose  adminis- 
trations obtained  the  praise  of  liberal  and  honorable  policy,  and  the  recom- 
pense of  general  satisfaction  and  esteem.^ 

The  advancement  of  Nicholson  to  a  station  of  greater  dignity  than  he  had 
ever  before  enjoyed  served  rather  to  inflame  than  to  gratify  his  thirst  for 
distinction.  Elevated  to  the  supreme  command  of  the  most  ancient  and 
wealthy  province  of  the  British  empire  in  America,  he  now  suffered  himself 
to  be  transported,  by  the  eagerness  of  his  ambition,  beyond  the  modesty 
of  reasonable  hope  and  the  safeguard  of  politic  demeanour.  The  project 
of  a  general  government,  embracing  all  the  colonies,  which  had  been  de- 
vised by  James  the  Second,  but  rendered  abortive  by  the  Revolution,  was 
now  revived  by  this  enterprising  politician,  who  beheld  in  it  at  once  the  most 
effectual  means  of  securing  the  absolute  authority  of  the  parent  state,  and 
the  fairest  promise  of  his  own  ascent  to  the  pinnacle  of  provincial  s^reatness. 
By  his  merit  in  promoting  an  object  so  agreeable  to  the  English  cou>  ,  added 
to  his  boasted  influence  and  experience  in  America,  he  hoped  to  entitle 
himself  to  claim  the  appointment  of  governor-general  ;  and  this  ambitious 
vision  s§ems  to  have  mainly  influenced  his  language  and  actions  during  his 
second  presidency  in  Virginia.  One  of  the  first  transactions  in  which  he 
engaged  convinced  him  very  disagreeably  that  he  had  underrated  the  resist- 
ance which  the  colonists  might  be  expected  to  oppose  to  such  designs, 
and  that,  in  laboring  to  accomplish  them,  he  had  no  aid  to  expect  either 
from  his  own  personal  influence  or  the  supposed  tractability  of  the  people. 
Three  years  before  this  period.  King  William  had  concerted  a  plan  for  the 
general  defence  of  the  American  settlements  against  the  French  forces  in 
Canada  and  their  Indian  allies  ;  in  conformity  with  which,  every  British 
colony  was  required  to  furnish  a  pecuniary  contingent  proportioned  to  the 
amount  of  its  population,^  —  to  be  administered  according  to  the  directions 
of  the  king.  This  plan  was  submitted  to  all  the  provincial  legislatures,  and 
disregarded  or  rejected  by  every  one  of  them  ;  the  colonies  most  exposed 
to  attack  being  desirous  of  employing  their  forces  in  the  manner  most  agree- 
able to  their  own  judgment  and  immediate  exigencies,  and  those  which  were 
more  remote  from  the  point  of  danger  objecting  to  participate  in  the  expense. 

The  Quaker  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  from  which  the  most  inflexible 
opposition  might  naturally  have  been  expected,  was  the  only  one  which 
finally  consented  to  aid,  by  a  subscription,  the  military  operations  in  New 
York,  which  preceded  the  peace  of  Ryswick.'**  Governor  Nicholson  clearly 
perceived  the  utility  of  King  William's  plan  as  a  preparative  of  the  uherior 
design  of  a  general  government  of  the  colonies  ;  and  though  peace  was  now 
established,  he  determined  to  signahze  his  recent  promotion  by  reviving 
the  royal  project  and  retrieving  its  failure.  He  ventured  accordingly  to 
introduce  this  unwelcome  proposition  to  the  assembly  of  Virginia,  and  em- 
ployed all  the  resources  of  his  address  and  ingenuity  to  procure  its  adop- 
tion. He  affirmed  that  a  fort  on  the  western  frontier  of  New  York  was 
essential  to  the  security  of  Virginia ;  and  insisted  that  the  legislature  of  this 
province  was  consequently  engaged,  by  every  consideration  of  prudence, 
equity,  and  generosity,  to  contribute  to  its  erection  and   support.     But  his 

'  Oldmixon.     Beverly.     Burk^  «^Se7Book~VTChap  II.,  ante.  " 

»  See  Book  VII.,  Chap  II.,  ante. 


8  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

arguments,  though  backed  by  all  the  aid  they  could  derive  from  reference 
to  the  wish  and  suggestion  of  the  king,  proved  totally  unavailing  ;  and  the 
proposition  experienced  an  unquahfied  rejection  from  the  assembly.  Nich- 
olson, astonished  and  provoked  at  this  discomfiture,  hastened  to  transmit 
to  the  king  a  report  of  the  affair,  in  which  he  strongly  censured  the  refrac- 
tory spirit  of  the  Virginians,  and  urged  the  propriety  of  compelling  them 
yet  to  acknowledge  their  duty  and  consult  their  true  interests.  [1698.] 
William  was  so  far  moved  by  this  representation,  as  to  recommend  to  the 
provincial  assembly  a  more  deliberate  consideration  of  the  governor's  prop- 
osition ;  and  he  even  condescended  to  repeat  the  arguments  which  Nicholson 
had  already  unsuccessfully  employed.  But  these  reasons  gained  no  addi- 
tional currency  from  the  stamp  of  royal  sanction.  The  king's  project 
encountered  again  the  most  determined  opposition,  and  was  a  second  time 
rejected  ;  while  his  argument  elicited  from  the  assembly  only  a  firm,  but  re- 
spectful, remonstrance,  in  which  they  declared  their  conviction,  ''that  nei- 
ther the  forts  then  in  being,  nor  any  other  that  might  be  built  in  the  province 
of  New  York,  could  in  the  slightest  degree  avail  to  the  defence  and  security 
of  Virginia  ;  for  that  either  the  French  or  the  Northern  Indians  might  invade 
this  colony,  and  yet  not  approach  wuthin  a  hundred  miles  of  any  of  those 
forts." 

Nicholson  had  relied  with  undoubting  assurance  on  the  success  of  this 
attempt ;  and  the  issue  of  it,  which  disconcerted  his  aspiring  hopes,  de- 
stroyed his  popularity,  and  discredited  the  policy  of  his  counsels  by  lower- 
ing the  dignity  of  the  king,  inspired  him  with  the  most  vindictive  feelings  of 
rage  and  mortification.  Henceforward,  he  took  no  pains  to  conceal  his  an- 
tipathy to  the  institution  of  representative  assembHes,  and  to  the  democrat- 
ical  frame  of  the  provincial  governments.  He  represented  to  the  British 
ministers  that  the  dissent  of  the  Virginian  assembly  from  his  Majesty's  desire 
and  opinion  proceeded  entirely  from  a  spirit  of  rebelUon,  and  a  propensity 
to  national  independence  and  republican  government  ;i  —  charges,  which,  as 
they  coincided  with  the  apprehensions  of  the  parent  state,  were  most  likely 
to  provoke  her  jealousy  and  malevolence  towards  the  colony.  Blending  a 
regard  to  policy  with  the  gratification  of  his  resentment,  and  hoping  to  im- 
press the  credulous  with  a  high  opinion  of  his  munificence  and  public  spirit, 
he  protested  that  neither  the  king  nor  New  York  should  be  disappointed,  for 
that  he  himself  would  rather  furnish  the  quota  due  by  Virginia  from  his  own 
private  estate.  He  repaired  soon  after  to  New  York,  where  he  labored  to 
regain  the  reputation  which  he  had  heretofore  forfeited  with  its  citizens,  by 
passionate  declamations  on  his  efforts  to  serve  them,  and  on  the  sordid 
and  disobliging  spirit  with  which  the  Virginians  obstructed  his  purpose  ;  and 
he  succeeded  for  a  while  in  buying  golden  opinions  in  this  quarter  by  an 
impudent  deceit,  whereby  he  pretended  to  grant  his  own  bills  of  exchange 
for  the  sum  that  had  been  ineffectually  soHcited  from  the  Virginian  assembly. 
Notwithstanding  his  resentment  against  the  people,  and  his  hostility  to  the 
institutions  over  which  he  continued  for  some  years  longer  to  preside,  he 
found  his  power  insufficient  for  any  open  violation  of  public  rights  ;  and 
was  obliged  to  content  himself  with  conveying  to  the  English  government 
secret  counsels  and  complaints,  which,  under  pretence  of  guarding  the  in- 
terest and  honor  of  the  parent  state,  aimed  at  the  destruction  of  every  lib- 
eral and  popular  institution  in  Virginia.  He  cooperated  with  his  friend, 
'  1  See  Note  XXVIII.,  Vol.  I.,  atde.  " 


CHAP.  I.]         POLITIC  APPOINTMENTS  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  ,9 

Colonel  Quarry,  another  functionary  of  the  crown  in  North  America,  in  the 
composition  of  the  Memorials  which  were  presented  in  Quarry's  name  to  the 
Commissioners  of  Trade  and  Plantations  in  England.  These  Memorials  rep- 
resented the  colonists  of  America,  and  particularly  the  Virginians,  as  deeply 
imbued  with  republican  principles  ;  strongly  counselled  immediate  recourse 
to  the  most  rigorous  measures  for  preserving  the  ascendency  of  the  royal 
prerogative  ;  and  especially  suggested  ''that  all  the  English  colonies  of 
JSTorth  America  be  reduced  under  one  government  and  one  viceroy  y  and  that 
a  standing  army  be  there  kept  on  foot  to  subdue  the  enemies  of  royal  author- 
ity.''^ The  success  of  his  exertions  corresponded  better  with  his  vindictive 
sentiments  than  with  his  ambitious  designs  ;  for,  though  he  was  able  to  ex- 
cite mutual  distrust  and  jealousy  between  the  parent  state  and  the  colony, 
he  could  not  succeed  in  persuading  the  English  ministers  to  embrace  the  en- 
ergetic measures  which  he  recommended.  The  vehemence  of  his  language, 
perhaps,  led  them  to  doubt  the  soundness  and  prudence  of  his  views.  His 
career  in  America  was  suspended  in  the  year  1704,  by  his  recall  from  Vir- 
ginia ;  ^  but  he  afterwards  resumed  it,  in  the  conduct  of  various  mihtary  ex- 
peditions, and  in  a  short  occupation  of  the  government  of  Carolina. 

In  New  York,  where  hberal  institutions  had  enjoyed  but  a  brief  exist- 
ence, and  where  the  boundaries  of  royal  authority  and  popular  rights  were 
not  defined  by  a  charter.  King  William  showed  as  little  respect  for  the  wishes 
of  the  people,  in  the  selection  of  his  pubHc  officers,  as  he  had  done  in  rela- 
tion to  Virginia.  He  conferred  the  highest  judicial  office  at  New  York  on 
Dudley,  a  victim  of  the  revolution  in  New  England  ;  and  bestowed  the 
government  of  the  province  on  Fletcher,  whose  intemperate  effiarts  to  stretch 
the  royal  prerogative  proved,  however,  more  beneficial  than  hurtful  to  public 
spirit  and  the  interests  of  freedom.  But  in  Massachusetts,  where  the  peo- 
ple regarded  liberty  as  their  undoubted  birthright,  and,  next  to  rehgion, 
their  peculiar  glory,  and  where  the  most  formidable  approaches  of  tyranny 
had  ever  been  encountered  with  heroic  fortitude  and  inflexible  opposition, 
the  king  and  his  ministers  were  sensible  that  greater  deference  was  due  to 
pubhc  opinion,  and  that  a  conciliating  policy  was  necessary  to  mitigate  the 
discontent  excited  by  the  innovations  in  the  frame  of  the  provincial  consti- 
tution. Though  some  of  the  obnoxious  officers  of  James  were  counte- 
nanced and  retained  by  Wilham,  not  one  of  them  had  yet  been  employed 
in  New  England  ;  and  the  first  royal  governor  of  Massachusetts  after  the 
Revolution,  as  we  have  seen,  owed  his  appointment  by  the  king  to  the 
previous  favor  and  express  recommendation  of  the  colonists  and  their  agents. 
This  pohtic  condescension  was  in  a  great  degree  successful  ;  though,  from 
unforeseen  and  unhappy  circumstances,  the  administration  of  Sir  William 
Phips  did  not  produce  all  the  satisfactory  consequences  that  were  expected 
to  ensue  from  it ;  and  at  its  close,  and  for  some  time  after,  so  much  discon- 
tent and  irritation  prevailed  in  the  province,  as  forcibly  to  inculcate  on  the 
king  and  his  ministers  the  utmost  prudence  and  moderation  in  the  exercise 
of  the  royal  prerogative.  It  was  never  more  wisely  exercised  by  them,  than 
in  the  subsequent  appointment  of  Richard,  Earl  of  Bellamont,  to  the  govern- 
ment of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  ;  to  which  was  added  the  gov- 
ernment of  New  York,  where  some  remedy  was  urgently  required  for  the 
abuses  that  had  signahzed  Fletcher's  administration.  The  conduct  of  Lord 
Bellamont  at  New  York  has  already  engaged  our  attention. 

^Beverly.    Oldmixon.     Quarry's  Jlfe^nonW,  in  the  British  Museum. 
VOL.    II.  2 


iO  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIH. 

Lord  Bellamont  was  the  first  and  the  only  British  nobleman  who  ever 
exercised  the  functions  of  governor  in  New  England  ;  and  even  in  this  region 
of  republican  usages  and  Puritanic  sentiments,  his  rank  enhanced  the  rever- 
ence which  his  merit  inspired.  Endowed  with  sound  sense  and  judgment, 
a  liberal  and  magnanimous  disposition,  a  calm,  yet  resolute  temper,  —  grave, 
incorrupt,  religious,  open,  and  sincere, — he  embellished  these  estimable 
qualities  by  an  address  replete  with  courtesy  and  benignity.  [1699.]  On 
his  arrival  at  Boston,  he  found  that  his  reputation  had  preceded  him  ; 
and  he  experienced  the  most  gratifying  demonstrations  of  welcome  and 
esteem  from  all  classes  of  the  inhabitants,  who  assembled  to  greet  his  ap- 
proach in  throngs  so  numerous  and  so  uniformly  respectable  in  aspect,  that 
he  was  struck  with  surprise  at  the  unexpected  wealth  and  population  of  the 
province,  —  and,  doubtless,  touched  with  a  generous  pleasure  at  the  unex- 
ampled display  of  extended  happiness  and  civility.  His  popularity  was  not 
confined  to  the  immediate  scene  of  his  administration  ;  the  inhabitants  of 
Connecticut,  esteeming  the  appointment  of  such  a  man  a  favorable  indica- 
tion of  the  policy  of  the  parent  state,  expressed  in  a  congratulatory  address 
their  sympathy  with  the  gratification  of  their  neighbours  in  Massachusetts. 
The  mutual  satisfaction  of  Lord  Bellamont  and  his  people  w^as  confirmed 
by  a  farther  acquaintance  with  each  other.  Regarding  them  collectively 
with  respect,^  and  treating  them  individually  and  invariably  with  affability 
and  benevolence,  he  commanded  esteem  and  was  judged  with  candor. 
They  forgave,  or  rather,  perhaps,  they  did  not  feel  it  necessary  to  forgive, 
his  attachment  to  the  church  of  England  ;  and  while  the  desire  of  ingratiat- 
ing himself  with  the  people  could  not  induce  him  to  disguise  this  predilec- 
tion, the  force  of  it  could  not  prevent  his  discerning  and  acknowledging 
the  worth  of  those  provincial  institutions  of  which  the  extraordinary  piety 
and  virtue  of  the  people  of  New  England  was  either  the  cause  or  the  effect. 
Though  he  paid  his  Sunday  devotions  in  an  Episcopal  chapel,  he  attended 
the  weekly  lectures  of  the  Congregational  church  at  Boston  ;  ^  and  pro- 
fessed the  highest  regard  and  esteem  for  the  Congregational  preachers. 
Hutchinson,  a  ruler  and  historian  of  this  province,  whose  own  unpopularity 
has  rendered  him  extremely  skeptical  with  regard  to  the  merit  of  a  popular 
governor,  ascribes  the  success  of  Lord  Bellamont  to  his  avoiding  offence 
to  particular  persons^  and  disputes  with  the  assembly  ;  and  his  general  con- 
formity  to  the  cast  or  prevailing  disposition  of  the  people.     Certain  it  is, 

V  "  A  speech  of  his  to  his  lady,  when  their  table  was  filled  with  the  representatives  from 
the  country  towns,  is  yet  remembered :  —  Dame,  we  should  treat  these  gentlemen  well ;  they 
give  vs  our  bread. ^'     Hutchinson. 

^  The  General  Court  always  adjourned  its  sitting  to  attend  the  lecture.  This  strictness  of 
religious  observance,  however,  though  generally,  was  not  universallv,  prevalent  in  Boston. 
Among  those  who  were  estranged  from  it  was  one  Bullivant,  an  apothecary,  who  had  been  a 
justice  of  the  peace  under  Andros.  "  Lord  Bellamont,  going  from  the  lecture  to  his  house,  with 
a  great  crowd  round  him,  passed  by  Bullivant  standing  at  his  shop-door  loitering  :  Doctor, 
says  his  Lordship  with  an  audible  voice,  you  have  lost  a  precious  sermon  to-day.  Bullivant 
whispered  to  one  of  his  companions  who  stood  by  him.  If  I  could  have  got  as  much  by  being 
there  as  his  Lordship,  I  icould  have  been  there  too.^'     Hutchinson. 

The  least  pleasing  trait  in  the  demeanour  of  Lord  Bellamont  is  one  which  reproaches  the 
prevalent  taste  and  language  of  the  contemporary  partisans  of  the  British  Revolution.  In  his 
speeches  to  the  assembly,  he  extolled  the  character  and  achievements  of  King  William  in  a 
strain  of  the  most  exaggerated  and  almost  impious  commendation  ;  and  in  his  unsparing,  though 
juster,  censure  of  the  princes  of  the  House  of  Stuart,  he  loaded  their  real  or  supposed  religious 
faith  with  all  the  blame  of  their  corrupt  or  careless  policy.  In  his  last  speech  to  the  Massa- 
chusetts assembly,  he  declared  that  "  the  parting  with  Canada  to  the  French,  and  the  Eastern 
country  called  Acadia  or  Nova  Scotia,  with  the  noble  fishery  on  that  coast,  were  most  execra- 
ble treacheries  to  England,  and  intended,  without  doubt,  to  serve  the  ends  of  popery."     Ibid. 


CHAP.  I]      POPULAR  ADMINISTRATION  OF  LORD  BELLAMONT.  || 

that,  whatever  was  the  source  of  Lord  Bellamont's  influence,  he  obtained 
from  the  provincial  assembly  a  larger  remuneration  of  his  services  than  was 
ever  bestowed  on  any  of  his  predecessors  or  successors  in  the  administra- 
tion of  royal  prerogative.  During  his  residence  in  the  province,  which 
lasted  only  fourteen  months,  he  received  from  the  General  Court  grants 
amounting  to  £2,500  of  the  provincial  money,  or  £1,875  sterling.  The 
appointment  of  this  excellent  person  would  reflect  more  honor  on  King 
William  and  his  ministers,  if  it  were  not  evident,  from  their  correspondence 
with  him,  that  they  were  more  desirous  to  render  his  previous  reputation 
instrumental  to  the  credit  of  royal  authority,  than  to  secure  to  the  colonists 
the  benefit  of  his  virtues.  Infected,  themselves,  by  the  reports  of  Nich- 
olson and  Quarry,  with  distrust  and  jealousy  of  the  Americans,  they  en- 
deavoured to  impart  these  sentiments  to  Lord  Bellamont ;  and,  assuring 
him  that  the  people  were  notoriously  disaffected  to  the  parent  state,  and 
inchned  to  mutiny  and  independence,  urged  him  to  watch  and  curb  the 
symptoms  of  this  dangerous  spirit.^ 

His  unexpected  death  prevented  him  from  receiving  the  communica- 
tion of  these  ignoble  suspicions  and  pernicious  counsels,  which  were 
repugnant  alike  to  the  dignity  of  his  disposition  and  the  tenor  of  his  expe- 
rience. Continuing  to  treat  the  colonists  with  merited  confidence  and  un- 
affected respect,  he  pursued  the  policy  most  honorable  and  advantageous 
to  them,  to  himself,  and  to  the  parent  state.  While  he  demonstrated  a 
generous  confidence,  he  succeeded  in  inspiring  it ;  of  which  a  remarkable 
mstance  has  been  preserved  in  the  annals  of  New  Hampshire.  He  had 
recommended  to  the  assembly  of  this  province  the  execution  of  a  public 
work,  of  which  the  expense  appeared  to  them  disproportioned  to  the  ad- 
vantage that  would  accrue  from  it,  and  to  the  pecuniary  circumstances 
of  the  people.  They  submitted  this  objection  to  his  consideration  ;  but 
declared,  at  the  same  time,  that,  if  he  would  acquaint  himself  a  little  farther 
with  their  actual  condition  and  resources,  they  would  readily  submit  to  any 
burden  that  he  should  reckon  conducive  to  their  advantage  and  compatible 
with  their  ability.  The  annals  of  this  province,  for  several  years,  con- 
sist of  little  else  than  a  record,  no  longer  interesting,  of  the  disputes  and 
litigations  between  the  successors  of  Mason  and  the  colonists  who  had  im- 
proved the  soil  by  their  own  industry  and  defended  it  by  their  valor. 

During  the  administration  of  Lord  Bellamont,  the  only  circumstances 
that  occurred  to  disquiet  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  were  the  terri- 
torial encroachments  of  the  French.  Louis  the  Fourteenth  had  already 
projected,  and  even  commenced,  the  conduct  of  that  ambitious  scheme  of 
policy,  which  was  afterwards  pursued  by  France  with  so  much  steadines-s 
and  address,  for  the  aggrandizement  of  her  colonial  empire.  Laying  claim 
to  the  vast  territory  of  Louisiana,  the  French  monarch  despatched  two 
vessels,  with  a  troop  of  adventurers,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  col- 
ony there,  in  the  year  1698.  King  William,  convinced  of  the  preferable 
claim  of  the  English  to  Louisiana,  endeavoured  to  anticipate  the  project 
of  Louis  by  hastily  assembling  a  force  composed  of  French  Protestant 
exiles,  who  sailed  from  London  with  the  intention  of  forming  a  settlement 
on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  But  this  emulous  attempt  was  rendered 
abortive  by  the  vigor  and  celerity  of  the  French,  who  first  assumed  posses- 
sion of  the  country,  and  erected  forts  at  well  selected  spots  for  defending 
'  See  Note  XXVIII.,  Vol.  I.,  ante.  ' 


12  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIU. 

their  occupation.  The  grand  project  of  the  French  government  was  to 
open  a  communication  from  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  colony 
of  Canada,  and  so  to  hem  and  environ  the  colonies  of  the  English  as  to 
enable  the  subjects  of  France  to  engross  the  whole  of  the  Indian  trade. 
This  enterprising  design,  however,  was  not  immediately  disclosed  to  the 
English  colonists  by  the  first  insignificant  hnk  in  so  great  a  chain  of  opera- 
tions ;  and  their  present  uneasiness  was  occasioned  by  an  act  of  resolute 
usurpation  committed  by  their  rivals  in  a  quarter  very  remote  from  Louisiana. 

Almost  immediately  after  the  peace  of  Ryswick,  the  French  openly 
avowed  the  intention  of  restraining  the  English  from  occupying  any  part 
of  the  country  comprehended  within  the  Massachusetts  charter  to  the  east- 
ward of  Kennebec,  and  of  engrossing  to  themselves  the  sole  possession  of 
the  fishery  on  the  relative  coast.^  It  was  understood  by  the  English  court, 
that  by  the  treaty  of  Ryswick  all  the  country  westward  of  St.  Croix  was 
recognized  as  the  property  of  England,  from  being  included  within  the  char- 
tered designation  of  the  province  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  an  exact  adjust- 
ment of  all  questionable  hmits  was  left  to  be  subsequently  accomphshed 
by  commissioners,  whose  appointment  never  took  place.  In  opposition  to 
the  understanding  and  the  rights  of  the  English  court,  Villebon,  the  governor 
of  a  French  settlement  on  St.  John's  River,  gave  notice  to  the  government 
of  Massachusetts  that  he  was  commanded  by  the  king  of  France  to  take 
possession  of  and  defend  the  whole  country  as  far  as  Kennebec,  and  that 
English  vessels  attempting  to  fish  on  the  coast  would  forthwith  be  seized  ; 
and  in  concert  with  this  pohcy,  the  Norridgewock  Indians,  a  tribe  allied  to 
the  French,  and  implicitly  devoted  to  a  French  priest  whom  they  accepted 
for  their  pastor,  began  to  establish  a  fixed  settlement  and  erected  a  church 
on  the  banks  of  Kennebec  River.  Lord  Bellamont  communicated  infor- 
mation of  these  transactions  to  the  Enghsh  court,  by  which  they  were  so 
negligently  considered  and  so  languidly  resented,  that,  had  it  not  been  for 
the  war  which  more  interesting  disputes  soon  after  enkindled  between  Eng- 
land and  France,  the  encroachments  of  the  French  (who  were  actively 
supported  by  their  king)  would  in  all  probability  have  proved  entirely  suc- 
cessful. The  administration  of  Lord  Bellamont  was  terminated  by  his  death 
at  New  York  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1701  .^ 

The  wise  and  liberal  policy  of  King  William  towards  New  York  and 
New  England  was  exhausted  by  the  appointment  of  Lord  Bellamont ;  and 
the  vacated  dignities  of  this  nobleman  were  now  conferred  on  successors 
whom  we  might  almost  suppose  to  have  been  selected  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  counteracting  the  impressions  produced  by  his  virtue  and  reputation. 
The  command  of  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
was  intrusted  to  Lord  Cornbury,  —  one  of  the  most  odious  and  contempti- 
ble of  mankind  ;  and  the  government  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire, 

^  The  French  appear  to  have  been  more  jealous  of  the  advantage  derived  by  the  English 
from  the  American  fishery,  than  judicious  in  their  exertions  to  render  it  advantageous  to  them- 
selves. From  the  letters  of  Charlevoix,  it  appears,  that  the  fisheries  on  the  coasts,  w^hether  of 
the  English  or  the  French  settlements,  were  beneficial  to  the  English  alone,  and  generally 
proved  ruinous  to  the  French  who  engaged  in  them.  The  resident  English  colonists,  them- 
selves undertaking  the  fishery,  ascertained  the  proper  seasons  and  stations  for  fishing  with 
advantage,  and  wasted  no  time  on  the  sea  which  they  could  profitably  employ  on  shore.  The 
French  colonists  preferred  to  devote  themselves  to  the  fur  trade  (which  was  one  cause  of  their 
more  extended  connection  with  the  Indians),  and  left  the  fishery  to  be  conducted  unskilfully 
and  expensively  by  fishing-vessels  despatched  annually  from  France  to  the  American  coast. 

^  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Mouvelle  France.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  Trumbull.  Ander 
son's  History  of  Commerce.     Holmes. 


CHAP.  I]  JOSEPH  DUDLEY  13 

which  Lord  Cornbury  had  also  unsuccessfully  aspired  to  engross,  was  com- 
mitted to  a  man  whose  previous  history  tended  to  reawaken  the  most  irri- 
tating recollections  of  regal  injustice  and  usurpation.  Joseph  Dudley  was 
originally  destined  by  his  friends  to  the  office  of  a  minister  of  religion  in  his 
native  country  of  Massachusetts  ;  but  his  taste  did  not  correspond  with  his 
education  ;  and,  declining  to  assume  a  function,  which,  in  New  England, 
was  divested  of  all  temporal  pomp  and  splendor,  he  applied  a  vigorous  un- 
derstanding, and  a  genius  more  comprehensive  than  elevated,  to  civil  and 
political  pursuits.  It  is  difficult  to  form  a  satisfactory  estimate  of  the  char- 
acter of  an  individual,  however  illustrated  by  conspicuous  station  and  vicissi- 
tudes of  fortune,  of  whom  it  has  been  justly  remarked,  that  few  men  were 
ever  pursued  by  their  enemies  with  fiercer  virulence,  or  supported  by  their 
friends  with  fonder  zeal.  He  extorted  even  from  his  opponents  the  praise 
of  indefatigable  application,  sagacity,  and  ability,  in  the  conduct  of  public 
affairs  ;  and  endeared  himself  to  his  partisans  by  the  charm  of  agreeable 
manners,  and  the  genuine  grace  of  as  many  virtues  as  could  consist  with  an 
overweening  desire  of  power  and  distinction. 

At  that  interesting  period  when  Charles  the  Second  made  his  final  at- 
tempt to  subvert  the  liberties  of  Massachusetts,  Dudley  had  attained  a  con- 
sideration in  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen  that  recommended  him  to  the  ar- 
duous and  dehcate  office  of  envoy,  to  represent  the  province  and  defend 
its  interests  at  the  English  court.  Here  his  native  thirst  for  grandeur  and 
authority  was  inflamed  by  the  dazzling  display  of  regal  and  aristocratical 
state  ;  and  despairing  of  the  cause  of  his  country,  which  had  been  intrusted 
to  him,  he  was  seduced  into  a  partial  desertion  of  it.  His  acceptance  of 
the  temporary  commission  of  government,  which  was  tendered  to  him  by 
King  James,  completely  extinguished  his  popularity,  notwithstanding  the 
moderate  strain  of  his  administration,  and  the  hberal  measures  which  he  rec- 
ommended to  the  king  ;  ana  his  subsequent  association  with  the  tyranny 
of  Andros,  in  whose  grand  council  he  occupied  a  place,  not  only  loaded  him 
with  additional  obloquy  and  aversion,  but  entailed,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
the  shipwreck  of  his  political  fortunes.  Driven  from  his  office  by  the  rev- 
olutionary explosion  in  Massachusetts,  and  conveyed  a  prisoner  to  England, 
he  was  not  only  absolved  from  blame,  or  at  least  screened  from  punishment, 
by  King  William,  but,  through  the  interest  of  powerful  connections  at 
court,  was  appointed  to  the  office  of  chief-justice  of  New  York,  —  where 
he  increased  the  odium  that  already  attached  to  him,  by  presiding  on  the  trial 
and  pronouncing  the  condemnation  of  Leisler,  who  had  given  the  first  im- 
pulse to  the  revolution  in  this  province.  But  this  contracted  sphere  was 
very  ill  suited  to  his  aspiring  character,  and  equally  uncongenial  to  that 
patriotic  attachment  with  which  his  ambition,  though  the  preponderating 
sentiment,  was  inseparably  blended.  Returning  to  England,  he  obtained, 
by  the  interest  of  his  friends,  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the 
post  of  lieutenant-governor  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Yet  even  this  elevation, 
though  more  exalted  than  any  promotion  that  was  attainable  in  America, 
could  not  divert  his  wishes  from  their  original  determination,  or  reconcile 
him  to  the  condition  of  an  exile.  To  all  his  countrymen  whom  he  met  with, 
from  time  to  time,  in  England,  he  expressed  a  longing  desire  to  end  his  days 
and  obtain  a  grave  in  the  land  of  his  nativity  ;  and  all  the  interest  which  he 
possessed  at  court  was  assiduously  exerted  to  procure  his  restoration  to 
official  dignity  in  Massachusetts.     He  endeavoured  to  gain  the  favor  of  the 

B 


1^  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VHI. 

party,  who,  in  this  province,  were  opposed  to  Sir  William  Phips,  by  abet- 
ting their  complaints  and  intrigues  for  his  removal  from  office  ;  and  when  at 
length  the  envied  eminence  was  vacated  by  that  governor's  death,  the  pre- 
tensions of  Dudley  to  succeed  to  it  were  so  powerfully  supported  at  court, 
that,  but  for  a  politic  device  of  his  adversaries,  they  would  probably  have 
prevailed.  The  colony  had  now  adopted  the  practice  of  maintaining  resident 
agents  at  the  court  of  London,  to  defend  its  interests  and  watch  the  policy 
and  proceedings  of  the  parent  state. 

Sir  Henry  Ashurst,  a  member  of  parliament,  and  Constantine  Phips,  af- 
terwards Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland,  who  then  discharged  this  important 
function,  in  order  to  obstruct  the  elevation  of  an  individual  so  obnoxious  to 
their  constituents  as  Dudley,  strove  to  injure  his  credit  in  England,  by  stim- 
ulating and  aiding  the  exertions  of  the  son  of  Leisler  to  procure  a  parhament- 
ary  reversal  of  his  father's  attainder.  Young  Leisler  eagerly  united  with 
them  in  denouncing  the  character  of  the  judge  by  whom  his  parent  had 
been  condemned  ;  and,  chiefly  by  their  assistance,  the  act  of  reversal  was 
obtained.  The  real  object  of  the  agents  for  Massachusetts  was  not  less 
effectually  promoted  by  this  transaction,  which,  as  it  impeached  Dudley's 
credit,  so  it  relaxed  the  zeal  of  his  English  partisans,  —  and,  betokening  a 
determined  opposition  to  his  authority  in  America,  contributed  to  persuade 
King  William  to  bestow  the  government  of  Massachusetts  on  Lord  Bella- 
mont.  Undaunted  by  this  defeat,  Dudley  labored  with  the  most  adroit  and 
persevering  assiduity  to  reinforce  the  interest  by  which  he  hoped  to  repair 
it.  He  cultivated  with  particular  care  the  good-will  of  the  Protestant  Dis- 
senters in  England,  who  had  derived  a  great  accession  of  political  weight  and 
consideration  from  the  British  Revolution,  and  were  always  ready  to  inter- 
pose its  efficacy  in  the  councils  and  arrangements  of  the  court  with  respect 
to  the  people  of  New  England,  whose  interests  they  regarded  as  identified 
v/ith  their  own.  By  a  grave  and  serious  deportment,  and  a  conversation  well 
seasoned  with  piety,  good  sense,  and  politeness,  Dudley  succeeded  in  rec- 
ommending himself  to  this  powerful  party  ;  and  not  only  engaged  their  do- 
mestic influence  in  support  of  his  pretensions,  but  by  their  good  offices  was 
reconciled  to  the  most  influential  personages  among  the  clergy  and  politi- 
cians of  Massachusetts.  He  was  still  regarded  with  enmity  and  aversion  by 
a  great  portion  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  province  ;  while  the  sentiments  of 
those  whose  hostility  he  had  been  enabled  to  overcome  partook  rather  of 
hope  than  confidence.  It  was  manifestly  improbable  that  the  administration 
of  such  a  man  would  tend  to  promote  harmony  and  contentment  among  the 
colonists,  or  to  improve  their  regards  for  the  parent  state  ;  yet,  by  the  in- 
crease of  his  interest,  and  the  diminished  weight  of  the  opposition  to  his 
advancement,  he  finally  prevailed  on  King  Wilham  to  appoint  him  the  suc- 
cessor of  Lord  Bellam.ont  in  the  government  of  Massachusetts  and  New 
Hampshire.  The  king's  death  following  almost  immediately  after,  the  ap- 
pointment was  confirmed  by  Queen  Anne  ;  and  Dudley,  gladly  resigning  his 
dignities  in  England,  repaired  once  more  to  Boston  [1702],  where  he  was 
received  with  much  ceremonious  respect  by  a  provincial  council,  among 
whom  were  several  of  the  persons  who  had  been  most  actively  instrumental 
to  his  deposition,  imprisonment,  and  exile. ^ 

His  administration,  as  might  easily  have  been  anticipated,  proved  neither 
agreeable  to  Massachusetts  nor  advantageous  to  the  parent  state.     Treating 

*  Hutchinson. 


CHAP.  I]  DUDLEY'S  EFFORTS  TO  EXTEND  PREROGATIVE.  J 5 

the  people  with  less  courtesy,  and  urging  the  royal  prerogative  with  less 
moderation,  than  Lord  Bellamont  had  displayed,  he  provoked  very  speedi- 
ly a  keen  and  determined  spirit  of  opposition,  of  which  the  vehemence  must 
appear  disproportioned  to  the  immediate  cause,  if  we  overlook  the  old 
resentments  and  jealousies  which  renewed  collision  with  the  same  individual 
tended  inevitably  to  reproduce.  In  New  Hampshire  this  spirit  was  re- 
pressed by  the  anxious  desire  of  the  people  to  propitiate  the  favor  of  the 
English  government,  with  the  hope  (which  was  not  altogether  disappointed) 
of  engaging  its  protection  against  the  legal,  but  iniquitous,  claims  with  which 
they  were  incessantly  harassed  by  the  successors  of  Mason.  Dudley  was 
specially  directed  by  the  queen  to  require  from  the  provincial  assemblies 
the  establishment  of  competent  and  permanent  salaries  to  the  governor,  the 
lieutenant-governor,  and  the  judges  appointed  by  the  crown  ;  and  this  re- 
quisition was  complied  with  very  readily  by  New  Hampshire.  But  the 
Massachusetts  assembly  not  only  reduced  the  emoluments  of  Dudley  to  about 
a  fourth  part  of  the  remuneration  they  had  bestowed  on  Lord  Bellamont, 
but  positively  refused  to  attach  a  fixed  salary  to  his  office,  —  declaring  that 
it  had  ever  been  their  privilege  to  raise  and  distribute  the  provincial  supplies 
according  to  existing  emergencies  ;  and  that  the  imposition  of  permanent 
burdens  was  a  measure  totally  unsuitable  to  the  fluctuating  circumstances  of 
the  people.  Dudley  made  free  and  frequent  use  of  the  power  of  rejecting 
members  of  council  nominated  by  the  assembly,  —  a  privilege,  which, 
though  doubtless  conferred  on  the  governor  by  the  existing  charter,  had 
been  suffered  by  his  predecessors  to  remain  almost  entirely  dormant  ;  and 
he  endeavoured,  without  any  warrant  from  the  charter,  to  appropriate  the 
power  of  controlling  the  assembly  in  the  choice  of  their  speaker.  Opposed 
and  thwarted  in  these  and  various  other  attempts  to  enlarge  the  royal  pre- 
rogative beyond  its  legitimate  proportions,  or  to  extend  its  practical  effi- 
cacy beyond  the  limits  which  the  patriotism  of  Sir  William  Phips  and  the 
moderation  of  Lord  Bellamont  had  prescribed  to  them,  —  Diidley  was  so 
far  bereft  of  liberality  and  discretion,  as  to  express  a  wish  that  the  province 
might  be  again  deprived  of  its  charter.  Only  this  was  wanting  to  rekindle 
all  the  hatred  and  indignation  which  his  conduct  in  the  reign  of  King  James 
had  engendered  ;  and  henceforward,  his  power  and  reputation  were  assailed 
by  a  numerous  party  with  the  most  passionate  and  implacable  animosity  ; 
while,  in  his  own  defence,  he  courted  the  adherence  of  a  friendly  faction, 
and  degraded  his  character  by  adopting  the  crooked  and  illiberal  devices  of 
a  party  leader.  Honor  and  integrity  were  violated  alike  by  the  policy  of  the 
governor  and  the  rage  of  his  opponents. 

In  the  course  of  the  war  that  ensued  with  France,  he  connived  at  an  il- 
licit trade  which  some  merchants  who  adhered  to  his  party  carried  on  with 
the  French  settlements,  and  he  was  strongly,  though  unjustly,  suspecf^^d  of 
having  himself  participated  in  this  traffic,  by  which  the  military  resources  of 
the  enemy  were  increased.  During  the  whole  of  his  administration,  manv 
respectable  inhabitants,  including  several  of  the  clergy  of  Massachusetts,  re- 
sorted to  the  most  unworthy  arts  and  scandalous  intrigues,  with  the  view  of 
supplanting  him  in  the  government  of  the  province.  To  this  end,  they  per 
suaded  Sir  Charles  Hobby,  a  man  of  reputed  influence  and  licentious  char 
acter,  to  solicit  Dudley's  office  from  Queen  Anne ;  and  besides  supporting 
this  worthless  candidate  with  all  their  might,  they  prevailed  with  a  committee 
of  the  ministers  of  the  church  of  Scotland  to  intercede  with  the  queen  in  his 


IQ  HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

behalf ;  —  apologizing  for,  or  rather  defending,  their  conduct  with  loathsome 
hypocrisy  and  casuistical  cant.  These  apphcations  of  his  adversaries  to 
have  him  displaced  from  his  office  were  counteracted  by  petitions  for  his 
continuance  in  it,  not  only  from  his  own  partisans  in  Massachusetts,  but 
from  a  great  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  Hampshire,  who  warmly 
espoused  his  interests,  in  return  for  the  honest  or  politic  favor  which  he  de- 
monstrated for  theirs  in  their  controversies  with  the  successors  of  Mason. i 
Nothing  could  be  more  impolitic  than  the  conduct  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, in  employing  such  an  instrument  as  Dudley  to  make  the  first  essay  in 
Massachusetts  of  straining  to  its  utmost  height  a  prerogative,  which  he  had 
previously  forfeited  his  popularity  by  assisting  to  introduce  into  the  provin- 
cial constitution,  and  which  his  predecessors  in  authority  were  suffered 
practically  to  lower  and  relax.  The  measures  he  pursued  were,  doubtless, 
calculated  of  themselves  to  create  discontent ;  but,  promoted  by  him,  and 
recalling  the  remembrance  of  his  former  apostasy,  they  provoked  a  warmth 
of  resentment  and  bitterness  of  apprehensive  jealousy  which  the  advocacy 
of  no  other  individual  could  have  excited  ;  and  the  pretensions  of  the  parent 
state  were  henceforward  identified  in  the  minds  of  the  colonists,  by  strong 
historical  association,  with  treachery  and  tyranny.  Never  did  any  man  labor 
with  greater  assiduity  than  Dudley  for  the  attainment  of  official  dignity  in 
his  native  land  ;  nor  ever  did  any  one  find  a  more  painful  preeminence  in 
the  gratification  of  his  ambition. 

In  addition  to  the  rage  of  domestic  dissension,  the  rekindled  flame  of  for- 
eign war  signalized  the  commencement  of  Dudley's  administration.  By  the 
treaty  of  Ryswick,  Louis  the  Fourteenth  had  acknowledged  the  regal  title 
of  King  William  ;  and  on  the  death  of  James,  he  determined,  in  conformity 
with  the  advice  of  his  minister,  not  to  recognize  the  claims  of  the  royal  ex- 
ile's son.  But,  yielding  to  the  entreaties  of  his  mistress,  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon,  he  abandoned  this  wise  purpose,  and  openly  proclaimed  the  accession 
of  the  Pretender  to  the  crown  that  had  been  forfeited  by  his  father.  The 
insult  thus  offered  to  the  Enghsh  people  betokened  the  termination  of  the  peace 
of  Ryswick  ;  and  in  the  month  of  May,  1702,  war  was  declared  by  Queen 
Anne  and  her  allies,  the  emperor  of  Germany  and  the  States  General  of 
Holland,  against  France  and  Spain.  This  intelligence  prepared  the  English 
colonists  of  America  for  a  renewal  of  hostilities  with  the  colonial  settlements 
of  the  enemy  ;  and  excited,  especially  in  New  England,  an  anxious  desire 
to  ascertain  how  far  they  might  rely  on  the  continuance  of  their  pacific  re- 
lations with  those  Indian  tribes,  who,  in  previous  wars,  had  been  the  allies 
and  instruments  of  the  French.  To  this  end,  Dudley,  accompanied  by  a 
deputation  of  the  magistrates  of  Massachusetts,  held  a  conference  with  the 

'  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  Sir  Henry  Ashurst,  the  provincial  agent  at  London,  at  first  ex- 
pressed disgust  and  surprise  at  the  recommendation  of  such  an  individual  as  Hobby  by  cler- 
gymen and  other  professors  of  superior  piety  in  New  England.  But  finding  that  faction  ren- 
dered his  constituents  deaf  to  sober  truth  and  reason,  he  adopted  their  views,  conducted  their 
negotiation  with  the  church  of  Scotland,  and  observed,  that,  though  Hobby  was  not  in  all  re- 
spects the  man  he  could  wish  to  see  governor  of  Massachusetts,  yet  the  earth  must  help  the 
woman  '  —  "  which,"  says  the  historian  of  Massachusetts,  "  too  often  means  no  more  than  we 
must  do  evil  that  good  may  come  of  it."  Hutchinson.  In  Sir  H.  Ashurst's  letters  we  find 
frequent  complaints  of  an  ungrateful  disregard  of  his  services  by  the  colonists.  "  I  see,"  he 
declares,  on  one  occasion,  "  that  he  who  is  faithful  to  his  religion  and  his  country  must  expect 
his  reward  above."  Hutchinson  pronounces  these  complaints  well  founded,  and  declares  that 
.he  colonial  agents  were  invariably  treated  with  ingratitude  and  injustice.  We  have  already 
seen  (Note  X.,  at  the  end  of  Vol.  I.)  a  similar  testimony  from  Cotton  Mather.  Sir  Henry 
Ashurst  was  succeeded  in  the  agency  for  the  province,  in  1710,  by  his  brother,  Sir  William 
Ashursi. 


CHAP.  I]  aUEEN  ANNE'S  WAR.  17 

Indians  inhabiting  the  eastern  parts  of  New  England,  who  readily  consented 
to  renew  their  former  treaties,  and,  with  a  guileful  semblance  of  candor, 
avowed  that  the  French  had  labored  to  engage  their  assistance,  but  pro- 
tested that  they  had  not  the  most  distant  thoughts  of  breaking  the  peace, 
and  that  their  friendship  with  the  Enghsh  was  firm  as  a  mountain  and  du- 
rable as  the  sun  and  moon.  [1703.]  These  protestations  did  not  gain 
implicit  or  general  credit  ;  but,  unhappily,  from  their  coincidence  rather 
with  the  general  wish  than  with  repealed  experience  and  manifest  prob- 
a]|)ility,  they  succeeded  in  lulling  some  of  the  colonists  into  an  unguarded  se- 
curity, from  which  they  were  first  aroused  by  the  fury  and  havoc  of  a  gen- 
eral attack  by  those  Indians,  a  few  weeks  after  the  conference,  on  all  the 
frontier  settlements  of  New  Hampshire  and  Massachusetts.  So  indiscrim- 
inate was  the  hostility  of  the  assailants,  that  they  put  even  Quakers  to  the 
sword  ;  and  so  unreasonable  was  the  surprise  which  their  treacherous  assault 
created  in  some  of  the  colonists,  that  the  anticipations,  which  wiser  persons 
had  entertained  and  vainly  endeavoured  to  communicate  to  their  neigh- 
bours, were  ascribed  to  supernatural  agency  and  impression. 

A  fierce  and  desolating  warfare  ensued  between  New  England  and  the 
Eastern  Indians,  reinforced  by  the  Indian  tribes  of  Canada,  and  frequently 
aided  by  detachments  of  French  troops.  The  scene  of  this  warfare  was 
confined  to  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  ;  for  Rhode  Island  was 
completely  sheltered  from  attack  by  the  intervention  of  Massachusetts  ; 
and  though  a  part  of  Connecticut  was  considered  in  danger,  the  irruptions 
of  the  enemy  never  actually  reached  this  territory.  New  York  secured  the 
benefit  of  an  entire  exemption  from  hostilities,  by  directing  the  Five  Na- 
tions, which  were  interposed  between  her  territories  and  Canada,  to  nego- 
tiate for  themselves  with  the  French  a  treaty  of  strict  neutrality  between 
the  belligerent  powers.  The  French  very  wiUingly  agreed  to  an  arrange- 
ment which  enabled  them  to  concentrate  the  force  of  their  Indian  auxil- 
iaries against  New  England,  and  deprived  the  Enghsh  colonists  in  this 
quarter  of  the  advantage  they  would  have  obtained  from  the  cooperation  of 
the  Five  Nations.  The  Indian  allies  of  New  England,  from  the  means  that 
had  been  employed  to  reduce  them  to  a  state  of  civilization,  were  become 
an  enervated  race,  or  at  least  had  generally  lost  the  habits  and  qualities  that 
would  have  rendered  their  assistance  valuable  against  Indian  foes  ;  and  the 
Five  Nations,  whose  neutrality  was  thus  sold  to  the  French  for  the  benefit 
of  New  York,  were  the  most  efficient  native  allies  that  the  Enghsh  pos- 
sessed in  America.  The  injury  that  New  England  sustained  at  this  period 
from  New  York,  where  Lord  Cornbury  presided  as  governor,  was  not 
bounded  by  the  operation  of  the  mean  and  selfish  pohcy  which  was  thus  per- 
mitted to  debase  the  public  councils  of  this  province.  Even  during  the  last 
war,^  it  was  strongly  suspected  that  the  Dutch  merchants  at  Albany,  with 
their  national  preference  of  commercial  profit  to  political  or  patriotic  consid- 
erations, had  traded  with  the  Indians  who  ravaged  New  Hampshire,  sup- 
plied them  with  arms,  and  promoted  their  depredations  by  aflbrding  a  mar- 
ket for  the  spoil.  This  disgraceful  practice  was  now  carried  on  to  a  large 
extent,  and  combined  with  proceedings  still  more  treacherous  and  injurious 
to  the  English  interests.     The  inhabitants   of  Albany  not  only  purchased 

*  The  war  which  was  closed  by  the  peace  of  Ryswick  has  been  denominated  by  some 
American  writers  King  William's  War.  The  war  which  we  are  now  considering  has  moro 
generally  obtained  the  title  of  Queen  Anne's  War. 

VOL.    II.  3  B  * 


13  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

in  the  most  open  manner  the  plunder  taken  from  their  fellow- subjects  in 
New  England  by  the  Canadian  Indians,  but  even  suffered  these  marauders 
to  pass  through  their  territory  in  order  to  attack  the  New  England  frontiers. 

There  were,  indeed,  some  respectable  citizens  of  Albany  who  regarded 
the  base  pohcy  of  their  fellow-colonists  with  detestation,  and  dihgently  en- 
deavoured to  counteract  it.  Colonel  Schuyler,  in  particular,  exerted  his 
interest  with  the  Five  Nations  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  the  projected 
expeditions  of  the  French  and  their  allies,  and  was  able  on  some  occasions 
to  afford  timely  notice  to  Massachusetts  of  approaching  danger.  Thus  de- 
prived of  an  efficient  Indian  ally,  and  betrayed  by  their  own  fellow-subjects, i 
the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  conducted  their  mili- 
tary operations  with  great  disadvantage  against  an  enemy  consisting  of  numer- 
ous flying  hordes,  divested  of  those  restraints  of  honor  and  humanity  which 
mitigate  the  ferocity  of  civiUzed  warriors,  and  whose  object  was  not  victory 
or  conquest,  but  plunder  and  extermination.  Though  the  Indians  received 
premiums  from  the  French  government  for  the  English  scalps  which  they 
produced  in  Canada,  they  did  not  invariably  destroy  their  victims.  They 
preserved,  in  particular,  a  number  of  children,  of  whom  some  were  adopted 
into  Indian  families,  and  others  were  sold,  or  gratuitously  consigned  to  French 
priests,  who  eagerly  desired  to  convert  them  to  the  church  of  Rome  ;  nor 
was  it  the  least  afflicting  calamity  entailed  by  the  war  on  the  New  England 
colonists,  that  their  offspring  were  frequentty  carried  into  a  captivity  where 
they  were  educated  by  Catholic  priests  or  heathen  savages,  and  incorporated 
with  a  people  the  enemies  of  their  kindred  and  of  the  Protestant  faith. 

At  first  the  military  operations  of  the  colonists  were  merely  defensive,  and 
confined  to  small  parties  scattered  along  the  wide  frontiers  exposed  to  attack. 
Of  the  nature  of  these  hostilities,  and  the  difficulty  of  overcoming  an  enemy 
who  warily  avoided  fighting  except  with  the  attendant  advantages  of  assault 
and  surprise,  some  notion  may  be  derived  from  the  enormous  bounty  of  forty 
pounds  for  every  Indian  scalp,  which  was  proffered  by  the  assemblies  of  Mas- 
sachusetts and  New  Hampshire.  In  the  year  1704,  more  extended  opera- 
tions were  attempted  ;  and  Colonel  Church,  who  had  distinguished  himself 
in  Philip's  War,^  was  despatched  by  Dudley,  at  the  head  of  six  hundred  men, 
and  with  an  auxiliary  naval  force,  against  the  French  and  Indians  in  Acadia. 
The  French  settlers  in  this  quarter  now  endured  a  severe  retribution  of  the 
devastations  with  which  their  countrymen  in  Canada  had  afflicted  New 
England  ;  but  the  Indians  escaped  whh  very  little  injury  ;  and  much  discon- 
tent and  evil  surmise  were  excited  in  Massachusetts,  when  it  was  discov- 
ered that  Dudley  had  prohibited  any  attack  upon  Port  Royal,  the  capital 
of  the  French  settlement,  —  though  he  was  aware  of  the  general  hope  and 
belief  that  the  subjugation  of  this  place  was  the  main  object  of  the  expedi- 
tion, and  though  Church  had  earnestly  solicited  the  governor's  permission  to 
attempt  it.  Dudley  asserted  in  his  defence  that  he  could  not  venture  to 
undertake  an  operation  of  such  importance  without  express  instructions  from 
England  ;  but  his  forbearance  was  generally  imputed  to  regard  for  the  in- 
terests of  an  illicit  traffic  with  Port  Royal,  in  which  some  of  his  own  po- 
litical partisans  were  engaged.^ 

*  "  Thus  our  own  enemies,"  says  Charlevoix,  "  assisted  our  most  faithful  allies  in  their 
difficulties,  and  whilst  they  were  daily  hazarding  their  lives  in  our  service." 

2  Book  II.,  Chap.  IV.,  ante. 

^  y ohaire's  Aa-e  of  Loiiis  the  Fourteenth.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  W.  Smith's  History  of  JVew 
York.     Dwight's  Travels.    In  the  year  1704,  Sawyer,  a  respectable  colonist  of  New  England, 


CHAP.  I]     ATTACK  ON  THE  CONNECTICUT  CHARTER.  19 

The  province  of  Connecticut,  on  this  occasion,  displayed  a  spirit  dia- 
metrically opposite  to  that  which  prevailed  in  the  councils  of  New  York. 
With  equal  vigor  and  liberality,  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  prepared  to 
defend  the  vulnerable  points  of  its  territory,  and  to  succour  the  other  States 
more  exposed  to  the  brunt  of  war.  To  prevent  the  encouragement  which 
the  enemy  were  likely  to  derive  from  the  influence  of  the  panic  that  began  to 
prevail  in  the  frontier  settlements,  it  was  ordained  by  an  act  of  the  legisla- 
ture, that  all  persons  deserting  their  habitations  in  any  of  the  frontier  towns 
should  forfeit  the  lands  and  houses  from  which  they  withdrew.  Prompt  and 
liberal  assistance  was  rendered  to  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  by 
levies  of  men  and  money,  which  were  despatched  to  cooperate  with  the  mili- 
tary force  of  those  provinces.  While  the  inhabitants  of  Connecticut  were 
laboring  under  the  weight  of  these  generous  exertions,  they  were  incessantly 
harassed  with  the  most  impudent  solicitations  from  Lord  Cornbury  for  pecu- 
niary subsidies  in  aid  of  the  pretended  defence  of  New  York,  which  his  own 
ignoble  policy  had  already  secured  from  attack  by  land  at  the  expense  of  the 
colonies  of  New  England.  But  affecting  to  dread  the  invasion  of  a  French 
naval  force,  he  succeeded  in  rendering  the  colonists  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
endeavoured  also  to  render  the  people  of  Connecticut,  tributary  to  the  de- 
fensive measures  of  erecting  batteries  at  New  York.  The  Pennsylvanian 
Quakers  were  induced  to  depart  from  their  religious  principles,  on  this  occa- 
sion, by  the  apprehension  of  affording  a  pretext  to  the  British  government  for 
abrogating  or  altering  their  provincial  constitutions.  The  people  of  Connec- 
ticut had  much  greater  reason  to  entertain  the  same  apprehension,  and,  by 
their  refusal  to  submit  to  Lord  Cornbury's  exactions,  they  stimulated  the 
hostile  activity  which  he  was  exerting  to  realize  it. 

The  preservation  of  the  original  charter  of  Connecticut  had  always  been 
a  subject  of  regret  to  the  revolutionary  government  of  England  ;  and  various 
attempts  were  successively  made  to  withdraw  or  curtail  the  popular  fran- 
chises which  it  conferred.  We  have  remarked  the  encroachment  attempted  by 
King  William,  in  the  year  1693,  on  the  chartered  rights  of  the  province,  and 
the  determined  opposition  by  which  his  policy  was  defeated.^  In  the  year 
1701,  a  more  sustained  and  deliberate  effort  was  made  to  undermine  those 
rights  altogether,  by  a  bill  which  was  introduced  into  the  English  House  of 
Lords  for  rescinding  all  the  existing  American  charters,  and  subjecting  the 
relative  provinces  to  the  immediate  dominion  of  the  crown.  The  preamble 
of  the  bill  declared  that  the  charters  which  had  been  bestowed  on  certain  of 
the  English  colonies  were  prejudicial  to  the  trade  and  customs  of  the  king- 
dom, no  less  than  to  the  welfare  of  those  settlements  which  had  not  obtained 
charters  ;  and  that  piracy,  smuggling,  and  other  illegal  practices  were  coun- 
tenanced and  encouraged  by  the  governments  of  the  chartered  colonies.  An 
address  of  remonstrance  against  this  measure  was  transmitted  to  England  by 
the  province  of  Massachusetts  ;  but  the  principal  opposition  which  it  receiv- 
ed proceeded  from  Connecticut,  against  whose  charter  it  was  more  especially 
directed.      Sir  Henry  Ashurst,  who  was  the  agent  at  London  for  this  prov- 

was  carried  alive  by  the  Indians  to  Canada,  and  condemned  to  expire  in  torture.  An  appli- 
cation for  his  release  by  the  French  governor  was  rejected ;  and  the  unfortunate  man  was 
already  attached  to  the  stake,  when  a  French  priest,  rushing  into  the  circle,  held  forth  a  key, 
with  which,  he  declared,  that,  unless  the  Indians  desisted  from  their  purpose,  he  would  in- 
stantly unlock  the  gate  of  purgatory,  and  let  out  all  the  diabolical  plagues  of  that  place  ou 
their  heads.  Even  the  stubborn  ferocity  of  the  Indians  was  overcome  by  the  terror  of  this 
threat ;  and  without  asking  to  see  the  gate  or  its  lock,  they  surrendered  their  prisoner  ^ith 
great  humilitv  Dwight. 
«  Jnte,  Book  v.,  Chap    II. 


20  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

ince  as 'well  as  for  Massachusetts,  having  obtained  leave  to  defend  the  inter- 
ests of  his  constituents  at  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Lords,  represented  that 
the  rights  and  privileges  established  by  the  charter  of  Connecticut  had  been 
granted  on  weighty  considerations,  and  as  the  meed  of  valuable  services 
actually  performed  ;  that  the  colonists  had,  at  a  great  expense,  purchased, 
subdued,  and  planted  an  extensive  country,  and  defended  it  against  the  Dutch, 
the  French,  and  other  public  enemies  ;  and  that  the  fruit  of  their  exertions 
had  been  a  great  enlargement  of  the  English  dominions  and  commerce  ;  that 
on  the  charter  there  was  reposed  not  only  the  stability  of  the  municipal  in- 
stitutions of  the  province,  but  the  security  of  the  titles  by  which  the  inhab- 
itants enjoyed  their  private  estates  ;  that  Connecticut  had  never  been  ac- 
cused, far  less  convicted,  of  abetting  piracy  or  smuggling,  and  was  willing  to 
reform  any  illegal  practice  which  might  have  inadvertently  sprung  up  within 
her  jurisdiction,  whenever  such  illegality  should  be  specifically  indicated  ;  and 
that  the  abolition  of  so  many  charters  was  calculated  to  destroy  all  confidence 
in  the  crown  and  its  patents  and  pledges,  to  discourage  all  future  enterprise 
in  colonizing  and  defending  North  America,  to  create  universal  discontent 
and  disaffection  in  the  colonies,  and  to  produce  effects  more  prejudicial  to 
the  British  nation  than  any  of  those  which  were  enumerated  in  the  preamble, 
of  the  bill. 

The  force  of  these  reasons,  backed  by  the  support  which  the  New  Eng- 
land colonists  received  from  the  Enghsh  Protestant  Dissenters,  operated  so 
powerfully  against  the  bill,  that  it  was  withdrawn  by  its  .promoters.  Lord 
Cornbury  and  Dudley,  who  had  supported  this  measure,  now  labored  assid- 
uously to  retrieve  its  failure,  and  to  furnish  Queen  Anne  and  her  ministers 
with  some  plausible  pretext  that  would  justify  them  in  the  public  opinion  for 
again  attempting  by  judicial  process  or  legislative  act  to  annul  the  charter  of 
Connecticut.  Dudley  engaged  a  venal  scholar  to  compose  a  treatise,  which 
was  entitled  The  Doom  or  Miseries  of  Connecticut^  and  contained  a  tissue 
of  slanderous  charges  against  this  colony,  an  exposition  of  the  advantages  of 
a  general  government  for  New  England,  and  a  warm  panegyric  on  the  ad- 
ministration of  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  prior  to  the  British  Revolution.  Among 
other  accusations,  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  was  reproached  with  an  en- 
tire denial  of  succour  to  Massachusetts,  —  at  the  very  time  when  Dudley's 
letters  to  them  were  filled  with  grateful  acknowledgments  of  the  liberal  aid 
they  afforded.  The  charges  contained  in  this  volume  were  communicated 
in  a  formal  shape  to  the  queen  by  Dudley  and  Cornbury  ;  and  there  was 
presented  along  with  them  a  complaint  which  these  personages  had  instigat- 
ed certain  discontented  litigants  before  the  courts  of  Connecticut  to  prefer, 
and  which  imputed  to  the  assembly  of  this  province  the  most  fraudulent  and 
oppressive  conduct  towards  an  Indian  tribe  named  the  Mohegans  or  Mohi- 
cans. Lord  Cornbury  assured  the  queen  that  her  authority  would  never  be 
respected  in  Connecticut  as  long  as  the  people  retained  the  power  of  appoint- 
ing their  own  governor  ;  and  Dudley  directed  her  attention  to  an  opinion 
which  King  William  obtained  from  one  of  his  crown  lawyers,  importing  that 
"  the  crown  might  send  a  governor  to  Connecticut."  The  queen  readily 
availed  herself  of  this  last  pretext,  and  intimated  to  the  provincial  agent  that 
she  would  proceed  forthwith  to  exercise  the  prerogative  which  was  thus  as- 
cribed to  the  crown  ;  but  she  was  compelled  to  arrest  the  execution  of  her 
purpose  by  a  forcible  remonstrance,  in  which,  from  facts  and  arguments 
quite  incontrovertible,  it  was  clearly  deduced  that  the  opinion  of  King  Wil- 


CHAP.  I.]  CHARGES  AGAINST  CONNECTICUT.  21 

liam's  adviser  had  reference  to  a  hypothetical  case,  and  was  founded  on  the 
assumption  that  the  colony  was  unable  to  defend  itself.  Lord  Cornbury  and 
Dudley  were  thereupon  remitted  to  the  proof  of  the  complaints  which  they 
had  preferred,  and  which,  after  harassing  Connecticut  with  a  vexatious  and 
expensive  controversy,  were  shown  to  be  entirely  destitute  of  foundation. 
The  investigation  of  the  complaint  respecting  the  Mohegans,  which  involved 
a  territorial  dispute,  was  protracted  for  many  years,  but  finally  terminated  in 
like  manner  in  the  triumph  of  Connecticut. 

The  animosity  of  Lord  Cornbury  and  Dudley  against  this  province  seem- 
ed to  be  rather  inflamed  than  exhausted  by  their  successive  defeats.  [1705.] 
Aware  that  their  exertions  were  seconded  by  the  wishes  of  the  queen,  whose 
forbearance  was  dictated  solely  by  the  obstructions  of  legal  formalities  and 
the  force  of  public  opinion,  they  continued  to  produce  against  the  govern- 
ment of  Connecticut  a  variety  of  charges,  some  of  which  were  so  manifestly 
incapable  of  abiding  parliamentary  scrutiny  or  judicial  investigation,  that  they 
could  not  have  been  intended  to  serve  any  other  purpose  than  that  of  depre- 
ciating the  colonists  in  the  regards  of  their  English  fellow-subjects,  and  abat- 
ing the  general  sympathy  by  which  they  were  aided  in  the  defence  of  their 
liberties.  Among  other  proceedings  of  this  description  was  the  charge  they 
derived  from  one  of  the  laws  published  by  the  Connecticut  assembly  more 
than  fifty  years  before,  against  the  Quakers,  during  the  general  persecution 
of  Quakerism  in  New  England  ;  and  which,  as  it  had  been  framed  before  the 
Connecticut  charter  was  in  existence,  could  never  imply  an  abuse  of  the 
power  which  this  charter  conferred.  A  complaint  against  that  law  was  pre- 
sented to  the  queen  in  council,  describing  it  as  an  ordinance  recently  enacted, 
and  beseeching  her  Majesty's  interposition  to  prevent  the  injustice  which  it 
threatened  from  being  carried  into  effect.  In  vain  the  provincial  agent  en- 
deavoured to  prevent  the  sanction  of  a  royal  order  from  being  imparted  to 
this  charge,  by  offering  to  prove  that  the  law  was  enacted  half  a  century  be- 
fore ;  that  it  had  never  been  executed  even  at  that  time,  and  was  long  since 
deemed  obsolete  ;  and  that  no  suspicion  could  now  be  reasonably  entertained 
of  an  attempt  to  revive  or  enforce  it,  as  there  was  not  a  single  Quaker  living 
in  the  colony.  An  order  of  council  was  issued  nevertheless,  describing  the 
complaint  precisely  in  the  terms  in  which  it  had  been  presented,  and  annul- 
ling the  law  as  a  recent  enactment,  and  an  abuse  of  the  powers  conferred  by 
the  provincial  charter.  To  give  greater  efficacy  to  this  proceeding,  the  Qua- 
kers of  London,  who  had  been  persuaded  to  support  the  complaint,  and 
must,  therefore,  have  known  the  explanation  which  it  had  received,  present- 
ed a  public  address  of  thanks  to  the  queen,  for  her  gracious  interposition  in 
behalf  of  their  brethren  in  New  England  ;  taking  especial  care  so  to  express 
their  acknowledgment  of  what  she  had  done,  that  the  public  should  not  be 
undeceived  as  to  the  actual  date  of  the  law  that  was  repealed  ^ 

This  transaction  appears  the  more  surprising,  when  we  recollect,  mat,  at 
the  time  of  its  occurrence,  the  only  American  persecution  of  which  the  Qua- 
kers had  reason  to  complain  was  that  which  was  inflicted  on  their  brethren  by 

^  The  vindictive  dislike  which  was  long  cherished  by  many  of  the  Quakers  towards  the 
people  of  New  England  appears  on  several  occasions  to  have  obscured  their  moral  discrimina- 
tion. More  than  seventy  years  after  this  period,  Robert  Proud,  the  Quaker  and  American  his 
torian,  with  astonishing  ignorance  or  shameful  equivocation,  published  a  copy  of  the  queen's 
order  in  council  and  of  the  Quakers'  address,  with  the  preliminary  remark,  that  "About  this 
time  (anno  1705),  the  Quakers  in  America  seem  to  have  reason  to  be  alarmed  by  a  singular 
act  of  assembly  passed  in  the  colony  of  Connecticut ;  the  substance  or  purport  of  which  ap- 
pears by  the  order  of  Queen  Anne  in  council,  made  upon  that  occasion. 


22  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK   VIII. 

Lord  Cornbury  himself  in  New  Jersey.^  Yet  so  strong  was  the  hereditary 
resentment  of  these  sectarians  against  New  England,  as  not  only  to  enfeeble 
their  sense  of  justice,  but  to  overpower  their  sense  of  present  interest,  and 
render  them  the  willing  tools  of  their  only  existing  oppressor.  Notwith- 
standing all  the  falsehood  and  intrigue  that  was  exerted  in  this  affair,  it  yielded 
no  other  satisfaction  to  its  promoters  than  what  their  malignity  might  derive 
from  wounding  the  feelings  and  calumniating  the  reputation  of  the  people  of 
Connecticut.  This  people,  meanwhile,  retained  their  virtue  uncorrupted  and 
their  spirit  undepressed,  and  encountered  every  variety  of  trouble  with  un- 
conquerable patience,  resolution,  and  magnanimity.  Menaced  at  once  by 
national  and  political  enemies,  and  burdened  with  a  heavy  expenditure  for  the 
succour  of  their  allies,  the  defence  of  their  own  territory,  and  the  preserva- 
tion of  their  chartered  rights,  they  cheerfully  continued,  and  even  augmented, 
the  liberality  by  which  the  ministers  and  the  ordinances  of  religion  were  sup- 
ported. They  contemplated  the  varied  scene  of  peril  and  dehverance  de- 
picted in  their  past  history,  and  supplied  by  their  present  experience,  with 
solemn  and  grateful  elevation  of  regard  ;  and,  rejoicing  in  the  preservation 
of  their  liberty,  ascribed  this  blessing,  and  the  victorious  virtue  which  it  re- 
warded, to  the  favor  and  beneficence  of  the  great  Arbiter  of  destiny  and 
Parent  of  good.^ 

Although  the  policy  of  New  York  produced  the  effect  of  restrictmg  the 
hostilities  of  the  French  and  their  Indian  allies,  during  this  war,  to  the  north- 
ern colonies  of  Britain,  there  was  another  hostile  power  to  whose  attack  the 
most  southerly  of  the  colonial  settlements  was  pecuharly  exposed.  The 
Spaniards  in  Florida  had  been  for  some  time  preparing  an  expedition  for 
the  reduction  of  Carolina  [1706]  ;  and  at  length  despatched  against  it  a  force 
by  which  they  confidently  expected  to  overpower  all  resistance,  and  victo- 
riously establish  the  ancient  pretensions  of  the  Spanish  crown  to  the  domin- 
ion of  this  territory.  Apprized  of  their  design.  Sir  Nathaniel  Johnson,  the 
governor  of  South  Carolina,  exerted  much  skill  and  vigor  to  put  the  colony 
in  a  posture  of  defence.  His  efforts  were  seconded  by  the  spirit  of  the  col- 
onists, who  heard  with  undaunted  firmness  that  the  approaching  armament  of 
Spain  was  reinforced  by  a  junction  with  some  French  ships  of  war.  On  the 
arrival  of  the  combined  fleet  at  Charleston,  Le  Feboure,  the  French  admiral, 
who  assumed  the  command  of  the  expedition,  sent  a  message  with  a  flag  of 
truce  into  the  place,  requiring  its  instant  surrender  to  the  arms  of  France  and 
Spain,  and  threatening  its  capture  by  storm,  if  a  submissive  answer  were 
not  returned  within  an  hour.  Johnson,  anticipating  this  step,  had  arranged 
the  provincial  militia,  and  the  warriors  of  a  friendly  Indian  tribe  who  march- 
ed to  their  assistance,  in  a  disposition  which  was  ingeniously  adapted  to  con- 
vey to  a  hasty  glance  a  very  exaggerated  notion  of  the  strength  of  the  be- 
sieged ;  and  precluding  the  hostile  messenger  from  the  opportunity  of  more 
deliberate  observation,  dismissed  him  abruptly  with  the  disdainful  reply,  that 
the  enemy  needed  not  to  wait  one  minute  for  the  answer  to  their  summons  ; 

»  Jinte,  Book  VI. 

*  Trumbull.  Hutchinson.  "Is  it  possible  to  review  the  sufferings,  dangers,  expense  of  blood 
and  treasure,  with  which  our  liberties,  civil  and  religious,  have  been  transmitted  to  us,  and  not 
to  esteem  them  precious.^  Can  we  contemplate  the  sobriety,  wisdom,  integrity,  industry, 
economy,  public  spirit,  peaceableness,  good  order,  and  other  virtues,  by  which  this  republic 
hath  arisen  from  the  smallest  beginnings  to  its  present  strength,  opulence,  beauty,  and  respect- 
ability, and  not  admire  those  virtues,  and  acknowledge  their  high  importance  to  society  ^ 
Shall  we  not  make  them  our  own  ;  and  by  the  constant  practice  of  them,  band  down  our  dis- 
tinguished liberties,  dignity,  and  happiness  to  the  latest  ages.'^  "     Trumbull. 


S- 


o 


CHAP.  I.]     PROGRESS  OF  THE  WAR  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.  23 

that  he  was  ready  to  sustain  the  threatened  attack  ;  and  that,  commanding 
a  people  who  preferred  death  to  submission,  he  would  willingly  shed  the 
last  drop  of  his  blood  in  their  defence.  This  dexterous  parade  of  simulated 
force,  which  induced  the  invaders  to  proceed  with  more  caution  than  they 
at  first  supposed  to  be  necessary,  was  followed  by  an  active  and  successful 
exertion  of  valor  that  consummated  the  deliverance  and  triumph  of  Carolina. 
A  detachment  of  the  enemy's  troops,  which  were  disembarked  with  the  view 
of  seconding  by  land  the  operations  of  the  fleet,  were  unexpectedly  attacked 
at  daybreak  by  Captain  Cantey  and  a  chosen  band  of  the  provincial  militia, 
who  routed  them  in  an  instant,  and,  having  slain  a  considerable  number  of 
them,  compelled  the  remainder  to  surrender  as  prisoners  of  war.  Animated 
by  this  success,  the  courage  of  the  Carolinians  could  no  longer  be  confined 
to  defensive  conflict  ;  and,  yielding  to  their  ardor,  the  governor  permitted 
Captain  Rhett,  an  able  and  intrepid  officer,  who  commanded  six  small 
vessels  that  formed  the  naval  force  of  Charleston,  to  try  the  fortune  of  a 
bold  assault  on  the  superior  strength  of  the  invading  squadron.  But  the 
enemy,  disheartened  by  the  check  which  they  had  received  on  shore,  and 
the  unexpected  emergency  of  sustaining  instead  of  inflicting  attack,  declined 
the  overture  of  farther  battle,  and,  weighing  anchor,  retired  from  Rhett's 
approach,  and  abandoned  the  expedition.  A  few  days  after,  a  French  ship 
of  war,  arriving  to  join  the  combined  fleet,  and  unacquainted  with  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  enterprise,  landed  a  number  of  troops  in  Seewee  Bay, 
where  they  were  attacked  and  put  to  flight  by  Captain  Fen  wick  and  a  party 
of  the  provincial  militia  ;  and  they  had  hardly  regained  their  vessel,  when 
she  was  surrounded  and  captured  by  the  little  armament  of  Rhett.  Thus 
terminated  the  invasion  of  Carolina,  in  a  manner  that  reflected  the  highest 
honor  on  the  conduct  and  courage  of  the  colonists.  The  loss  of  men 
that  they  sustained  was  very  inconsiderable  ;  but  the  public  satisfaction  was 
not  a  little  depressed  by  the  heavy  taxes  which  were  imposed  to  defray 
the  expense  of  the  military  preparations.^ 

The  war,  of  late,  had  languished  in  New  England.  Vaudreuil,  the 
governor  of  Canada,  doubting  the  ability  of  the  French  monarch  to  dis- 
pense with  a  portion  of  the  strength  of  his  European  armies  for  the  rein- 
forcement of  the  provincial  troops,  and  perceiving  that  his  Indian  allies 
ceased  to  combat  with  their  wonted  alacrity  and  were  desirous  of  peace, 
had,  in  the  preceding  year,  sent  a  commissioner  to  Boston,  with  proposi- 
tions of  a  treaty  of  neutrality  between  Canada  and  New  England.  These 
propositions  were  communicated  by  Dudley  to  the  General  Court,  who  de- 
clined to  take  any  step  in  promoting  an  arrangement  so  inconsistent  with 
their  favorite  and  long  cherished  hope  of  an  invasion  and  conquest  of 
Canada.  Dudley,  however,  continued  artfully  to  protract  a  correspondence 
wnth  Vaudreuil,  and  vaunted  to  his  countrymen  the  repose  which  their  fron- 
tier settlements  derived  for  some  time  from  his  poHcy.  But  Dudley  had 
now  become  an  object  of  incurable  jealousy  and  dislike  to  the  majority  of 
the  colonists  ;  and  the  intermission  of  hostilities  served  to  increase  his  un 
popularity,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the  chief  benefit  of  it  resuhed  to 
the  French,  who  obtained  an  accession  to  their  military  stores  from  certain 
merchants  of  Boston,  who  were  stanch  adherents  of  Dudley,  and  whoso 
illicit  traffic  he  plainly  appeared  to  have  sanctioned,  and  was  generally  sus- 
pected of  having  partaken.     Vaudreuil,  finding  himself  duped  by  Dudley, 

*  Hewit. 


24  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

endeavoured  to  rekindle  the  flame  of  war,  and  with  much  difficuhy  prevailed 
on  his  savage  auxiliaries  to  resume  their  predatory  inroads  upon  the  frontiers 
of  New  England.  With  the  view  of  stimulating  their  ardor,  and  increasing 
their  attachment  to  the  French  interest,  he  despatched  Nescambouit,  a 
noted  Indian  chief,  to  the  court  of  France,  to  receive  from  the  king's  own 
hands  the  reward  of  those  cruelties  that  had  rendered  him  the  terror  of  the 
English  frontiers.  On  his  appearance  at  Versailles,  Nescambouit  held  up  his 
hand,  and  boasted  that  it  had  been  the  messenger  of  death  to  a  hundred  and 
fifty  of  the  enemies  of  the  Most  Christian  King.  Louis  received  him  with 
courteous  demonstrations  of  friendship  and  esteem  ;  loaded  him  with  ca- 
resses ;  conferred  on  him  a  pension  of  eight  livres  a  day  ;  presented  him 
with  a  sword  ;  and,  according  to  the  report  of  some  writers,  elevated  him 
to  the  dignity  of  knighthood. 

It  was  not  a  mere  vague  desire  or  visionary  speculation  of  the  conquest 
of  Canada  that  prevented  the  Massachusetts  assembly  from  accepting 
Vaudreuil's  proposition  of  neutrality.  [1707.^  ]  They  had  repeatedly  urged 
the  British  government  to  undertake  this  enterprise  ;  and  their  applications 
were  seconded  by  Colonel  Nicholson  and  other  partisans  of  arbitrary  gov- 
ernment in  America,  who  judged  that  an  extended  system  of  military  op- 
eration, the  presence  of  a  British  army,  and  the  necessity  of  united  contri- 
butions of  the  several  colonies  for  its  support,  would  promote  their  own 
ambitious  views,  and  invigorate  the  authority  of  the  parent  state.  The 
British  government  seemed  at  length  to  have  acceded  to  the  wishes  of  the 
colonists,  who  were  encouraged  to  expect  that  an  armament  would  be  de- 
spatched in  the  commencement  of  the  present  year  from  England,  for  the 
reduction  of  the  French  settlements  in  Canada  and  Acadia.  In  reality,  a 
considerable  detachment  of  troops,  under  the  command  of  General  Macart- 
ney, had  been  destined  by  the  English  ministers  to  undertake  this  enterprise  ; 
but  their  services  were  diverted  and  the  expedition  intercepted  by  the  de- 
feat of  the  English  and  their  allies  at  the  battle  of  Almanza,  in  Spain. 
The  government  of  Massachusetts,  meanwhile,  had  made  active  exertions  to 
assemble  an  auxiHary  force  to  cooperate  with  the  armament  expected  from 
the  parent  state ;  and  though  the  detention  of  the  English  troops  rendered 
the  attack  which  had  been  contemplated  on  Canada  impracticable,  it  was 
still  hoped  that  the  native  force  already  collected  might,  with  the  assistance 
of  the  other  New  England  States,  be  employed  to  strike  an  important  blow, 
and  perhaps  achieve  the  conquest  of  Acadia.  Rhode  Island  and  New 
Hampshire  willingly  contributed  to  reinforce  the  troops  of  Massachusetts  for 
this  purpose  ;  but  Connecticut,  alarmed  by  intelligence  from  Colonel  Schuy- 
ler of  a  projected  invasion  of  French  and  Indians  from  Canada,  and  engross- 
ed with  the  defence  of  her  own  and  the  New  Hampshire  frontiers,  declined 
to  take  any  part  in  an  enterprise  to  which  the  concurrence  of  her  councils 
had  not  been  previously  invited. 

Two  regiments,  composed  of  the  forces  supplied  by  the  other  States^ 
and  amounting  to  about  a  thousand  men,  commanded  by  Colonel  March, 
were  embarked  at  Nantasket,  whence  they  sailed  to  Acadia  under  convoy 
of  an  English  ship  of  war.  [May,  1707.]  Arriving  at  Port  Royal,  they 
made  an  attempt  to  bombard  it ;  but  displayed  in  all  their  operations  a  defect 
of  discipline  and  skill  which  courage  alone  was  insufficient  to  counterbalance. 

'  The  union  which  took  place  this  year  between  England  and  Scotland  extended  the 
licensed  trade  of  the  North  American  colonies  to  all  parts  of  the  island  of  Great  Britain. 


CHAP.  I.]  EXPEDITION  AGAINST  PORT  ROYAL.  25 

At  a  council  of  war,  it  was  resolved,  **  that  the  enemy's  well  disciplined 
garrison  in  a  strong  fort  is  more  than  a  match  for  our  ill  disciplined  militia'' ; 
and,  abandoning  the  siege,  the  troops  retired  to  Casco  Bay.  Dudley  was 
greatly  provoked  at  this  result ;  and  the  more  so,  because  the  attack  on 
Port  Royal  had  on  the  present  occasion  been  specially  enjoined  by  himself 
in  opposition  to  the  wishes  of  the  General  Court,  which  preferably  recom- 
mended the  devastation  of  the  territory  of  Acadia.  With  more  of  headlong 
pertinacity  than  of  considerate  wisdom,  he  ordered  the  dispirited  troops  to 
return  to  Port  Royal  and  resume  the  siege  they  had  abandoned  ;  and  dis- 
trusting the  capacity  of  March,  but  afraid  to  displace  a  popular  officer, 
he  adopted  a  practice  familiar  to  the  military  councils  of  the  Venetians  and 
the  Dutch, ^  and  despatched  three  commissioners  to  the  camp  with  power  to 
superintend  and  control  the  proceedings  of  the  nominal  commander.  So 
much  insubordination  and  discontent  now  prevailed  among  the  troops,  that 
it  was  with  difficulty  they  were  induced  to  obey  the  mandate  to  return 
again  to  the  scene  of  their  recent  repulse  ;  and  when  they  actually  reached 
it  a  second  time,  the  season  was  so  far  advanced,  and  sickness  was  spread- 
ing so  fast  among  them,  that  success  was  plainly  more  improbable  than  be- 
fore. Some  sharp  encounters  ensued  between  them  and  the  enemy,  in 
which  both  sides  claimed  an  insignificant  victory  ;  but  the  position  of  the 
invaders  becoming  more  perilous  every  day,  they  finally  abandoned  the  en- 
terprise and  returned  to  New  England,  —  where  their  conduct  was  univer- 
sally lamented  and  more  generally  than  justly  condemned. 

While  this  expedition  was  in  progress,  the  frontiers  of  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire  were  ravaged  by  the  Indians  ;  and  in  the  following  year 
[1708],  the  intelligence  that  had  been  communicated  by  Colonel  Schuyler 
was  authenticated  by  the  assemblage  of  a  formidable  band  of  French  troops 
and  Indian  auxiliaries,  who  marched  from  Canada  to  invade  New  England. 
A  scene  of  extensive  ravage,  rather  than  conquest,  was  portended  by  this 
expedition  ;  but  the  force  of  the  blow  was  broken,  and  the  plans  of  the 
enemy  disconcerted,  by  the  abrupt  desertion  of  two  Indian  tribes  ;  one  of 
which  was  terrified  from  advancing  by  an  incident  which  they  construed 
into  an  augury  of  evil,^  and  the  other  was  induced  by  the  influence  and 
negotiations  of  Colonel  Schuyler  to  decline  a  prosecution  of  the  campaign, 
under  pretence  that  they  had  contracted  an  infectious  disease,  which  they 
were  afraid  of  communicating  to  their  allies  by  longer  association  with  them. 
[August,  1708.]  Disconcerted  as  well  as  extenuated  by  these  desertions, 
the  invading  forces  attempted  nothing  more  important  than  an  attack  on  the 
village  of  Haverhill,  in  Massachusetts,  which  they  plundered  and  set  fire  to. 
Satisfied  with  this  paltry  triumph,  they  commenced  a  hasty  retreat,  but  were 
compelled  to  abide  a  sharp  skirmish  with  a  party  of  the  Massachusetts 
militia,  before  the  woods  afforded  them  shelter  from  farther  pursuit.^ 

The  disappointment  which  New  England  sustained  by  the  diversion  of 
the  troops  of  the  parent  state  from  the  invasion  of  Canada,  and  the  morti- 
fication which  attended  the  abortive  attempt  on  Port  Royal,  served  to  en- 
hance the  general  hope  and  joy  produced  by  the  intelligence  that  the  English 
government  had  resumed  its  suspended  designs  against  the  French  colonies 

•  This  practice  was  likewise  imitated  at  a  later  period  by  the  chiefs  of  the  revolutionary 
republic  of  France. 

2  One  of  the  tribe  had  accidentally  killed  his  companion. 

3  Charlevoix.  When  Charlevoix's  Travels  (Letters)  are  not  expressly  specified,  it  is  to  his 
History  of  Mw  France  X\\Q.i  I  xa^er.    Hutchinson.     Belknap.     Trumbull. 

VOL.    II.  4  n 


26  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

on  a  larger  scale  of  operation  than  was  formerly  contemplated,  and  with  an 
activity  and  minuteness  of  preparatory  arrangement  that  betokened  imme- 
diate performance.  [1709.]  Letters  from  the  Earl  of  Sunderland  announced 
to  the  provincial  governments  of  all  the  English  colonies,  except  Virginia, 
Maryland,  and  Carolina,  to  which  no  communication  was  addressed,  that 
the  queen  was  preparing  to  attack  the  settlements  of  France  in  Canada, 
Acadia,  and  Newfoundland.  The  plan  of  operation  (devised  by  Colonel 
Vetch,  who  had  acquainted  himself  with  the  condition  of  the  French  set- 
tlements), and  the  extent  to  which  the  several  colonies  were  required  to  co- 
operate with  it,  were  distinctly  unfolded.  An  English  squadron  was  to 
be  despatched  in  time  to  reach  Boston  by  the  middle  of  May,  with  five 
regiments  of  regular  troops,  which  were  to  be  joined  by  twelve  hundred 
auxiliaries  required  from  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  New  Hamp- 
shire, whose  respective  quotas  were  defined,  and  who  were  directed  to 
provide  transports  and  provisions  for  three  months'  service  of  their  forces. 
This  armament  was  destined  to  attack  Quebec.  A  levy  of  fifteen  hundred 
men  was  required  at  the  same  time  from  Connecticut,  New  York,  New  Jer- 
sey, and  Pennsylvania  ;  and  this  corps  was  appointed  to  proceed  by  Lake 
Champlain  to  the  invasion  of  Montreal.  So  httle  was  the  spirit  of  the 
colonists  understood  by  the  British  court,  that  a  general  reluctance  to  com- 
ply with  the  royal  mandate  was  anticipated  ;  and  Colonel  Vetch,  who  was 
despatched  to  superintend  the  arrangements  of  the  provincial  governments, 
was  most  superfluously  authorized  to  offer  the  boon  of  a  preferable  interest 
in  the  trade  and  soil  of  Canada  to  those  colonies  which  should  actually  con- 
tribute to  its  conquest. 

The  mandate,  however,  was  received  not  only  with  acquiescence,  but 
with  the  most  cordial  satisfaction,  by  all  the  colonies  except  Pennsylvania, 
where  the  Quakers,  who  composed  the  majority  of  the  assembly,  protested 
to  Gookin,  their  governor,  that  the  fundamental  object  and  purpose  of  their 
provincial  settlement  was,  to  afford  an  inviolable  sanctuary  to  the  princi- 
ples of  peace  and  philanthropy  ;  that  their  principles  and  consciences  would 
not  suffer  them  to  contribute  a  farthing  for  the  purpose  of  hiring  men  to 
slay  one  another  ;  but  that  they  cherished,  nevertheless,  a  dutiful  attachment 
to  the  queen,  and  in  demonstration  of  this  sentiment  now  voted  to  her  Majes- 
ty a  present  of  five  hundred  pounds,  which  w^as  all  they  could  afford  to  be- 
stow,—  and  for  the  apphcation  of  which  (says  a  Quaker  historian)  they 
did  not  account  themselves  responsible.  The  zeal  of  the  other  colonies  sur- 
passed the  limits  of  the  royal  requisition.  Thanks  were  voted  by  the  pro- 
vincial assemblies  to  the  queen  for  the  promised  armament  from  England  ; 
and  besides  the  quotas  that  were  specified,  independent  companies  were 
raised  and  added  to  the  provincial  forces.  None  of  the  States  demon- 
strated more  ardor  than  New  York.  The  inhabitants  of  this  province  had 
been  recently  delivered  from  the  sway  of  Lord  Cornbury  ;  and  had  expe- 
rienced only  a  gratifying  liberality  of  treatment  from  his  successor.  Lord 
Lovelace,  whose  sudden  death,  after  an  administration  of  a  few  months, 
intercepted  a  dissension  that  would  infallibly  have  been  produced  by  the 
queen's  instructions  to  him  to  insist  for  a  permanent  salary,  and  by  the  de- 
termination of  the  assembly  to  make  no  such  arrangement.  The  command 
was  now  exercised  by  Ingoldsby,  the  lieutenant-governor,  and  the  council, 
who  manifested  a  zeal  and  liberality  in  the  common  cause  that  atoned 
for  the  selfish  policy  with  which   this  province  had    previously  been   re- 


CHAP.  I]  PROJECTED  INVASION  OF  CANADA.  gffe 

proached.^  Aided  by  the  powerful  influence  of  Colonel  Schuyler,  the 
provincial  authorities  negotiated  so  successfully  with  the  Five  Nations,  as 
to  induce  them  to  consent  to  violate  their  neutrality,  and  contribute  an  aux- 
iliary force  of  six  hundred  Indian  warriors  to  accompany  the  expedition 
against  Montreal. 

Colonel  Nicholson,  whose  experience  and  ability  were  highly  commended 
by  the  queen  to  the  provincial  governments,  was  intrusted  with  the  com- 
mand of  the  forces  destined  to  this  enterprise,  and  marched  with  them  at 
the  appointed  time  to  Wood  Creek,  where  he  awaited  the  arrival  of  the 
English  fleet  at  Boston  [May,  1709],  —  in  order  that  the  attack  of  Quebec 
and  Montreal  might  take  place  at  the  same  time.  The  troops  of  Massachu- 
setts, Rhode  Island,  and  New  Hampshire  w^ere  embodied  with  equal  punc- 
tuality, and,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Vetch,  assembled  at  Boston, 
with  their  transports  and  stores,  —  eager  to  behold  the  signal  of  action  in 
the  arrival  of  the  promised  fleet  from  Britain,  and  fixed  in  expectation  of  a 
decisive  and  successful  campaign.  But  the  hopes  of  America  were  fated 
to  be  again  deferred.  The  two  armaments  continued,  in  this  state  of  prep- 
aration, and  without  the  slightest  intelligence  from  England,  to  await  the 
arrival  of  her  fleet  till  the  month  of  September,  when  the  advanced  season 
of  the  year  finally  terminated  the  public  suspense,  and  proclaimed  that  the 
expedition  was  no  longer  practicable.  About  a  month  after,  a  vessel 
arrived  at  Boston  with  despatches  from  the  British  government,  w^hich 
announced  that  the  troops  prepared  for  America  had  been  suddenly  re- 
quired in  Portugal  to  reinforce  the  defeated  armies  of  the  English  and  their 
allies  in  that  quarter  of  Europe.  Nicholson,  meanwhile,  after  seeing  his 
forces  wasted  by  sickness  during  his  inactivity  at  Wood  Creek,  had  retreat- 
ed, in  comphance  with  orders  from  New  York,  whose  assembly  expressed 
the  liveliest  indignation  at  the  public  disappointment ;  and  Vetch,  after 
vainly  attempting  to  promote  a  substitutional  enterprise  against  Port  Royal, 
which  the  ministerial  despatches  suggested  to  him,  but  which  the  English 
ships  of  war  in  the  neighbourhood  refused  to  assist,  was  compelled  to  dis- 
band the  forces  of  New  England.  The  chagrin  and  discontent  which  this 
catastrophe  produced  in  the  British  colonies  was  proportioned  to  the  ardor 
of  the  hopes  that  were  disappointed,  and  the  magnitude  of  the  preparatory 
efforts  that  were  rendered  abortive.  All  hearts  had  at  first  been  gladdened 
with  the  joyful  prospect  of  a  final  deliverance  from  the  encroachments  and 
ravages  of  the  French  and  their  Indian  alHes,  — of  a  victorious  aggrandize- 
ment of  the  British  empire,  and  a  vast  enlargement  of  the  national  com- 
merce. And  if  the  English  ministry  had  fulfilled  the  encouraging  as- 
surances recently  held  forth  by  them,  instead  of  sacrificing  the  wishes  and 
interests  of  America  to  the  most  insignificant  branch  of  their  connection 
with  the  continental  politics  of  Europe,  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  this 
prospect  would  have  been  realized,  and  the  French  empire  in  America 
completely  overthrown.  It  redounded,  perhaps,  to  the  lasting  advantage  of 
the  American  provinces,  that  events  w^ere  otherwise  ordered. 

Among  other  topics  of  regret  which  were  suggested  to  the  Americans 
by  this  signal  disappointment,  was  the  mortality  which  had  wasted  the 
forces  at  Wood  Creek,  If  we  may  credit  the  representation  of  the  his- 
torian of  the  French  colonies,  the  English  owed  this  calamity  to  the  treach- 
ery of  their  Indian  auxiliaries,  —  w^hom  the  selfish  policy  formerly  pursued 

'  The  expenditure  of  New  York  on  this  occasion  amounted  to  twenty  thousand  pounds; 
that  of  New  Jersey  to  three  thousand  pounds.     W.  Smith.     S.  Smith. 


28  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

by  New  York  had  taught  to  calculate  the  advantage  of  their  own  neutrality 
between  France  and  England,  and  of  preventing  either  of  these  rival  powers 
from  obtaining  a  complete  ascendency  over  the  other.  According  to  the 
statements  of  this  author,  the  Five  Nations,  or  at  least  some  of  their  leading 
politicians  (whether  from  French  suggestion  or  their  own  unaided  sagacity) , 
had  embraced  the  opinion,  that,  situated  between  two  powerful  states, 
either  of  which  was  capalDle  of  totally  extirpating  them,  they  would  in- 
fallibly be  destroyed  by  the  one,  which,  by  conquering  the  other,  should 
cease  to  depend  on  the  aid  or  intervention  of  the  Five  Nations.  Entertain- 
ing these  views,  and  apprehending  the  conquest  of  Montreal  by  the  arms  of 
the  English,  a  party  of  the  Indians  are  said  to  have  insidiously  corrupted 
the  water  of  which  their  unsuspecting  allies  drank,  by  throwing  the  skins, 
and  other  refuse,  of  the  game  which  they  procured  by  hunting,  into  the 
river  on  whose  banks  the  forces  of  Nicholson  were  posted.^ 

A  congress  (as  this  memorable  term  was  then,  for  the  first  time,  em- 
ployed in  America)  of  the  governors  and  delegates  of  the  colonies  which 
had  sustained  loss  and  disappointment  from  the  late  enterprise  was  assembled 
in  the  close  of  the  year  at  Rehoboth,  in  Massachusetts,  and  attended  by 
Vetch  and  Nicholson.  Addresses  of  remonstrance  and  solicitation  to  the 
parent  state  were  recommended  by  this  assembly,  and  adopted  by  the  re- 
spective provincial  governments.  Nicholson  repaired  shortly  after  to  Eng- 
land, for  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  petitions  of  the  colonists  by  his  own  per- 
sonal influence  and  counsel  ;  and  Colonel  Schuyler,  whom  the  recent  events 
inspired  with  equal  surprise  and  dissatisfaction,  resolved,  at  his  own  private 
expense,  to  undertake  a  similar  mission  ;  and  conceived  the  idea  of  enhanc- 
ing its  efficacy  by  the  imitation  of  a  politic  device,  of  which  the  example 
had  been  given  by  the  French  governor,  Vaudreuil.  With  the  approbation 
of  the  assembly  of  New  York,  which  bestowed  the  highest  praise  on  his 
patriotism  and  generosity,  and  made  him  the  bearer  of  an  address  to  the 
queen,  he  prevailed  on  five  sachems  or  chiefs  of  the  confederacy  of  the  Five 
Nations  to  accompany  him  as  ambassadors  from  their  people  to  the  court 
of  England,  and  unite  in  soliciting  the  aid  of  a  British  force  for  the  invasion 
of  Canada.  The  object  of  this  embassy  (which  appears  strangely  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  alleged  transactions  at  Wood  Creek)  was  not  merely  to 
second  the  application  of  the  colonists  to  the  queen,  but  to  impress  the 
Indian  tribes  with  a  lofty  idea  of  the  power  and  greatness  of  the  English 
monarchy,  and  counteract  the  representations  by  which  the  French  depre- 
ciated its  claims  to  respect,  and  magnified  the  glory  and  advantage  of  an 
alliance  with  the  sovereign  of  France.  [1710.]  The  arrival  of  the  Indian 
sachems  strongly  excited  the  interest  and  curiosity  of  the  people  of  Eng- 
land ;  nor  could  a  more  effectual  means  have  been  devised  of  awakening  a 
general  attention  in  the  parent  state  to  the  condition  and  wishes  of  the  col- 
onies. Vast  multitudes  of  people  continually  followed  the  sachems  with 
wondering  gaze  ;  engravings  of  their  figures  were  circulated  through  the 
whole  kingdom  ;  the  principal  nobility  displayed  to  them  the  magnificence 
Hnd  hospitality  of  England,  in  the  most  sumptuous  banquets  ;  they  were 
conducted  to  a  review  of  the  guards  in  Hyde  Park  by  the  Duke  of  Or- 
mond,  and  entertained  on  board  the  admiral's  ship,  in  the  midst  of  a  fleet 
that  was  riding  at  anchor  near  Southampton.  The  skill  of  the  directors 
of  the  London  theatre,  and  the  resources  of  its  wardrobe,  w^ere  employed 

^  Charlevoix.  Oldmixon.  W.  Smith.  Hutchinson.  S.  Smith.  Belknap.  Proud.  Trum- 
bull  *  ^ 


CHAP.  I]     CONaUEST  OF  PORT  ROYAL  AND  ACADIA.  £9 

to  deck  the  persons  of  the  ambassadors  in  apparel  at  once  appropriate  to 
their  barbarian  character  and  suitable  to  European  conceptions  of  royalty. 
They  were  introduced  to  the  queen  with  extraordinary  solemnity  [April, 
1710],  and  addressed  her  in  a  speech  importing  that  they  had  waged  a  long 
war,  in  conjunction  with  her  children,  against  her  enemies,  the  French,  and 
had  formed  a  defensive  bulwark  to  her  colonies,  even  at  the  expense  of  the 
blood  of  their  own  bravest  warriors  ;  that  they  had  mightily  rejoiced,  on 
hearing  the  intention  of  their  great  queen  to  send  an  army  to  invade  Canada, 
and  had  thereupon,  with  one  consent,  hung  up  the  kettle  of  peace,  and 
grasped  the  hatchet  of  war  in  aid  of  General  Nicholson  ;  but  that,  when 
they  heard  that  their  great  queen  was  diverted  by  other  affairs  from  her 
design  of  subduing  the  French,  their  hearts  had  been  saddened  by  the  ap- 
prehension of  the  contempt  of  an  enemy  who  had  hitherto  regarded  them 
with  dread.  They  declared,  in  conclusion,  that  they  were  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  reduction  of  Canada  ;  and  that,  if  their  interests  should  be 
disregarded  by  the  great  queen  to  whose  gracious  consideration  they  were 
now  commended,  the  Five  Nations  must  either  forsake  their  territories, 
or  dissolve  their  alliance  with  England  by  a  treaty  of  perpetual  peace  with 
France. 

In  compliance  with  the  soHcitations  of  the  provincial  assemblies  and  their 
Indian  allies,  the  English  government  once  more  engaged  to  despatch  an 
armament  for  the  invasion  of  Canada  ;  but  only  faint  hopes  were  afforded 
of  its  arrival  in  America  before  the  following  year.  These  hopes,  how- 
ever, backed  by  the  arrival  of  Nicholson  from  Europe  with  five  small 
ships  of  war,  were  sufficient  to  induce  the  New  England  States  once  more  to 
collect  a  naval  and  military  force,  which  again  assembled  at  Boston  to 
await  the  succour  of  the  parent  state,  and  to  endure  another  disappoint- 
ment. Nicholson,  discerning  at  last  that  no  farther  aid  was  this  year  to 
be  expected  from  England,  in  order  to  lessen  the  mortification  and  ani- 
mate the  spirit  of  the  colonists,  determined  to  lead  his  forces  against  Port 
Royal,  on  which  he  had  reason  to  beheve,  that,  notwithstanding  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  season,  a  bold  attack  could  harjdly  fail  of  success,  from 
the  mutinous  and  extenuated  condition  of  the  French  garrison.  Arriving  at 
Port  Royal  [September  24,  1710],  the  troops  were  landed  with  little  op- 
position ;  and  Subercase,  the  governor,  perceiving,  that,  from  the  superiority 
of  the  invaders  and  the  temper  of  his  own  soldiers,  neither  victory  nor  an 
honorable  resistance  was  to  be  expected,  waited  only  till  a  few  discharges 
of  the  British  artillery  afforded  him  a  decent  pretext  for  capitulation.  The 
fort  and  settlement  of  Port  Royal,  together  with  the  whole  province  of 
Acadia,  were  accordingly  surrendered  to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain.  [Oc- 
tober 2,  1710.]  Colonel  Vetch  was  appointed  by  Nicholson  to  the  com- 
mand of  Port  Royal,  which,  in  honor  of  the  queen,  now  received  the 
name  of  Annapolis  ;  and  intimation  was  made  to  Vaudreuil,  the  governor 
of  Canada,  that,  if  he  should  continue  to  despatch  his  Indian  allies  to  rav- 
age the  frontiers  and  slaughter  the  colonists  of  New  England,  the  most  am- 
ple retribution  would  be  inflicted  on  his  subjugated  countrymen  in  Acadia. 
This  threat,  which  Vaudreuil  entirely  disregarded,  was  never  carried  into 
effect  by  the  people  of  New  England.  Harassed  by  the  continual  depre- 
dations on  their  frontiers  by  the  Canadian  Indians,  they  applied  to  Hunter, 
who  was  now  appointed  governor  of  New  York,  and  besought  him  to  en- 
gage  the  Five  Nations  to  act  for  the  common   behoof,  and  check  those 


30  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

hostilities  which  were  prompted  by  the  instigation  and  waged  by  the  aux- 
iliaries of  the  common  enemy.  But  as  the  Five  Nations,  notwithstanding 
all  the  demonstration  of  enmity  to  the  French  that  was  recently  elicited  from 
them,  had  never  yet  by  actual  warfare  departed  from  their  treaty  of  neutral- 
ity, and  as  New  York  was  indebted  for  the  repose  of  her  frontiers  to  the 
respect  which  was  still  professed  for  this  treaty  by  France  and  her  allies, 
Hunter  refused  to  embroil  the  Five  Nations,  for  the  sake  of  New  England, 
with  an  enemy  whom  the  pretext  of  neutrality  still  precluded  from  carrying 
hostilities  into  the  territory  of  New  York.^ 

Elated  by  his  recent  successful  exploit,  and  by  the  popularity  which  re- 
warded his  exertions  to  accomplish  the  favorite  object  of  the  colonists, 
Nicholson  again  repaired  to  England,  in  order  to  urge  upon  the  British  gov- 
ernment the  fulfilment  of  its  promise  to  undertake  the  invasion  of  Canada. 
But,  in  consequence  of  the  signal  change  that  the  ministerial  cabinet  of  Queen 
Anne  had  now  undergone,  the  colonists  no  longer  expected  a  favorable 
issue  to  this  appHcation.  A  contest,  of  which  the  interest  was  extended  to 
America,  had  prevailed  ever  since  the  Revolution  between  the  Whigs  and 
the  Tories  of  England,  and  was  inflamed  of  late  years  by  the  near  probabil- 
ity of  an  emergence  which  promised  to  develope  the  farthest  efficacy  of  the 
revolutionary  principles,  and  once  more  to  illustrate  their  features  in  broad 
and  living  display.  It  was  now  manifest  that  Queen  Anne  would  die  with- 
out leaving  issue  ;  and,  according  to  the  Act  of  Settlement  of  the  crown, 
the  principle  of  hereditary  succession  was,  in  that  event,  again  to  be  violat- 
ed, and  the  Elector  of  Hanover  called  to  the  throne  in  preference  to  the 
exiled  brother  of  the  queen.  This  was  a  catastrophe  which  all  the  Tories 
contemplated  with  reluctance,  and  which  a  considerable  party  among  them 
sought  to  avert  with  assiduous  exertion  and  intrigue.  This  party  was  op- 
posed to  the  continuance  of  the  war  with  France,  and  endeavoured,  neither 
unsuccessfully  nor  altogether  groundlessly,  to  persuade  their  countrymen  that 
the  hostilities  on  the  continent  of  Europe  had  been  latterly  prolonged  at  a 
heavy  and  unprofitable  expense  to  England,  for  the  advantage  of  the  Whig 
ministers,  the  commanders  of  their  armies,  and  their  continental  allies.  In 
the  speeches  and  writings  of  the  Tory  politicians,  though  the  Revolution  was 
not  expressly  arraigned,  the  legitimacy  of  the  principles  on  which  it  re- 
posed, and  of  any  farther  extension  or  practical  application  of  them,  was 
openly  disowned. 

A  violent  controversy  ensued  between  the  two  parties  ;  in  which  the  one 
defended  the  principles  of  the  Revolution,  —  maintaining  that  they  were 
indissolubly  blended  with  the  political  system  of  England,  and  urging  the 
people  to  contend  for  them  as  the  national  property  and  glory  ;  —  while 
the  other,  with  a  passionate  and  contagious  zeal,  strove  to  pledge  the  pub- 
lic sentiment  to  an  abjuration  of  principles  which  they  reproached  as  re- 
pugnant alike  to  the  English  constitution  and  the  Christian  religion.  Sach- 
everell,  the  pulpit  champion  of  the  Tories,  proclaimed  that  monarchy  was 
of  divine  origin,  and  hereditary  succession  to  the  crown  an  indefeasible  right ; 
he  denounced  the  Presbyterians  and  other  Dissenters,  who  were  universally 
favorable  to  the  Revolution,  as  the  enemies  of  England  ;  and,  exclaiming 
that  the  church  was  in  danger^  sounded  an  alarm  which  has  often  transported 
Englishmen  beyond  the  bounds  of  reason  and  moderation. 

The  University  of  Oxford,  at  the  same  time,  in  full  convocation,  affixed 
'  Oldmixon.     W.  Smith.     S.  Smith.     Hutchinson.     Trumbull.     Belknap. 


CHAP.  I]  EXPEDITION  AGAINST  CANADA.  3 J 

its  sanction  to  a  decree  that  passive  obedience  and  non-resistance  were  fun- 
damental principles  of  the  English  constitution,^  And  though  the  House 
of  Lords  condemned  both  Sacheverell's  sermons  and  the  Oxford  decree  to 
be  burned  by  the  hands  of  the  common  executioner,  and  requested  the  queen 
to  promote  Dr.  Hoadley,  who  had  preached  a  discourse  in  vindication  of 
the  right  of  resistance  to  evil  rulers,  —  it  was  obvious  that  the  sentiments  of 
the  Tories  were  cordially  espoused  both  by  the  queen  and  by  a  numerous 
party  among  the  people.  The  mass  of  mankind,  when  unenlightened  by 
education  or  experience,  have  always  been  partial  to  royalty,  and  suscepti- 
ble of  impressions  favorable  even  to  its  most  arrogant  pretensions,  —  not 
only  from  their  proneness  to  idolize  visible  greatness,  but  from  the  concur- 
rent, though  seemingly  opposite,  sentiment  of  a  jealous  aversion  to  brook 
the  superiority  of  those  who  seem  not  to  be  lifted  a  great  way  above  them- 
selves. The  grandeur  and  peerless  supremacy  of  the  master  seem  at  once 
to  elevate  the  general  condition  and  to  efface  the  particular  distinctions  of 
his  slaves  ;  and  the  maxim  of  the  father  of  epic  poetry,  that  one  prince  is 
preferable  to  a  number  of  princes,  may  be  regarded  as  expressing  the  uni- 
versal persuasion  of  mankind  that  equality  is  more  perfectly  reahzed  under 
a  monarchical  than  under  an  aristocratical  system  of  government.  The  queen 
had  been  swayed  all  her  life  by  female  favorites  ;  and  the  influence  which 
the  Whigs  at  first  enjoyed  with  her,  and  which  her  attachment  to  the  Duch- 
ess of  Marlborough  contributed  not  a  little  to  preserve,  incurred  a  propor- 
tional detriment  from  her  quarrel  with  this  imperious  favorite,  and  the  trans- 
ference of  her  regards  to  Mrs.  Masham,  who  was  devoted  to  the  Tories. 
The  expulsion  of  the  Whigs  from  office  followed  very  soon  after,  and  was 
beheld  with  much  regret  and  disapprobation  by  the  people  of  New  England. 
One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  Tory  ministry  was  the  abandonment  and  reproba- 
tion of  a  policy  which  had  proved  highly  advantageous  to  the  American  prov- 
inces. By  the  advice  of  her  Whig  counsellors,  the  queen  had  encouraged 
and  assisted  a  great  number  of  Palatine  exiles  to  emigrate  to  her  dominions 
in  America  ;  and  several  thousands  of  useful  and  industrious  settlers  were 
latterly  added  to  the  population  of  New  York  and  Pennsylvania.  Whether 
from  apprehension  that  these  people  would  render  America  a  manufacturing 
country,  or  from  mere  enmity  and  contradiction  to  the  Whigs,  the  Tory 
ministers  prevailed  with  the  House  of  Commons  to  pass  a  vote  of  censure 
of  the  assistance  which  the  Palatines  had  received,  and  to  declare  that  the 
advisers  of  this  measure  were  enemies  to  the  queen  and  the  realm.  It  was 
the  recent  change  of  ministry  which  led  the  people  of  New  England  to  doubt 
the  success  of  Nicholson's  mission,  and  to  despair  of  receiving  aid  for  ex- 
tended warfare  on  France  from  the  Tory  ministers  who  now  guided  the 
councils  of  the  queen. 

The  utmost  surprise  was  consequently  excited  by  the  return  of  Nicholson 
to  Boston  [June,  1711],  bearing  the  royal  command  to  the  several  govern- 
ments of  New  England,  New  York,  Pennsj^lvania,  and  New  Jersey,  again 
to  collect  their  forces  to  act  in  conjunction  with  an  English  fleet  which  they 
were  desired  forthwith  to  expect,  and  which  actually  arrived  a  very  few 
days  after.  It  was  further  remarked  as  extraordinary,  that  the  fleet  was  not 
victualled,  and  that  a  supply  of  provisions  for  ten  weeks  was  abruptly  re- 
quired from  Massachusetts,  for  the  use  of  the  English  troops.  These  cir- 
cumstances, conspiring  with  the  idea  entertained  by  the  colonists  of  the 
^  And  yet  this  University  sent  its  plate  to  the  Prince  of  Orange,  when  he  invaded  England! 


32  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

policy  of  the  royal  cabinet,  induced  a  general  suspicion  that  the  British  gov- 
ernment had  never  seriously  contemplated  the  conquest  of  Canada,  and  that 
the  design  of  the  present  ministers  was  that  the  expedition  should  prove 
abortive,  and  the  blame  of  its  miscarriage  be  imputed  to  New  England. 
This  suspicion  served  only  to  excite  the  provincial  governments  to  increased 
diligence  of  preparation  ;  in  which  their  activity  was  amply  seconded  by  the 
ardor  of  the  people,  who,  especially  in  New  England,  readily  incurred 
every  sacrifice  that  their  rulers  proposed,  and  even  zealously  anticipated  and 
exceeded  their  requisitions.  Even  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly,  with  some- 
what less  delay  than  usual,  voted  a  present  of  two  thousand  pounds  to  the 
queen.  The  neighbouring  colonies  exerted  all  their  vigor  and  ability  ;  New 
York  once  more  prevailed  with  the  Five  Nations  to  send  six  hundred  of  their 
warriors  to  join  her  mihtia  ;  Connecticut,  in  addition  to  her  own  share  in  the 
general  equipment,  aided  New  York  with  provisions  ;  and  in  the  other  New 
England  States,  so  active  and  industrious  was  the  preparation,  that,  httle 
more  than  a  month  after  the  arrival  of  the  English  fleet,  it  was  enabled  to 
set  sail  from  Boston  for  Canada.  [July  30,  1711.]  The  fleet  consisted 
of  fifteen  ships  of  war,  forty  transports,  and  six  store-ships,  with  a  complete 
train  of  artillery  ;  while  the  land  army  on  board  was  composed  of  five  regi- 
ments drawn  from  England  and  Flanders,  and  two  which  had  been  raised 
in  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  New  Hampshire.  Sir  Hovenden 
Walker  commanded  the  fleet  ;  and  Brigadier  Hill,  brother  to  the  queen's 
favorite,  Mrs.  Masham,  commanded  the  land  force,  amounting  to  about  seven 
thousand  men,  and  consequently  very  nearly  equal  to  the  army,  which,  under 
Wolfe,  subsequently  reduced  Quebec,  when  the  defensive  resources  of  this 
city  were  much  greater  than  what  it  now  possessed.  On  the  same  day  on 
which  the  fleet  sailed  from  Boston,  General  Nicholson  commenced  his 
march  from  New  York  to  Albany,  where  he  shortly  after  appeared  at  the 
head  of  four  thousand  men  levied  in  the  colonies  of  Connecticut,  New  York, 
and  New  Jersey.  He  had  advanced  but  a  little  way  towards  Canada, 
when  tidings  of  the  failure  of  the  naval  enterprise  compelled  him  to  return. 
Admiral  Walker,  on  arriving  in  the  mouth  of  the  river  Sti  Lawrence, 
betrayed  a  want  of  judgment  in  needlessly  staying  the  progress  of  the  voyage 
for  some  days.  [August  14,  1711.]  Soon  after  it  was  resumed,  the  fleet 
was  overtaken  by  a  thick  fog  and  a  heavy  gale,  in  the  most  perilous  part  of 
the  navigation.  The  admiral,  disregarding  the  advice  of  the  New  England 
pilots,  preferred  to  consult  certain  French  pilots  whom  he  had  procured  ; 
and,  whether  from  receiving  treacherous  or  erroneous  counsel  from  these  per- 
sons, or  from  his  own  jealous  conceit  and  obstinacy  in  not  adhering  punctually 
to  their  directions, —  for  thus  differently  has  the  matter  been  represented  by 
difl?erent  writers,  —  the  fleet  was  manoeuvred  so  unfortunately  as  to  be  driven 
on  shore  in  circumstances  of  imminent  and  general  danger.  Some  of  the 
ships  sustained  considerable  damage  ;  eight  or  nine  of  the  transports  were 
wrecked,  and  nearly  a  thousand  «ien  buried  in  the  waves.  The  wind,  in- 
stantly after,  shifted  to  a  point  which  would  have  speedily  conveyed  the 
fleet  to  Quebec  ;  but,  in  consequence  of  the  disaster  that  had  befallen  him, 
the  admiral  bore  away  for  Spanish  River  Bay.  Here  a  council  of  naval  and 
military  officers  was  assembled,  and,  after  a  short  dehberation,  resolved,  that, 
as  they  had  but  ten  weeks'  provisions  on  board,  and  could  not  expect  a 
farther  supply  from  New  England,  it  was  expedient  to  abandon  the  enter- 
prise altogether.     The  British  fleet  accordingly  set  sail  for  England,  where 


CHAP.  I]  DISASTROUS  RESULTS  OF  THE  EXPEDITION.  QQ 

it  had  hardly  arrived,  when  one  of  its  vessels,  the  Edgar,  a  ship  of  seventy- 
guns,  with  a  crew  of  four  hundred  men,  blew  up  ;  and  as  all  the  admiral's 
papers  and  journals  were  on  board  of  her  at  the  time,  the  real  circumstances 
of  the  expedition  and  the  causes  of  its  failure  were  never  satisfactorily 
explained.  Admiral  Walker  and  the  other  Enghsh  officers  endeavoured  to 
exculpate  themselves,  by  reproaching  the  provincial  governments  with  un- 
necessary delay  in  raising  their  forces  and  victualling  the  fleet,  and  with  neg- 
ligence in  supplying  unskilful  pilots.  Nothing  could  be  more  unjust  or  more 
irritating  to  the  colonists  than  such  calumnious  charges.  The  Whigs  in 
[England  generally  censured  the  ministry  for  the  conduct  of  the  enterprise  : 
and  Harley,  Earl  of  Oxford,  although  a  member  of  the  ministerial  cabinet 
by  which  it  was  undertaken,  subsequently  affirmed,  in  a  memorial  to  the 
queen,  that  the  whole  affiiir  was  a  contrivance  of  Lord  Bolingbroke  and  the 
Lord  Chancellor  Harcourt  to  defraud  the  pubhc  of  twenty  thousand  pounds. 
Lord  Harcourt,  in  particular,  was  reported  to  have  said  that  "  no  govern- 
ment was  worth  serving  that  would  not  admit  of  such  jobs." 

In  America,  the  failure  of  the  enterprise  and  the  circumstances  with 
which  it  was  attended  excited  the  keenest  emotions  of  grief  and  indignation. 
Retorting  the  injustice  with  which  they  were  calumniated  by  the  English 
commanders,  many  of  the  colonists  declared  their  conviction  that  they  had 
been  wantonly  duped,  betrayed,  and  pillaged  by  the  queen  and  her  officers  ; 
they  insisted,  with  more  circumstantial  plausibility  than  so  violent  an  impu- 
tation might  be  thought  to  admit,  that  the  disaster  in  the  river  St.  Law- 
rence was  wilfully  incurred  ;  and  some  persons  entertained  farther  the  mon- 
strous conjecture  that  the  Edgar  had  been  designedly  blown  up  in  order  to 
conceal  the  documents  of  disgrace  and  treachery  from  public  view.  Persons 
of  greater  moderation  rejoiced,  in  the  midst  of  their  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ments, that  none  of  the  provincial  troops  had  perished.  A  journal  of  all 
the  relative  proceedings  of  the  New  England  governments  and  their  forces 
was  transmitted  by  Massachusetts  to  the  queen  ;  and  three  of  the  pilots  were 
sent  to  Britain,  in  the  hope  that  they  would  be  examined  by  a  court  of  in- 
quiry. But  no  pubhc  investigation  whatever  took  place  of  the  causes  of  the 
disastrous  issue  of  the  expedition.  Many  pious  people  in  New  England, 
astonished  at  the  numerous  disappointments  of  their  favorite  project,  re- 
nounced all  farther  expectation  of  the  conquest  of  Canada  ;  concluding  that 
it  was  not  the  design  of  Providence  that  the  northern  continent  of  America 
should  ever  wholly  belong  to  any  one  European  nation.^ 

At  New  York,  the  pubhc  disappointment  was  aggravated  by  the  appre- 
hension of  vindictive  hostihties  from  the  enemy.  The  most  active  endeav- 
ours were  now  employed  by  numerous  emissaries  of  the  French  authorities 
in  Canada  to  seduce  the  Five  Nations  from  their  attachment  to  Britain  ; 
and  nothing  could  have  more  effectually  contributed  to  aid  their  machina- 
tions than  the  recent  instances  of  the  retreat  of  the  English  from  an  en- 
counter with  the  forces  of  France.  Even  the  wisest  of  the  Indian  tribes 
were  rather  susceptible  of  politic  impressions,  than  equal  to  the  compre- 
hension, espousal,  and  r.teady  prosecution  of  an  extended  scheme  of  judicious 
and  considerate  policy.  Strong  symptoms  of  disaffection  were  manifested 
by  some  of  the  confederated  tribes  ;  and  demonstrations  were  even  made  of 
an  intention  to  embrace  the  French  interest  and   declare  war  against  Eng- 

'  Charlevoix.  Smollett's  History  of  England.  Oldmixon.  Hutchinson.  W.  Smith' 
S.Smith.     Trumbull.     Belknap.     Proud.     Holmes. 

VOL.     II.  5  ^ 


34  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

land.  This  extremity,  however,  was  eluded  for  the  present  ;  though  the 
probability  of  its  occurrence  at  a  subsequent  period  was  strengthened  by 
an  event  which  distinguished  the  following  year,  and  which  at  once  aug- 
mented the  forces  of  the  Indian  confederacy,  and  communicated  to  it  an 
additional  savor  of  unfriendly  feeling  towards  the  English. 

The  province  of  North  Carolina,  which  had  been  totally  sequestered 
from  the  hostilities  by  which  so  many  of  her  sister  colonies  were  harassed, 
now  sustained  a  severe  and  dangerous  blow  from  a  conspiracy  of  the  Coree 
and  Tuscarora  tribes  of  Indians  [1712],  who,  resenting  a  real  or  supposed 
encroachment  on  their  hunting  lands,  formed  an  aUiance  and  project,  with 
amazing  secrecy  and  guile,  for  the  total  destruction  of  the  European  settle- 
ments in  their  neighbourhood.  A  general  attack,  in  which  a  hundred  and 
thirty-seven  of  the  colonists  of  North  Carolina  were  massacred  in  one 
night, ^  gave  the  first  intelligence  of  Indian  displeasure  and  hostility.  Hap- 
pily, the  alarm  was  communicated  before  the  work  of  destruction  proceeded 
farther  ;  and,  after  an  obstinate  resistance,  the  colonists  were  able  to  keep 
the  enemy  in  check  till  a  powerful  force  was  despatched  to  their  assistance 
by  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina,  and  by  Craven,  who  had  recently 
been  appointed  governor  of  this  province.  An  expedition  was  then  under- 
taken by  the  combined  forces  of  the  two  provinces  against  the  hostile  Indians, 
who  were  defeated  with  great  slaughter,  and  compelled  to  abandon  the 
country.  The  assembly  of  South  Carolina  appropriated  four  thousand 
pounds  to  the  service  of  this  war  ;  and  during  the  continuance  of  it,  the  as- 
sembly of  the  northern  province  was  compelled  to  issue  bills  of  credit  to  the 
amount  of  eight  thousand  pounds.  Before  a  decisive  ascendency  was  ob- 
tained over  the  Indians  in  North  Carolina,  the  colonists  fled  from  this  prov- 
ince in  such  numbers,  that,  to  prevent  its  entire  desertion,  a  law  was  enact- 
ed prohibiting  all  persons  from  quitting  the  territory  without  a  passport  from 
the  governor.  In  cooperation  with  this  ordinance,  the  government  of  Vir- 
ginia issued  an  edict,  commanding  that  all  fugitives  from  Carohna,  unpro- 
vided with  passports,  should  be  apprehended  and  compelled  to  return.^ 
Of  the  two  Indian  tribes  which  were  expelled  from  the  vicinity  of  North 
Carolina,  the  Tuscarora  fugitives  proposed,  and  were  permitted  by  the  Five 
Nations,  to  repair  their  broken  political  estate  by  engrafting  it  on  this  pow- 
erful confederacy  :  and  as,  in  consequence  of  a  supposition  (founded  on  sim- 
ilarity of  language)  of  their  being  a  cognate  race  derived  from  the  stock  to 
which  they  now  reannexed  themselves,  they  were  associated  as  a  new  mem- 
ber of  the  general  union,  instead  of  being  intermingled  with  any  particular 
portion  of  it,  the  confederacy  soon  after  obtained  the  name  of  The  Six 
JYations.^ 

The  frontiers  of  New  England  still  continued  to  sustain  occasional  ravages 

'  The  Indians  took  a  number  of  prisoners  on  this  occasion,  among  whom  were  John  Law- 
son,  surveyor-general  of  the  province,  and  author  of  a  descriptive  account,  which  has  been 
improperly  termed  a  history,  of  Carolina ;  and  Baron  GrafFenried,  the  leader  of  a  troop  of 
Palatine  emigrants.  Lawson  was  murdered  at  leisure  by  the  savages ;  but  Graifenried  extri- 
cated himself  from  the  same  fate,  to  which  he  was  designed,  by  persuading  the  Indians  that  he 
was  the  king  or  chief  of  a  distinct  tribe,  lately  arrived  in  the  province,  and  totally  unconnected 
with  the  English. 

^  W.  Smith.  Hewit.  Williamson.  To  defray  the  expenses  of  their  military  operations, 
a«  well  as  to  promote  domestic  trade,  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina  now  established  a  public 
bank,  which  issued  bills  of  credit  that  were  lent  at  interest  on  landed  or  personal  security. 
By  the  same  assembly  the  common  law  of  England  was  declared  to  be  the  common  law  of 
South  Carolina.     Hewit.     Drayton's  View  of  South  Carolina. 

'^  Col^GXiS  History  of  the  Five  Nations.  ^ 


CHAP.  I]     HUNTER  AND  THE  NEW  YORK  ASSEMBLY.  35 

from  the  incursions  of  the  Indian  allies  of  the  French.  Without  the  actual 
experience  of  similar  calamity,  the  inhabitants  of  New  York  endured  the 
continual  apprehension  of  it ;  and  their  uneasiness  derived  no  small  increase 
from  a  series  of  disputes  with  Governor  Hunter,  which  at  first  threatened 
to  render  his  administration  extremely  unpopular.  This  man,  the  fugitive 
apprentice  of  an  apothecary  of  his  native  country  of  Scotland,  had  enlisted 
in  the  British  army  as  a  common  soldier.  His  wit  recommended  him  to 
the  friendship  of  Swift  and  Addison  ;  and  the  graces  of  his  person  and  man- 
ners enabled  him  to  marry  a  peeress,  by  whose  interest  he  was  advanced  to 
the  dignity  of  governor  of  New  York.  In  one  of  his  first  speeches  to  the 
assembly,  he  signified  to  them  a  repetition  of  the  queen's  commands,  that 
they  should  attach  an  augmented  and  permanent  salary  to  his  office  ;  vain- 
ly attempting  to  cloak  the  obnoxious  purpose  of  rendering  the  governor  in- 
dependent of  the  people,  by  protesting  that  her  Majesty  was  actuated  solely 
by  a  tender  regard  to  her  colonial  subjects,  and  an  anxious  desire  to  relieve 
them  from  the  oppressive  burden  of  occasional  and  uncertain  grants  to  her 
officers  ;  and  asserting,  with  little  regard  to  accuracy,  that  the  royal  wishes 
in  this  respect  had  received  a  cheerful  and  grateful  compliance  from  every 
other  colony  in  North  America.  The  people  of  New  York,  he  declared, 
had  been  distinguished  above  all  the  other  provincials  by  an  extraordinary 
measure  of  the  queen's  bounty  and  care  ;  and  he  advised  them  to  express 
their  sense  of  this  grace  by  suitable  returns,  "  lest  some  insinuations,  much 
repeated  of  late  years,  should  gain  credit  at  last,  that,  however  your  re- 
sentment has  fallen  upon  the  governor ^  it  is  the  government  you  dislike." 
"  It  is  necessary,  at  this  time,"  he  continued,  "  that  you  be  told,  also,  that 
giving  money  for  the  support  of  government,  and  disposing  of  it  at  your 
pleasure,  is  the  same  with  giving  none  at  all.  Her  Majesty  is  the  sole  judge 
of  the  merits  of  her  servants."  He  concluded  with  a  hint  that  they  were 
to  obey  and  not  argue  with  him,  by  observing,  —  "  If  I  have  tired  you  by 
a  long  speech,  I  shall  make  amends  by  putting  you  to  the  trouble  of  a  very 
short  answer."  The  arbitrary  tone  of  this  harangue,  coupled  with  an  en- 
croachment which  the  provincial  council  attempted  shortly  after  on  the 
privileges  of  the  assembly,  and  which  they  supported  by  a  declaration  that 
the  assembly,  like  the  council,  existed  "  by  the  mere  grace  of  the  crown,"  ^ 
threatened  to  revive  all  the  disgust  that  had  been  excited  by  Lord  Corn- 
bury's  administration. 

The  assembly  refused  to  comply  with  the  governor's  demand,  and  ad- 
hered to  their  favorite  system  of  providing  by  temporary  arrangements  for 
the  expenses  of  government.  To  the  doctrine  propounded  by  the  council 
they  opposed  a  spirited  resolution,  importing  that  the  council,  indeed,  not 
consisting,  like  the  English  House  of  Lords,  of  a  distinct  order  or  rank  of 
persons  in  the  constitution,  owed  their  functions  to  the  mere  pleasure  of 
the  crown  ;  but  that  the  assembly  enjoyed  its  privileges,  and  especially  its 

'  This  pretension  was  never  abandoned  by  the  British  court,  which,  in  conformity  with  the 
opinions  of  the  crown  lawyers,  maintained  that  the  constitutions  of  all  the  unchartered  prov- 
inces arose  from  and  depended  upon  the  mere  will  and  pleasure  of  the  king.  "  On  a  question 
from  New  Jersey,  in  1723,  with  respect  to  the  number  of  representatives  from  certain  counties 
or  places,  the  attorney-general,  Raymond,  advised  the  king  that  he  might  regulate  the  number 
to  be  sent  from  each  place,  or  might  restrain  them  from,  sending  any,  at  his  pleasure.  In 
1747,  on  a  similar  question  from  New  Hampshire,  the  crown  lawyers,  Ryder  and  Murray, 
informed  his  Majesty  that  the  right  of  sending  representatives  to  the  assembly  was  founded 
originally  on  the  commissions  and  instructions  given  by  the  crown  to  the  governors  of  New 
Hampshire."  Pitkin.  These  questions,  Pitkin  very  justly  observes,  could  be  settled  only  by 
a  revolution. 


36  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

exclusive  control  over  the  public  money,  by  inherent  right,  derived  ''  not 
from  any  commission,  letters  patent,  or  other  grant  from  the  crown,  but  from 
the  free  choice  and  election  of  the  people,  who  ought  not  to  be  divested  of 
their  property  (nor  justly  can)  without  their  consent."  Hunter,  who  was 
exceedingly  bent  on  accumulating  a  fortune,  and  was  often  reduced  to  straits 
by  the  failure  of  gambling  speculations  which  he  pursued  for  this  purpose, 
found  means  to  increase  his  emoluments  by  estabhshing  a  provincial  court 
of  chancery,  in  which  he  himself  presided  as  judge.  This  was  resented 
by  the  assembly  as  an  unconstitutional  act  of  power,  inferring  dangerous 
consequences  to  the  liberty  and  properties  of  the  colonists.  But  the  dis- 
sensions which  seemed  likely  to  ensue  from  these  occurrences  were  in- 
tercepted by  the  policy  of  the  governor  and  the  generosity  of  the  people, 
whose  conduct  plainly  showed  that  a  resolute  spirit  is  by  no  means  in- 
compatible with  moderation  and  placability.  Hunter  —  prudently  lowering 
the  haughty  tone  which  he  at  first  assumed,  expressing  both  in  New  York 
and  New  Jersey  an  increased  deference  to  the  pubhc  will,  and  cultivating 
popularity  by  the  exercise  of  those  graceful  accomplishments  which  had 
elevated  him  from  the  obscurity  of  his  primitive  condition  —  succeeded 
in  establishing  a  harmonious  correspondence  with  the  provincial  assembly, 
and  in  rendering  himself  the  object  of  general  and  even  affectionate  regard.^ 
The  conduct  of  Great  Britain  during  the  war  was  productive  of  disap- 
pointment and  disgust  to  all  the  American  colonies  to  which  the  sphere  of 
hostilities  extended  ;  and  the  intelligence  w^hich  now  arrived  of  the  peace 
of  Utrecht  was  far  from  communicating  general  satisfaction.  [1713.]  Many 
of  the  colonists  united  with  the  English  Whigs  in  regarding  the  treaty,  which 
Britain  concluded  on  this  occasion  with  France  and  Spain,  as  a  treacherous 
desertion  of  the  allies,  and  of  the  purposes  she  had  pledged  herself  to 
support,  and  as  a  preparatory  step  to  the  great  design  of  the  Tories  to 
counteract  the  principle  of  the  British  Revolution,  and  exalt  the  Pretender  to 
the  throne  of  his  ancestors,  on  the  demise  of  the  queen.  Some  articles  in 
the  treaty  of  peace  related  expressly  to  America.  The  conquered  settle^ 
ment  in  Annapohs,  with  the  relative  province  of  Acadia  or  Nova  Scotia, 
was  ceded  to  England,  but  the  French  were  permitted  to  retain  a  settlement 
at  Cape  Breton  ;  the  Five  Nations,  or,  as  the}  came  now  to  be  termed,  the 
Six  Nations,  were  recognized  as  the  subjects  of  England  ;  and  the  French 
and  English  governments  respectively  engaged  not  to  molest  or  interfere 
with  the  other  Indian  tribes,  claimed  as  the  subjects  of  either  of  the  crowns. 
But  the  appropriation  of  this  latter  provision,  as  well  as  the  precise  definition 
of  the  boundaries  of  Nova  Scotia  and  of  the  territories  of  the  Six  Nations, 
were  deferred  for  the  present  by  common  consent,  and  with  a  great  defect 
of  good  policy  on  the  part  of  England.  After  numerous  ineffectual  attempts 
of  the  Duke  of  Shrewsbury  and  Prior  the  poet,  who  were  the  Enghsh  plen- 
ipotentiaries, to  adjust  these  important  points  with  the  ministers  of  France, 
they  were  professedly  remitted  to  the  adjudication  of  commissioners  to  be 
subsequently  appointed,  and  practically  reserved  as  the  subjects  of  future 
contention.  One  of  the  provisions  of  the  treaty  reflects  the  deepest  dis- 
honor on  the  commercial  policy  of  England,  and  illustrates  the  deplorable 
change  that  English  sentiment  and  opinion  had  undergone  on  the  subject 
of  the  slave-trade,  since  the  sceptre  of  this  kingdom  had  last  been  swayed 
by  a  female  sovereign.^     A  French  mercantile  corporation,  established  in 

'  W.  Smith.    S.  Smith.  ''  ^ 

•  See  the  account  of  the  rise  of  the  slave-trade,  anie^  Book  I.,  Chap.  I. 


CHAP.  I]  PEACE  OF  UTRECHT.  37 

the  year  1701,  with  the  title  of  the  Assiento  Company,  or  Royal  Company 
of  Guinea,  had  contracted  to  supply  the  Spanish  settlements  in  South  Amer- 
ica with  negroes,  in  conformity  with  a  relative  treaty  between  the  crowns  of 
France  and  Spain. ^  By  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  the  Assiento  contract,  as  it 
was  termed,  was  transferred  from  the  French  to  the  merchants  of  England  ; 
the  king  of  Spain  granting  to  them  for  thirty  years  the  exclusive  privilege 
of  supplying  his  colonies  with  negroes  ;  and  Queen  Anne  (who  had  already 
signalized  her  patronage  of  the  slave-trade^)  engaging  that  her  subjects 
should,  during  that  period,  transport  to  the  Spanish  Indies  one  hundred  and 
forty-four  thousand  of  what  were  called,  in  trade  language,  Indian  pieces ^  by 
which  was  meant  negro  slaves,  on  certain  specified  terms,  and  at  the  rate  of 
four  thousand  eight  hundred  negroes  a  year.^  For  such  purposes,  the 
Most  Catholic  King,  as  the  Spanish  monarch  was  proud  to  style  himself,  and 
the  Defender  of  the  Faith,  as  the  Protestant  sovereign  of  England  was  de- 
nominated, could  lay  aside  their  religious  and  pohtical  jealousies  and  unite 
in  terms  of  commercial  amity. 

When  the  peace  of  Utrecht  was  known  in  America,  the  Indians  who  ad- 
joined and  had  so  long  harassed  the  eastern  frontiers  of  New  England,  per- 
ceiving that  they  must  no  longer  expect  assistance  from  the  French,  or  the 
Canadian  tribes  dependent  upon  France,  sent  a  deputation  to  the  govern- 
ment of  New  Hampshire,  to  propose  that  friendship  might  also  be  reestab- 
lished between  the  English  and  them,  and  that  a  conference  for  this  purpose 
should  be  holden  at  Casco.  But  Dudley  judged  it  more  accordant  with 
the  dignity  of  his  government,  that  the  Indian  delegates  should  attend  the 
English  commissioners  at  Portsmouth  ;  and  there,  accordingly,  the  chiefs 
of  the  several  hostile  tribes  again  executed  a  formal  treaty,  wherein  they 
acknowledged  the  repeated  perfidy  they  had  committed,  besought  the  queen's 
pardon  for  their  unprovoked  rebellion,  and  engaged  to  demean  themselves  in 
future  as  faithful  and  obedient  subjects  of  the  British  crown.  [July  13, 
1713.]  The  frequent  repetition  and  no  less  frequent  breaches  of  these 
engagements  had  by  this  time  much  impaired  the  sense  of  obligation  on  the 
one  side,  and  of  confidence  on  the  other.  Both  parties,  however,  had 
suffered  so  greatly  from  the  war,  as  to  render  a  present  deliverance  from 
its  evils  mutually  welcome  ;  and  with  the  view  of  preventing  its  recur- 
rence, and  obviating  the  most  ordinary  occasions  of  quarrel  and  complaint, 
the  provincial  governments  prohibited  the  colonists  from  holding  private 
traffic  with  the  Indians,  and  undertook  to  establish  barter-houses,  where 
public  agents  should  be  appointed  to  conduct  or  superintend  all  the  com- 
mercial transactions  between  the  two  races  of  people.  Unfortunately,  this 
judicious  purpose  was  not  at  present  carried  into  effect."* 

The  war  proved  exceedingly  burdensome  to  all  the  American  provinces 
which  engaged  in  it,  and  left  the  New  England  States,  New  York,  and  South 
Carohna  embarrassed  with  the  debts  they  had  contracted  to  defray  the  ex- 

'  It  was  entitled,  "  Traite  fait  entre  les  deux  rois  tres  chretien  et  calholique  avec  la  com- 
pagnie  royale  de  Guinea  etablie  en  France,  concernanl  I'introduction  des  Negres  dans  I'Amer- 
ique."     Holmes. 

'  See  the  royal  instructions  to  Lord  Cornbury,  ante^  Book  VI. 

'  This  arrangement  ended  in  the  ruin  of  the  British  merchants  who  attempted  to  take 
advantage  of  it.  It  was  stipulated  that  they  should  have  leave  to  erect  a  factory  on  the  Plata, 
and  that,  in  case  of  war  between  England  and  Spain,  eighteen  months  should  be  allowed  t(» 
them  for  the  removal  of  their  effects.  But  on  the  breaking  out  of  the  war  excited  by  Cardinal 
Alberoni,  when  as  yet  the  British  traders  had  made  but  one  voyage,  their  persons  and  their 
property  were  instantly  seized  by  the  Spanish  government.  _ 

»  Smollett.    W.  Smith.    Hutchinson.    Belknap. 

D 


38  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK   VIII. 

pense  of  their  military  operations.  None  of  the  other  provinces  suffered 
so  severely  as  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  It  was  ascertained, 
during  the  eighteenth  century,  that,  from  the  mere  progress  of  native  in- 
crease, a  term  of  twenty-five  years  was  generally  sufficient  to  double  the 
population  of  the  North  American  colonies.  But  during  the  latter  part 
of  the  seventeenth  and  the  earlier  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  prin- 
ciple of  increase  was  less  efficient  in  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire 
than  in  any  of  the  other  colonial  settlements  ;  and  in  the  year  1713,  Mas- 
sachusetts did  not  contain  double  the  number  of  inhabitants  which  it  pos- 
sessed fifty  years  before.  The  heavy  taxes,  occasioned  by  the  wars  which 
prevailed  during  that  period,  doubtless  induced  some  of  the  inhabitants  to 
transfer  their  residence  to  other  provinces  ;  but  the  actual  carnage  of  war 
appears  to  have  chiefly  contributed  to  repress  the  growth  of  people.  From 
the  year  1675,  when  Philip's  War  began,  till  the  close  of  Queen  Anne's 
War,  in  1713,  about  six  thousand  of  the  youth  of  the  country  had  per- 
ished by  the  stroke  of  the  enemy,  or  by  distempers  contracted  in  military 
service.  From  the  frequency  and  fertihty  of  marriages  in  New  England, 
nine  tenths  of  these  men,  if  they  had  been  spared  to  their  country,  would 
have  become  fathers  of  families,  and  in  the  course  of  forty  years  have 
multiplied  to  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  souls. 

But  the  financial  burdens  entailed  by  the  late  war  bequeathed  mischiefs 
more  durable  and  afflicting  than  the  regret  occasioned  by  the  destruction  of 
life.  In  imitation  of  the  policy  of  Britain,  most  of  the  colonies  adopted  the 
practice  of  mortgaging  their  resources  for  the  purpose  of  raising  larger 
military  supplies  than  immediate  taxation  could  produce  ;  and  a  copious 
issue  of  paper  money  enabled  the  provincial  governments  to  render  the  fu- 
ture tributary  to  the  present,  and  extend  the  consumption  of  war  to  wealth 
not  yet  realized.  This  dangerous  practice  was  carried  to  a  great  extent 
in  Massachusetts,  where  the  current  paper  money  very  soon  underwent  a 
considerable  depreciation,  and  produced  much  commercial  fraud  and  gam- 
bling.^ Public  engagements  which  had  been  contracted,  or  at  least  enlarged, 
on  the  principle  of  evading  the  immediate  pressure  of  their  burden,  found 
no  generation  willing  fairly  to  fulfil  them  ;  and  an  increasing  reluctance  was 
naturally  created  by  the  lapse  of  time,  and  by  the  interest  acquired  by  stock- 
jobbers and  knavish  speculators  in  various  delusive  expedients  by  which  the 
public  were  induced  to  temporize  with  the  evil,  and  which,  seeming  at  first 
to  palliate,  always  eventually  increased  its  malignity.  The  pernicious  in- 
fluence thus  exercised  on  the  character  of  a  numerous  portion  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  Massachusetts  obtained  an  unhappy  cooperation  from  the  idleness 

'  "  A  public  credit  paper  currency,"  says  Dr.  Douglass,  of  Boston,  "  is  a  great  promoter  of 
military  expeditions.  1  have  observed  that  all  our  paper  money-making  assemblies  have  been 
legislatures  o£ debtors^  the  representatives  of  people  who,  from  incogitancy,  idleness,  and  pro- 
fuseness,  have  been  under  a  necessity  of  mortgaging  their  lands.  Lands  are  a  real,  permanent 
estate  ;  but  the  debt,  in  paper  currency,  by  its  multiplication,  depreciates  more  and  more. 
Thus  their  land  estate,  in  nominal  value,  increases,  and  their  debt,  in  nominal  value,  decreas- 
es ;  and  the  large  quantity  of  paper  money  is  proportionably  in  favor  of  the  debtors,  and  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  creditors,  or  industrious,  frugal  part  of  the  colony.  This  is  the  wicked 
mystery  of  this  iniquitous  paper  currency."  —  Douglass's  Summary.  An  American  writer  far 
superior  in  sense  and  genius  to  Douglass,  after  a  forcible  exhibition  of  the  evils  of  a  large  emis- 
sion of  paper  money,  remarks,  that,  "  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  the  occasion  of  good  to  many  ; 
it  was  at  all  times  the  poor  man's  friend.  While  it  was  current,  all  kinds  of  labor  very 
readily  found  their  reward  ;  none  were  idle  from  want  of  employment,  and  none  were  em- 
ployed without  having  it  in  their  power  to  obtain  ready  payment  of  their  services.  No  agra- 
rian law  ever  had  a  more  extensive  operation.  The  poor  became  rich,  and  the  rich  became 
poor.  Young  persons  were  taught  by  salutary  lessons  to  depend  rather  on  their  own  industry 
rod  activity  than  on  paternal  acquisitions."     Ramsay  s  American  Revolution. 


CHAP.  I]  EVIL   CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE   WAR.  39-. 

and  vice  which  a  military  life  promotes  in  its  followers,  and  from  the  faction 
and  intrigue  engendered  by  Dudley's  administration. 

In  Connecticut,  the  evils  that  attended  the  progress,  and  remained  to 
be  endured  after  the  cessation  of  the  war,  proved  a  great  deal  less  afflicting, 
from  the  energy  of  wisdom  and  virtue  that  was  exerted  to  counteract  them. 
The  assembly  of  this  province  had  labored  during  the  war,  by  extending 
education  and  cultivating  an  increased  strictness  in  the  practice  of  moral 
and  religious  duties,  to  resist  the  contagion  of  that  profaneness  and  impiety 
congenial  to  the  habits  and  propagated  by  the  example  of  soldiers.  To 
facihtate  the  exertions  of  the  clergy,  they  were  released  from  all  pubhc  tax- 
es ;  and  a  similar  exemption  was  extended  for  a  certain  number  of  years 
to  all  infant  towns  and  settlements,  on  condition  of  their  forthwith  erect- 
ing institutions  for  religious  education.  Voluntary  associations  were  formed 
to  animate  the  public  zeal  ;  and  addresses  were  circulated  by  these  bodies, 
recommending  ''  that  there  be  a  strict  inquiry  which  and  what  are  the  sins 
and  evils  that  provoke  the  just  majesty  of  Heaven  to  walk  contrary  unto 
us  in  the  ways  of  his  providence  ;  that  thereby  all  possible  means  may  be 
used  for  our  heahng  and  recovery  from  our  degeneracy."  For  a  consid- 
erable period  of  time,  both  during  and  subsequent  to  the  war,  the  acts  of 
the  government  of  Connecticut  consisted  chiefly  of  a  series  of  pious  and 
judicious  measures  for  cherishing  religion  and  morahty,  and  for  discharging 
the  pubhc  engagements  that  had  been  contracted  by  the  issue  of  paper 
money.  The  government  of  Massachusetts  was  by  no  means  entirely  neg- 
ligent of  similar  attempts  to  elevate  and  purify  the  character  of  its  people. 
A  few  years  after  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  the  pernicious  institution  of  lotter- 
ies, which  had  been  created  by  the  spirit  of  gambling,  and  was  contributhig 
to  spread  and  strengthen  it  by  exercise,  was  suppressed  by  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts ;  which  at  the  same  time  passed  a  law  restoring  the  primitive 
ordinances  against  idleness  and  immorality,  and  enacting  that  "  no  single 
persons  of  either  sex,  under  the  age  of  twenty-one  years,  shall  be  suffered 
to  live  at  their  own  hand,  but  under  some  orderly  family  government." 
But  in  Connecticut,  piety  was  now  more  widely  and  warmly  prevalent  than 
in  Massachusetts  ;  and  was  happily  preserved  from  the  insidious  and  de- 
praving influence  of  domestic  faction  and  political  intrigue.  The  leading 
persons  in  Connecticut,  too,  were  distinguished  by  the  soundness  of  their 
views  and  the  prudence  and  vigor  of  their  measures  in  relation  to  the 
circulating  medium  of  the  province.  A  stable  currency  they  clearly  per- 
ceived to  be  essential  alike  to  the  civil  and  the  moral  prosperity  of  every 
commonwealth.  Without  it,  the  principles  of  commutative  justice  are  un- 
hinged, and  the  property  and  rights  of  the  citizens  rendered  insecure.  It 
serves  to  guard  public  morality  by  withholding  numerous  temptations  to  in- 
justice, and  disabling  gamblers  and  speculators  from  perpetrating  those  frauds 
to  which  a  fluctuating  state  of  the  currency  affords  scope  and  temptation. 
An  unstable  and  depreciating  currency  is  an  engine  of  public  injustice, 
imposing  an  unfair  and  injurious  tax  on  the  sober  and  industrious  part  of 
every  community  where  it  prevails.  It  disappoints  all  men,  who  are  sup- 
ported by  salaries,  of  a  part  of  their  due  ;  and  tempts  debtors  to  defraud 
their  creditors,  by  withholding  payment  of  their  debts  as  long  as  possible, 
and  then  paying  them  with  paper  depreciated  far  below  its   nominal  value. ^ 

*  "  The  Novanglians  in  general,  the  Rhode  Islanders  in  particular,"  says  Dr.  McSporran,  a 
writer  whom  we  shall  afterwards  have  occasion  to  notice,  "  are  the  only  people  on  earth  who 
have  hit  on  the  art  of  enriching  themselves  by  running  in  debt." 


40  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK   VIIJ 

It  tends  thus  to  impoverish  the  fair-deahng,  laborious,  and  useful  members 
of  society,  for  the  benefit  of  dishonest  adventurers,  whose  gains  and  prac- 
tices it  is  the  interest  of  society  to  discourage  ;  and  in  these  and  a  great 
variety  of  other  ways,  proves  a  source  of  public  and  private  injustice,  and 
of  incalculable  injury  to  the  morals  of  a  people.  Sensible  of  these  truths, 
the  legislature  of  Connecticut  acted  with  the  most  scrupulous  caution  in 
limiting  the  issues  of  their  bills  of  credit,  and  with  the  strictest  honor  and 
resolution  in  providing  funds  and  imposing  taxes  for  their  seasonable  re- 
demption. The  consequence  of  this  wise  policy  (aided  by  the  general 
addiction  of  the  people  to  agricultural  instead  of  mercantile  pursuits)  was, 
that,  amidst  the  gambling  and  embarrassments  that  prevailed  in  Massachu- 
setts, there  was  no  redundance  and  little  or  no  depreciation  of  the  circulat- 
ing medium  in  Connecticut,  where  a  well  regulated  issue  of  paper  money 
proved  rather  beneficial  than  injurious  to  the  industry  and  prosperity  of  the 
people. 1 

Various  statutory  enactments  relative  to  the  American  colonies  were 
framed  by  the  parent  state  since  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne.  The  ship- 
builders of  England  had  long  depended  for  their  chief  supplies  of  pitch  and 
tar  on  Sweden,  which,  in  the  year  1703,  was  so  blind  to  her  own  interest 
as  to  confer  a  monopoly  of  this  important  commerce  on  a  mercantile  corpo- 
ration. The  sudden  and  unreasonable  increase  in  the  price  of  those  com- 
modities, which  ensued  upon  this  measure,  suggested  to  the  English  mer- 
chants and  ministers  the  policy  of  drawing  the  national  supplies  of  them 
from  a  different  quarter  ;  and  the  result  of  their  dehberations  was  the  adop- 
tion of  a  parliamentary  statute,^  in  1704,  for  encouraging  the  importation 
of  naval  stores  from  the  American  plantations.  It  was  stated  in  the  pre- 
amble of  this  act,  that  the  stores  required  for  the  mercantile  shipping  and 
the  royal  navy  of  England  were  imported  from  foreign  states,  but  might  be 
obtained  more  advantageously  from  certain  quarters  of  the  queen's  own  do- 
minions, and  in  particular  from  the  American  colonies,  which,  says  the 
act,  "  were  at  first  settled,  and  are  still  maintained  and  protected,  at  a  great 
expense  of  the  treasure  of  this  kingdom,  with  a  design  to  render  them  as 
useful  as  may  be  to  England,  and  the  labor  and  industry  of  the  people  there 
profitable  to  themselves."  Truth  was  never  more  grossly  outraged  than  by 
this  pretence  of  the  expenditure  of  the  public  resources  of  England  in 
founding  and  protecting  colonies,  of  which  every  one  (except  New  York) 
was  gained  to  the  English  empire  by  the  unaided  efforts  of  private  indi- 
viduals ;  all  of  which  had  defended  themselves,  without  assistance  from 
the  parent  state  ;  and  most  of  w^hich  were  actually  struggling  with  the  ex- 
pense and  danger  of  a  war  in  which  the  parent  state  herself  had  involved 
them.  Premiums  were  tendered  by  this  statute  to  all  persons  w^ho  should 
import  (in  vessels  manned  according  to  the  requirements  of  the  Acts  of 
Navigation)  into  England,  from  America,  masts,  tar,  hemp,  and  other 
naval  stores  ;  and  in  order  to  secure  the  materials  of  a  part  of  this  supply, 
the  colonists  of  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut, 
New  York,  and  New  Jersey  were  prohibited,  under  high  penalties,  from 
cutting  down  any  pitch,  pine,  or  tar  trees,  of  certain  dimensions,  growing 
on  lands  not  already  appropriated  by  private  owners,  and  actually  inclosed 
within  their  fences.  By  a  subsequent  act  of  the  Bnitish  parliament,^  in  the 
year   1710,  the   surveyor-general  of  the  royal  woods  in  those  parts  was 

'  Hutchinson.    W.  Smith.     Trumbull.     Holmes.  - 

«  .3  and  4  Anne,  Cap.  X.    Raynal.  »  9  Anne,  Cap.  XVII.     V'     • 


CHAP.  11]         EARL  OF  ORKNEY  GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA.  J^ 

^•equired  to  affix  a  mark  on  the  trees  which  he  considered  fit  for  naval  pur- 
poses ;  and  all  persons,  presuming  to  cut  down  trees  so  marked,  were 
subjected  to  a  heavy  fine.  In  the  year  1707,  an  act^  was  passed  by  the 
British  parliament  'Tor  encouraging  the  trade  to  North  America."  -  The 
chief  purpose  of  this  act  was  to  regulate  the  duties  payable  by  the  captors 
of  hostile  vessels  carried  into  American  ports,  and  to  confer  upon  mariners 
employed  in  merchant  ships  trading  to  any  of  the  North  American  settle- 
ments a  temporary  exemption  from  impressment  into  tlje  service  of  the 
royal  navy.  ^ 


CHAPTER    II 


Affairs  of  Virginia  —  Passage  across  the  Appalachian  Mountains  ascertained.  —  Affairs  of  New 
England  —  Attempt  to  subvert  the  New  England  Charters.  —  Indian  War  in  South  Carolina. 

—  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania —  Administration   of  Sir  William  Keith.  —  Affairs  of  Carolina 

—  Piracy  on  the  American  Coasts.  —  Theach,  or  Blackbeard,  the  Pirate.  —  Revolt  of  South 
Carolina  against  its  Proprietary  Government. — Affairs  of  New  York  —  Administration  of 
Burnet.  —  South  Sea  Scheme  and  commercial  Gambling  in  Britain.  —  Affairs  of  New  Eng- 
land —  Administration  of  Shute  —  Disputes  —  and  War  with  the  Indians.  —  Massachusetts 
incurs  the  Displeasure  of  the  King  —  and  receives  an  explanatory  Charter.  —  Dispute  re- 
specting fixed  Salary  between  the  Assembly  and  Royal  Governor —  terminates  in  Favor  of 
tne  Assembly.  —  Affairs  of  New  York. —  Transactions  in  Carolina  —  Surrender  of  the  Char- 
ter of  Carolina  to  the  Crown. — Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  —  British  Legislation.  —  Bishop 
Berkeley's  Project. 

Virginia  and  Maryland  were  the  only  two  of  the  North  American 
provinces,  which,  during  the  period  that  elapsed  from  the  British  Revolution 
till  the  peace  of  Utrecht  [1713],  enjoyed  an  entire  exemption  from  the 
cost  and  the  spoil  of  war.  On  the  removal  of  Nicholson  from  the  presi- 
dency of  Virginia  in  1704,  this  dignity  was  conferred  as  a  sinecure  office  on 
George,  Earl  of  Orkney,  who  enjoyed  it  for  thirty-six  years,  and  received 
forty-two  thousand  pounds  of  salary  ^  from  a  people  who  never  once  beheld 
him  among  them.  This  arrangement,  notwithstanding  the  praise  which  it 
obtained  from  some  courtly  writers  and  politicians,^  appears  discreditable 
alike  to  the  justice  and  the  wisdom  of  the  parent  state,  which  encumbered 
the  colonists  with  the  attendant  burdens,  without  entertaining  them  with  the 
show  and  splendor,  of  aristocratical  institutions.  But  the  mischievous  ef- 
fects of  this  policy  were  counteracted  by  the  wisdom  and  prudence  of  the 
lieutenants  to  whom  the  actual  administration  of  the  government  was  confided 
by  the  English  ministry.  Edward  Nott,  the  first  of  these,  was  rendered  ac- 
ceptable to  the  colonists  by  the  moderation  of  his  sentiments  and  the  mild- 

»  6  Anne,  Cap.  XXXVII. 

*  The  ann\ial  salary  was  two  thousand  pounds,  of  which  one  thousand  two  hundred  pounds 
was  paid  to  the  earl  as  chief  governor,  and  eight  hundred  pounds  to  the  lieutenant-governor, 
who  was  also  appointed  by  the  crown. 

'  Sir  William  Keith,  in  particular,  who,  though  he  adniits  that  worthless  and  incapable 
men  were  frequently  appointed  by  the  British  court  to  the  government  of  the  American  colo- 
nies, extols  the  appointment  of  Lord  Orkney,  as  a  measure  which  must  have  proved  beneficial 
to  the  Virginians,  by  rendering  a  powerful  courtier  the  advocate  of  their  interests  in  England. 
But  "  I  must  own,"  says  Oldmixon,  in  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  Keith,  "  I  have  different 
sentiments  of  the  fitness  of  a  nobleman  to  be  agent  for  a  colony  in  England  ;  and  as  the  in- 
habitants of  the  American  colonies  have  a  natural  right  to  the  protection  of  their  mother  state 
in  all  cases,  and  do  otherwise  pay  well  for  it,  they  surely  will  never  stand  in  need  of  any 
other  mediation  than  the  justice  and  reason  of  the  thing." 

VOL.    II.  6  D  *  ' 


42  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

ness  of  his  manners  ;  and,  in  the  year  1710,  he  was  succeeded  by  Colonel 
Alexander  Spottiswoode,  a  Scottish  gentleman  of  upright  and  honorable 
character,  who  had  already  distinguished  himself  by  his  attainments  in  sci- 
ence and  his  military  valor  and  skill,  and  who  now  acquired  additional  celeb- 
rity by  the  ardor  of  his  exertions  and  the  genius  and  compass  of  his  views 
for  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  Virginia,  and  the  enlargement  and 
security  of  the  British  empire  in  America.  He  applied  his  mathematical 
knowledge  to  the  construction  of  roads  and  other  works  of  public  utility  and 
convenience  ;  he  promoted  establishments  for  the  education  of  the  Indians, 
and  introduced  the  most  judicious  regulations  of  the  Indian  trade. 

Outstripping  the  sagacity  of  all  the  contemporary  politicians  of  Britain, 
Spottiswoode  was  the  first  of  his  countrymen  who  penetrated  the  great  de- 
sign of  France  for  uniting  her  scattered  settlements  in  America,  which, 
though  explicitly  unfolded  at  a  later  period,  was  still,  and  continued  for  many 
years  after  to  be,  disguised  from  general  perception  by  the  insignificance  of 
its  initial  operations.  His  attention  was  early  directed  to  the  means  of  ex- 
tending the  western  frontier  of  Virginia,  in  order  to  intercept  the  communi- 
cation of  the  French  between  Canada  and  the  Mississippi.  For  this  purpose 
it  was  necessary,  as  a  prehminary  step,  to  explore  a  practicable  route  over 
the  Appalachian  Mountains,  —  an  object  which  had  formerly  engaged  the 
consideration,  but  baflled  the  exertions,  of  Sir  William  Berkeley.  The 
French  alone  were  acquainted  with  the  geography  and  resources  of  the  re- 
gions beyond  those  mountains ;  and  they  made  it  a  capital  maxim  of  their 
American  policy  that  this  knowledge  should  be  carefully  withheld  from  the 
English,  who  had  no  farther  acquaintance  with  the  country  than  what  they 
derived  from  the  imperfect  reports  of  a  few  straggling  travellers  and  erratic 
savages.  It  had  long  been  a  prevalent  opinion  with  the  Virginians,  that  an 
insurmountable  barrier  to  their  progress  was  interposed  by  the  Appalachian 
Mountains,  whose  rugged  and  desolate  heights  were  trodden  only  by  the 
wolf,  the  bear,  the  panther,  and  the  Indians..  Animated,  however,  by  the 
spirit  of  Governor  Spottiswoode,  the  assembly  of  Virginia  consented  to  de- 
fray the  expense  of  an  expedition,  which  he  offered  personally  to  lead,  for 
the  discovery  of  a  passage  over  this  long  respected  barrier  ;  and  which, 
being  reinforced  by  the  accession  of  some  of  the  most  considerable  persons 
in  the  province,  who  desired  to  partake  the  peril  and  honor  of  the  attempt, 
was  conducted  with  a  great  deal  of  parade  and  solemnity.  The  enterprise 
was  crowned  with  success  ;  a  passage  across  the  Appalachian  ridge  ascer- 
tained [1714]  ;  and  an  increasing  scope  of  British  colonization  suggested 
by  a  view  of  the  fertile  and  beautiful  region  of  which  the  barrier  was  thus 
surmounted,  and  which,  as  it  was  beheld  for  the  first  time  by  the  colonists 
from  the  summits  of  the  mountains,  appeared  to  stretch  on  every  side  to  an 
immeasurable  distance. 

When  the  pubhc  solicitude,  which  had  been  strongly  excited  by  the 
supposed  danger  and  difficulty  of  the  expedition,  was  dispelled  by  the  safe 
return  of  the  adventurers,  with  the  tidings  of  their  successful  achievement, 
Spottiswoode  was  hailed  by  the  Virginians  with  acclamations  of  grateful, 
and,  indeed,  hyperbolical  praise,  which  exalted  him  to  an  approach  to  the 
glory  of  Hannibal.  His  genius,  however,  was  most  conspicuously  displayed 
in  a  project  of  which  the  honor  was  greater  than  the  success.  The  passage 
of  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  and  the  knowledge  he  acquired  of  the  ter- 
ritory beyond  them,  suggested  to  him  the  means  of  anticipating  and  defeating 


CHAP.  II.]  DUDLEY  SUPERSEDED  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  43 

the  latent  purposes  of  aggrandizement  which  he  discerned  in  the  colonial 
enterprises  of  the  French  ;  and  in  a  memorial  to  the  British  government, 
he  predicted  the  course  of  operations,  by  which  the  system  of  the  rival 
power,  unless  seasonably  counteracted,  would  be  progressively  developed  ; 
and  strongly,  but  vainly,  suggested  the  precautionary  measure  of  construct- 
ing a  chain  of  forts  along  a  line  and  in  positions  which  he  himself  had 
examined  with  the  eye  of  a  skilful  engineer.  His  conjectures  were  sub- 
sequently verified  ;  and  the  event  more  fully  demonstrated  his  sagacity  than 
if  readier  credit  had  been  given  to  it.  No  better  success  attended  the  coun- 
sels he  repeatedly  addressed  to  the  British  government  to  adopt  the  prudent 
and  liberal  policy  of  indemnifying  the  Virginians  for  the  expenses  of  the 
Appalachian  expedition,  —  a  policy  which  the  parent  state  might  have 
plainly  perceived  to  be  essential  to  her  dignity  and  her  consideration  with 
the  colonists,  and  which  she  could  not  neglect  without  suggesting  to  them 
the  idea  of  distinct  and  separate  interests.  With  less  wisdom,  Spottiswoode 
himself  established  a  temporary  order  of  knighthood  in  Virginia,  under  the 
title  of  "  The  Tramontane  Order,  or  the  Knights  of  the  Golden  Horse- 
shoe." Each  of  the  knights  was  entitled  to  wear  a  golden  horseshoe  on 
his  breast,  as  a  mark  of  distinction  for  having  surmounted  the  Appalachian 
ridge.  For  many  years  after  the  expedition,  this  province  continued  to  ad- 
vance in  a  steady,  but  silent  and  monotonous,  course  of  increasing  culture 
and  population,  —  so  barren  of  remarkable  incident,  and  so  totally  destitute 
of  the  irradiation  of  literature,  that  an  ingenious  historian  has  termed  this 
the  Dark  Age  of  Virginia.^  During  this  mute,  inglorious  interval,  however, 
the  foundations  of  national  strength  and  greatness  were  securely  laid  ;  and 
a  generation  of  statesmen,  orators,  patriots,  and  heroes  begotten. 

The  accession  of  George  the  First  to  the  British  throne  excited  very  little 
interest  in  any  of  the  North  American  provinces,  except  Nev/  England, 
where  it  was  joyfully  hailed  as  a  triumph  of  revolutionary  principles  over 
the  views  and  designs  which  the  Tories  had  entertained,  and  hoped  to  ac- 
complish on  the  demise  of  Queen  Anne.  In  consequence  of  this  event,  the 
English  friends  of  Governor  Dudley  were  deprived  of  their  interest  at  court, 
and  the  government  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  was  shortly  after 
withdrawn  from  his  hands,  and  conferred  on  Colonel  Burgess,  as  a  recom- 
pense of  this  officer's  services  in  the  late  continental  campaigns  of  the  Brit- 
ish army.  [1715.]  This  intelligence  was  wholly  unexpected  by  Dudley, 
who  had  lately  gained  a  considerable  accession  to  his  provincial  partisans  ; 
but  it  announced  a  fall  from  which  he  could  not  hope  to  rise  again  ;  and 
calmly  resigning  himself  to  the  final  farewell  of  ambition,  hope,  and  political 
fortune,  he  withdrew  for  ever  from  public  life  ;  bequeathing  to  his  country 
a  long  continuance  of  party  rage  and  cabal  ;  and  having  excited  a  vehement 
jealousy  of  British  prerogative,  which  lasted  as  long  as  the  connection  be- 
tween Massachusetts  and  the  parent  state.  The  last  official  acts  which  ter- 
minated his  administration  seemed  to  denote  an  extinction  in  his  own  bosom 
of  the  interests  and  animosities  which  he  had  hitherto  cherished,  and  graced 
his  political  demise  with  an  unwonted  show  of  forgiving  mildness  and  liber- 

'  Oldmixon.  Carver's  Travels  in  JVorth  America.  Wynne.  Burk.  Campbell.  The  his- 
torian of  T/te  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Rowan  Empire^  in  alluding  to  a  particular  era,  ascribes  to 
it  "  the  rare  advantage  of  furnishing  very  few  materials  for  history ;  which  is,  indeed,  littlrt 
more  than  the  register  of  the  crimes,  follies,  and  misfortunes  of  mankind."  Gibbon.  This 
is  a  just  enough  view  of  the  actuality,  but  not  of  the  capability,  of  history.    Every  social  scene 

Presents  a  spectacle  and  movement  which  genius  and  opportunity  might  interestingly  portray, 
t  is  easier  to  paint  a  hilly  than  a  flat  landscape. 


44  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

dity.*  Sir  William  Ashurst  and  Jeremiah  Dummer,  the  agents  for  the 
province  at  London,  conceived  somehow  an  apprehension  that  the  appoint- 
ment of  Burgess  would  prove  unacceptable  to  the  colonists  ;  and  in  con- 
junction with  Jonathan  Belcher,  a  wealthy  inhabitant  of  Massachusetts,  who 
was  in  England  at  the  time,  endeavoured  to  prevail  with  him  to  resign  his 
pretensions  in  favor  of  another  individual.  Burgess,  in  consideration  of 
one  thousand  pounds,  which  was  contributed  for  the  purpose  by  Belcher 
and  Dummer,  consented  to  gratify  their  wish  ;  and  the  office,  thus  again 
vacated,  was  conferred  on  Colonel  Shute,  who,  in  addition  to  the  reputation 
of  principles  friendly  to  liberty,  and  of  a  humane  and  generous  temper, 
enjoyed  the  advantage  of  being  connected  with  that  party  in  England  which 
was  most  esteemed  by  the  colonists,  and  formed  their  chief  engine  of  in- 
fluence at  the  British  court.  He  was  the  descendant  of  a  family  long  dis- 
tinguished among  the  dissenters  from  the  established  church ;  and  his  broth- 
er, afterwards  Lord  Barrington,  was  at  this  time  a  member  of  parliament 
and  a  leading  supporter  of  what  was  termed  the  Dissenting  interest  in  Eng- 
land. Shute  had  served  with  distinction  under  the  Duke  of  Marlborough 
in  Germany  ;  and  the  address  with  which  his  arrival  at  Boston  was  greeted 
by  the  provincial  assembly  contained  a  flattering  allusion  to  the  honorable 
wounds  he  had  received  in  the  cause  of  Hberty  and  religion.  Tranquillity 
and  harmony  attended  the  commencement  of  his  administration. 

But  the  satisfaction  with  which  the  colonists  of  New  England  beheld  the 
accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover  to  the  throne,  and  which  a  wise  policy 
might  have  improved  to  the  advantage  of  the  parent  state,  was  soon  di- 
minished by  measures  which  demonstrated  to  them  that  their  liberties  were 
no  dearer  to  the  new  dynasty  than  they  had  been  to  the  old.  In  the  very 
first  year  of  the  king's  reign,  a  bill  was  introduced  into  the  British  parlia- 
ment for  abolishing  all  the  charters  of  the  various  provinces  of  New  England. 
Connecticut,  on  this  occasion,  distinguished  herself  by  her  exertions  in  the 
common  cause.  Her  alarm  was  increased  by  the  cooperation  which  the 
enemies  of  American  liberty  received  from  the  descendant  of  the  Winthrops, 
who  was  discontented,  because  an  honorable  reputation  was  the  sole  reward 
of  the  patriotic  virtue  of  his  ancestors.  But  his  defection  was  more  than 
counterbalanced  by  the  generosity  and  public  spirit  of  Governor  Saltonstall, 
who,  enjoying  a  large  pecuniary  credit  in  England,  cheerfully  transferred 
the  command  of  it  to  the  province  and  its  English  agent,  and  risked  all 
his  fortune  in  defence  of  the  hberties  of  his  country. 

Dummer,  the  provincial  agent,  was  instructed  to  employ  every  possible 
engine  of  influence  to  defeat  the  bill,  and  to  spare  no  expense  for  this 
purpose.  He  was  also  employed  to  compose  and  publish  a  Defence  of  the 
JYeio  England  Charters  ;  and,  being  an  accomplished  and  ingenious  man, 
he  acquitted  himself  of  this  duty  in  a  manner  highly  creditable  to  himself 
and  satisfactory  to  his  constituents.  He  maintained  that  the  colonists  of 
New  England,  by  the  dangers  and  difficulties  they  haid  braved  and  sur- 
mounted for  the  enlargement  of  the  British  empire  and  commerce,  had 
given  a  valuable  consideration  to  the  parent  state  for  all  the  benefits  that  her 
charters  conferred  ;  that  these  benefits  consisted  solely  of  the  privileges 
attached  to  the  provincial  constitutions  ;  for  the  property  of  the  soil  had 
been  purchased  by  the  colonists  themselves  from  the  aboriginal  inhabitants, 
to  whom,  and  not  to  England,  it  rightfully  belonged ;  and  hence,  to  abolish 

'  He  died  in  the  year  1720,  at  the  age  of  seventy-three.  He  was  an  accomplished  scholar, 
and  proved  a  zealous  patron  and  liberal  benefactor  of  Harvard  College. 


CHAP.  II.]       BILL  TO  ABOLISH  NEW  ENGLAND  CHARTERS.  45 

the  provincial  constitutions  was  to  defraud  the  colonists  of  all  the  stipulated 
reward  that  they  had  earned  from  the  parent  state,  and  accepted  in  reli- 
ance on  her  honor  and  justice.  He  derided  the  supposed  expediency  of 
guarding  against  the  independence  of  the  colonies  ;  protesting  that  a  father 
might  as  rationally  propose  to  plant  a  guard  of  soldiers  around  his  new- 
born child,  to  prevent  the  infant  from  sallying  from  its  cradle  to  cut  his 
throat ;  and  that,  besides  the  feebleness  of  their  estate,  the  several  colonies 
were  so  much  estranged  from  each  other  by  religious  and  political  distinc- 
tions, that  it  was  impossible  they  should  ever  unite  in  an  enterprise  of  so 
much  magnitude  and  danger  as  opposition  to  Great  Britain. 1  By  the  co- 
gency of  these  arguments,  and  the  powerful  support  which  the  colonial 
cause  received  from  the  English  Dissenters,  the  promoters  of  the  bill  were 
ultimately  corripelled  to  withdraw  it.  Nothing  could  have  been  devised  of 
more  effectual  tendency  to  foster  in  America  the  growth  of  sentiments  and 
ideas  unfavorable  to  British  supremacy,  than  the  prosecution  and  the  fail- 
ure of  such  projects  ;  which  left  the  colonists  in  possession  of  the  animating 
impulse  and  enjoyment  of  liberty,  and  taught  them,  at  the  same  time,  to 
regard  it  as  a  benefit  they  had  preserved  by  resistance  to  the  wishes  and 
pretensions  of  the  parent  state.  Disputes  of  such  a  nature,  and  so  adjusted, 
have  a  procreative  faculty,  and  invariably  leave  behind  them  a  quarrelsome 
posterity  of  jealousies  and  discontents. 

New  Hampshire,  not  possessing  a  charter,  had  been  no  farther  interested 
in  the  attempt  which  was  thus  defeated,  than  as  it  betokened  the  encroach- 
ing policy  of  the  British  government  and  the  general  insecurity  of  Ameri- 
can hberty.  But  a  spirit  of  discontent  and  opposition  was  now  provoked 
in  this  province  by  the  conduct  of  the  individual  who  was  appointed  the 
deputy  of  Colonel  Shute.  George  Vaughan,  the  son  of  one  of  the  most 
popular  and  public-spirited  citizens  of  New  Hampshire,  had  been  employed 
for  some  time  as  the  provincial  agent  at  London,  where  he  forsook  the 
interests  of  his  constituents,  and  cultivated  the  favor  of  the  court,  by  sug- 
gesting measures  calculated  for  the  advancement  of  the  royal  authority.  In 
a  memorial  which  he  presented  to  the  king  and  ministry,  he  recommended 
the  extension  of  the  land-tax  of  Great  Britain  to  New  England  ;  and, 
proposing  that  a  receiver  of  this  tribute  should  forthwith  be  appointed  by 
the  crown,  devised  an  office  which  he  probably  hoped  would  be  conferred 
on  himself.  His  counsel  was  not  embraced  ;  but  his  subserviency  was  re- 
warded by  the  royal  appointment  of  deputy-governor  of  New  Hampshire. 
Here  the  peremptory  style  in  which  he  admonished  the  assembly  to  es- 
tablish a  perpetual  revenue  to  the  crown  excited  general  disgust  and  im- 
patience, which  he  increased  by  his  arbitrary  conduct  in  suspending  coun- 
sellors and  dissolving  assemblies.^     Happily  for  the  peace  of  the  province, 

'  "  It  is  for  this  reason  I  have  often  wondered  to  hear  some  great  men  profess  their  belief 
of  the  feasibleness  of  it,  and  the  probability  of  its  some  time  or  other  actually  coming  to  pass, 
who  yet  with  the  same  breath  advise  that  all  the  governments  on  the  continent  be  formed 
into  one,  by  being  brought  under  one  viceroy  and  into  one  assembly.  For,  surely,  if  we  in 
earnest  believed  that  there  was,  or  would  be  hereafter,  a  disposition  in  the  provinces  to  rebel 
and  declare  themselves  independent,  it  would  be  good  policy  to  keep  them  disunited  ;  be- 
cause, if  it  were  possible  that  they  could  contrive  so  wild  and  rash  an  undertaking,  yet  they 
would  not  be  hardy  enough  to  put  it  in  execution,  unless  they  could  first  strengthen  them- 
selves by  a  confederacy  of  all  the  parts."     Dummer's  Defence  of  the  JYew  Evfftaiid  Charters. 

'  One  of  his  speeches  at  the  council  board  of  New  Hampshire  is  preserved  by  Belknap,  and 
forms  a  most  ridiculous  specimen  of  pompous  pretension,  domineering  insolence,  and  bombastic 
elocution.  Personal  slanders  against  himself  he  declares  to  be  unworthy  of  his  regard,  — 
"  but  when  revenge's  mother  utters  bold  challenges,  raiseth  batteries,  and  begins  to  cannon- 


46  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

his  administration  was  but  shortlived.  Prompted  by  vauhing  ambition  and 
insolent  confidence,  he  attempted  to  restrict  the  control  which  Shute  was 
entitled  to  exercise  by  his  superior  command  ;  and  asserted  his  own  rival 
pretensions  in  a  style  so  impetuous  and  disrespectful,  that  Shute  was 
provoked  to  suspend  him  from  his  office.  Vaughan  then  found  that  he  had 
presumed  too  far  on  the  support  of  the  British  court.  The  justice  of  the 
case,  and  the  stronger  interest  of  Shute,  caused  him  to  be  divested  of  his 
ill-earned  dignity,  which  was  conferred  on  John  Wentworth,  a  wealthy  and 
respectable  inhabitant  of  New  Hampshire.  The  spirit  that  was  thus  ex- 
cited in  this  province  was  probably  the  cause  why  Shute  was  unable  to  ob- 
tain, like  his  predecessor,  a  fixed  salary  from  its  assembly.^ 

The  province  of  South  Carolina  was  this  year  reduced  to  the  brink  of 
ruin  by  an  extensive  conspiracy  of  Indian  tribes,  which  exploded  in  a  fu- 
rious and  formidable  war  [1715],  inflicting  a  bloody  retribution  of  the 
wrongs  that  the  Indian  race  sustained  heretofore  from  the  planters  of  Car- 
olina. The  numerous  and  powerful  tribe  of  the  Yamassees,  who  possessed 
a  large  territory  adjacent  to  Port  Royal  Island,  stretching  along  the  north- 
east side  of  Savannah  River,  were  the  most  active  promoters  of  the  con- 
spiracy. By  the  Carolinians  this  tribe  had  long  been  regarded  as  friends 
and  allies  ;  they  admitted  Enghsh  traders  to  reside  in  their  towns,  assisted 
the  military  enterprises  of  the  colonists,  and  displayed  a  fierce  and  inveterate 
enmity  towards  the  Spaniards.  For  many  years  they  were  accustomed 
to  make  incursions  into  the  Spanish  territories,  for  the  purpose  of  war- 
ring with  their  own  Indian  enemies  in  that  region.  In  their  return  from 
these  southern  expeditions,  it  was  a  frequent  practice  with  them  to  lurk 
in  the  woods  round  Augustine,  till  they  surprised  some  of  the  Spaniards, 
whom  they  carried  off  as  prisoners  to  their  towns,  and  put  to  death  with 
the  most  barbarous  and  excruciating  tortures.  To  prevent  such  atrocities 
from  being  committed  and  endured  by  human  beings,  the  legislature  of 
South  Carolina  passed  a  law  offering  a  reward  of  five  pounds  for  every 
Spanish  prisoner  whom  the  Indians  should  surrender  alive  and  unhurt  at 
Charleston.  The  Yamassees,  tempted  by  this  reward,  sacrificed  cruelty 
to  avarice,  and  on  various  occasions  dehvered  up  their  Spanish  captives 
to  the  governor  of  South  Carolina.  Charles  Craven,  who  now  held  this 
office,  was  distinguished  alike  by  humanity  and  valor.  He  invariably  sent 
back  the  ransomed  prisoners  to  Augustine,  charging  the  governor  of  this 
settlement  with  the  expenses  of  their  passage  and  the  reward  to  the  Yamas- 
sees. But  this  practice,  while  it  illustrated  English  humanity,  begot  an  in- 
tercourse between  the  Indians  and  their  ancient  enemies,  of  which  the  issue 
was  injurious  in  the  highest  degree  to  the  interests  of  Carolina,  and  not  less 
discreditable  to  Spanish  honor  and  gratitude.  The  Carolinian  traders 
among  the  Yamassees  had  observed  for  some  time  past,  that  the  chiefs 
of  this  tribe  made  unusually  frequent  journeys  to  Augustine,  and  returned 
from  it,  not  with  prisoners,  but  with  presents. 

ade  the  powers  established  by  my  sovereign,  I  acknowledge  myself  alarmed,  which  I  will  in 
no  wise  tolerate  or  endure."  — "I  cannot  but  wonder  at  the  arrogance  and  pride  of  those  who 
do  not  consider  I  am  a  superior  match,  as  being  armed  with  power  from  my  prince,  who  doth 
execution  at  the  utterance  of  a  word,"  &c. 

^  Oldmixon.  Hutchinson.  Trumbull.  Dummer's  Defence^  &-c.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
interesting  information  and  ingenious  argument  in  Dummer's  little  tract.  Belknap.  John 
Wentworth  received  his  commission  in  1717.  "The  celebrated  Mr.  Addison  being  then 
secretary  of  state,  this  commission  is  countersigned  by  a  name  particularly  dear  to  the  friends 
of  liberty  and  literature."     Belknap. 


CHAP.  II.]  THE  YAMASSEE  WAR.  47 

It  was  obvious  that  pacific  relations  were  formed  by  the  Yamassees 
with  their  enemies,  without  any  communication  of  this  important  event  to 
the  governor  of  CaroHna  ;  and  at  length  some  of  the  Indians  were  heard  to 
boast  that  they  had  dined  at  the  table  of  the  governor  of  Augustine,  that 
they  had  washed  his  face,  in  token  of  intimate  friendship,  and  that  they  now 
considered  him  their  king.  As  this  was  an  honorary  tide  which  they 
formerly  ascribed  to  the  governor  of  South  Carolina,  the  transference  of  it 
to  the  commander  of  a  rival  settlement  ought  reasonably  to  have  excited 
more  attention  and  suspicion  than  it  appears  to  have  done.  From  the  jeal- 
ous rivalry  that  subsisted  between  the  two  European  races,  it -was  impossi- 
ble that  the  Indians  should  cleave  to  the  one,  without  falling  off  from  the 
other.  But  the  English,  at  peace  with  the  Spaniards,  and  remembering 
their  recent  claims  on  Spanish  benevolence,  regarded  with  indifference  the 
close  connection  that  was  formed  between  their  rivals  and  an  apostate  ally, 
of  whose  ferocious  and  sanguinary  disposition  they  had  received  number- 
less proofs.  A  short  time  before  the  security  of  the  Carohnians  was  fatally 
dispelled,  a  Scotch  Highlander,  named  Eraser,  who  traded  among  the 
Yamassees,  was  visited  by  Sanute,  one  of  these  people,  with  whom  he  had 
contracted  a  solemn  covenant  of  friendship,  refreshed,  on  various  occa- 
sions, by  mutual  gifts  and  tokens  of  esteem.  To  Eraser's  wife,  a  beautiful 
woman,  whom  Sanute  had  recently  admitted  into  the  covenant  by  the  cere-, 
mony  of  washing  her  face,  he  communicated  the  warning  intelligence  that 
Spain  had  completely  supplanted  England  in  the  friendly  regards  of  the 
Yamassees,  who  now  acknowledged  the  sway  and  the  faith  of  the  governor 
of  Augustine  ;  that  they  had  learned  to  account  the  English  a  race  of  hell- 
doomed  heretics,  and  were  apprehensive  of  sharing  their  spiritual  perdition 
if  they  should  suffer  them  to  live  any  longer  in  the  country  ;  that  the  Span- 
iards had  confederated  with  the  Yamassees,  the  Creeks,  the  Cherokees,  and 
many  other  Indian  nations,  to  wage  a  terrible  war  with  the  colonists  of  Car- 
olina ;  and  that  they  waited  only  the  return  of  the  bloody  stick  ^  from  the 
Creeks  as  the  signal  for  its  commencement.  He  acquitted  himself  of  his 
debt  of  friendship  by  counselling  Eraser  and  his  wife  to  fly  from  the  ap- 
proaching danger  ;  offering  them  the  use  of  his  own  boat  for  this  purpose  ; 
and  withal  assuring  them,  that,  if  they  were  determined  to  remain,  he  himself, 
at  the  approaching  crisis,  would  claim  from  his  countrymen  the  privilege  of 
acting  as  their  executioner,  and  would  despatch  them  with  his  tomahawk, 
in  order  to  prevent  them  from  expiring  in  tortures. 

The  imputation  of  such  designs  to  the  Spaniards  induced  Eraser  at  first 
to  distrust  the  whole  story  ;  but,  infected  at  last  with  the  terrors  that  alarm- 
ed his  wife,  he  collected  his  goods  in  haste,  and  took  shelter  in  Charleston. 
Whether  from  his  doubts,  or  from  the  hurry  of  his  flight,  he  foolishly  or 
selfishly  neglected  to  propagate  the  warning  he  had  himself  received  ;  and 
no  precautions  were  taken  by  his  fellow-traders  to  avoid  or  repel  the  im- 
pending blow.  But  about  a  week  afterwards.  Captain  Nairn,  the  provincial 
agent  for  Indian  affairs,  who  resided  along  with  several  Carolinian  traders 
at  Pocotaligo,  the  largest  town  of  the  Yamassees,  was  startled  by  observing 
an  unusual  gloom  on  the  savage  countenances  of  these  people,  accompanied 
with  a  demeanour  that  indicated  at  once  constraint  and  agitation  of  spirit. 
Foreboding  evil  from  these  moody  symptoms,  Nairn  and  a  deputation  of  the 

'  This  symbol  ought  to  have  the  more  strongly  impressed  Eraser,  from  its  resemblance  to 
the  Highland  ceremonial  of  summoning  clansmen  to  war  by  sending  /he  fiery  cross  from  sta 
lion  to  station. 


48  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VI H. 

traders  repaired  to  the  Indian  chiefs,  and  begged  to  know  the  cause  of 
their  uneasiness  ;  assuring  them,  that,  if  they  had  sustained  injury  from  any 
of  the  people  of  CaroHna,  they  had  only  to  demand,  in  order  to  obtain, 
redress  and  satisfaction.  The  chiefs  replied,  that  they  had  no  complaints 
whatever  to  make,  but  were  busied  in  preparation  for  a  great  hunt  the  next 
morning  ;  and  the  traders,  deceived  by  the  perfidy  of  this  enigmatical  ex- 
pression, retired  at  night  to  their  unguarded  huts,  and  resigned  themselves 
to  a  sleep  from  which  many  of  them  were  never  to  awaken.  The  next 
morning,  at  break  of  day,  the  cries  of  war  resounded  on  all  sides  ;  and 
in  a  few  hours  above  ninety  persons  were  massacred  in  Pocotaligo  and  the 
neighbouring  settlements.  A  captain  of  militia,  escaping  to  Port  Royal, 
communicated  the  alarm  to  this  small  town  ;  and  an  English  vessel  happen- 
ing seasonably  to  enter  the  harbour,  the  inhabitants  rushed  precipitately  on 
board  of  her,  and,  sailing  for  Charleston,  were  narrowly  snatched  from 
destruction.  A  few  other  planters  and  their  families  on  the  island,  not 
having  received  timely  notice  of  the  danger,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  savages. 

While  some  Indian  tribes  were  thus  spreading  havoc  along  the  southern 
frontiers  of  the  province,  numerous  parties  detached  by  other  tribes  were 
penetrating  into  the  settlements  on  the  northern  borders  ;  for  every  savage 
tribe  from  Florida  to  Cape  Fear  had  united  in  the  hostile  confederacy.  The 
safety  of  Charleston  itself  seemed  precarious  ;  and  the  whole  province  was 
desolated  by  the  ravage,  or  agitated  by  the  rumor,  of  war  and  massacre.  In 
the  midst  of  the  general  panic,  and  though  the  muster-roll  of  the  capital 
enumerated,  it  is  said,  little  more  than  twelve  hundred  free  men  fit  to  bear 
arms,  Governor  Craven  resolved  at  once  to  make  head  against  the  enemy. 
He  proclaimed  martial  law  ;  laid  an  embargo  on  all  ships,  to  prevent  the 
transportation  of  aught  that  might  be  subservient  to  the  common  defence  ; 
and  obtained  an  act  of  assembly  empowering  him  to  impress  men,  and  seize 
arms,  ammunition,  and  stores,  wherever  they  could  be  found  ;  to  arm  trusty 
negroes  ;  and  to  do  every  thing  that  might  be  requisite  to  bring  the  struggle 
to  a  speedy  and  successful  issue.  Agents  were  sent  to  England  to  solicit 
assistance  ;  and  bills  were  stamped  for  the  pay  of  the  army  and  other  neces- 
sary expenses.  The  apphcation  to  England  proved  ineffectual  ;  neither  aid 
to  sustain  the  war,  nor  supplies  to  repair  its  ravage,  being  aflbrded  by  the 
selfish  proprietaries  of  Carolina.  Yet,  in  this  hour  of  need,  the  people  were 
not  left  entirely  destitute  of  friendly  support.  North  Carolina  now  showed 
her  willingness  to  repay  the  seasonable  succour  which  she  obtained  three 
years  before  from  her  sister  province,  and  promptly  despatched  a  body  of 
troops  to  her  assistance.  A  liberal  contribution  of  arms  and  ammunition 
was  also  furnished  to  South  Carohna  by  the  States  of  New  England. 

The  Indian  invaders  who  advanced  from  the  northern  quarter  of  the 
province  having  destroyed  a  settlement  about  fifty  miles  from  Charleston, 
Captain  Barker,  with  a  party  of  provincial  cavalry,  was  despatched  to  at- 
tack them.  But,  trusting  to  the  information  of  an  Indian  guide,  who  be- 
trayed him  into  an  ambush  of  the  enemy,  this  officer  was  circumvented 
and  slain  with  several  of  his  men  ;  and  the  rest  were  compelled  to  retreat 
in  confusion.  A  troop  of  four  hundred  Indians  now  penetrated  as  far  as 
Goose  Creek  ;  where  seventy  of  the  colonists  and  forty  negroes  had  sur- 
rounded themselves  with  a  breastwork,  and  seemed  determined  to  maintain 
their  post.  But,  disheartened  by  the  first  attack,  they  rashly  agreed  to  a 
capitulation,  which  the  enemy  readily  tendered,  and  then  violated  without 


CHAP.  II.]        GOOKIN  AND   THE  PENNSYLVANIA  QUAKERS.  J^ 

scruple,  by  the  prompt  assassination  or  lingering  torture  of  all  the  pris- 
oners, whom  their  assurance  of  safety  induced  to  submit.  The  Indians 
now  advanced  still  nearer  to  Charleston  ;  but  their  treachery  and  cruelty 
had  roused  the  energy  of  despair,  and  eradicated  all  notions  of  treaty  or 
surrender ;  and  after  some  sharp  encounter^,  the  invaders  in  this  quarter 
were  finally  repulsed  by  the  provincial  militia  and  their  allies. 

In  the  mean  time  the  Yamassees,  and  the  tribes  united  with  their  forces, 
spread  destruction  thro-ugh  the  parish  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  advanced  as 
far  as  Stono.  Governor  Craven,  dispersing  in  his  march  the  straggling  par- 
ties of  this  wily  foe,  advanced  with  cautious  steps  to  Saltcatchers,  where 
they  had  pitched  their  principal  camp  in  a  situation  which  was  well  adapted 
to  their  peculiar  style  of  warfare,  by  enabling  them  to  shelter  their  troops 
behind  trees  and  bushes.  Here  was  fought  an  obstinate  and  bloody  batde, 
in  which  the  Indians,  animating  their  fury  by  the  terrific  sound  of  the  war- 
whoop,  successively  attacked,  retreated,  and  again  returned  to  the  charge. 
Craven,  undismayed  by  their  ferocious  rage,  and  supported  by  the  steady 
intrepidity  of  his  people,  succeeded  in  totally  vanquishing  their  force  ;  drove 
them  from  their  position,  pursued  them  across  Savannah  River,  and  finally 
expelled  them  from  the  territory  of  South  Carolina.  This  victory  put  an 
end  to  the  war,  which  occasioned  a  vast  destruction  of  property,  and  the 
slaughter  of  at  least  four  hundred  of  the  inhabitants  of  South  Carolina. 
The  Yamassees,  expelled  from  their  own  proper  territories,  retired  to  the 
Spanish  possessions  in  Florida,  where  they  were  received  with  the  strongest 
demonstrations  of  friendship  and  hospitality  ;  which  convinced  the  Carolin- 
ians of  the  accession  of  Spain  to  the  recent  war,  though  they  were  unable 
to  tax  her  with  any  overt  act  of  hostile  interposition.  Two  statutes  w^ere 
subsequently  framed  by  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina,  appropriating  the 
lands  that  were  gained  by  conquest  from  the  Yamassees  to  the  use  of  such 
British  subjects  as  would  adventure  to  occupy  them.  Relying  on  this  as- 
surance, a  troop  of  five  hundred  men  from  Ireland  transported  themselves 
to  Carolina  ;  but  they  had  scarcely  taken  possession  of  the  lands,  when,  to 
their  entire  ruin,  and  w^ith  the  most  audacious  disregard  of  the  provincial 
faith  and  interest,  the  proprietaries  caused  the  whole  district  to  be  surveyed 
and  partitioned  into  domains  reserved  for  their  ow^n  private  advantage.  They 
reaped,  indeed,  no  actual  benefit  from  the  appropriation  of  lands  which  there 
were  no  tenants  to  cultivate  ;  but,  unfortunately,  it  was  the  unoffending 
colonists  who  were  the  chief  sufierers  by  this  act  of  selfish  injustice.  The 
old  settlers,  losing  the  protection  they  had  hoped  to  derive  from  the  new 
comers,  deserted  their  plantations,  and  again  left  the  frontiers  of  the  prov- 
ince exposed  to  the  enemy  ;  while  the  deceived  and  disappointed  Irish  emi- 
grants either  miserably  perished,  or  retired  to  the  northern  colonies. ^ 

Pennsylvania,  meanwhile,  blessed  with  liberty,  prosperity,  and  a  total 
exemption  from  the  flames  of  war,  and  chiefly  colonized  by  a  race  of 
men  distinguished  by  the  sobriety  of  their  manners  and  the  moderation  of 
their  sentiments  and  views,  seemed  to  possess  all  the  elements  of  national 
contentment.  [1716.]  Yet  even  this  fortunate  scene  was  not  entirely  un- 
visited  by  the  bitter  waters  of  strife  and  spleen  ;  and  in  the  present  year 
an  address  to  Governor  Gookin  by  the  assembly,  of  which  a  majority  still 

^  Hewit.  Williamson.  Dummer's  Defence  of  the  New  England  Charters.  Hewit  is  a  most 
perplexing  writer.  A  phrase  of  continual  recurrence  with  him  is  "  about  this  time,"  —  the 
meaning  of  which  he  leaves  to  the  conjecture  of  readers  and  the  laborious  investigation  of 
scholars,  as  he  scarcely  ever  particularizes  a  date. 

VOL.    II.  7  E 


go  HISTORY  OF  NORTh   AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

continued  to  be  Quakers,  after  a  prolix  detail  of  their  petty  grievances, 
concluded  with  the  preposterous  lamentation  that  they  were  debarred  from 
participation  in  the  happiness  which  was  so  plentifully  enjoyed  by  the  other 
American  colonies.  There  was,  indeed,  one  subject  of  just  complaint  which 
the  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania  ^ared  with  their  brethren  in  New  Jersey.  In 
both  these  States,  the  affirmation  of  a  Quaker  had  been  accepted  by  the 
provincial  tribunal  as  equivalent  to  an  oath,  till  the  year  1705,  when  this 
privilege  was  withdrawn  by  Queen  Anne,  and  Quaker  testimony  excluded 
(except  by  inevitable  connivance)  from  the  courts  of  justice,  till  the  year 
1725,  when  the  British  government,  after  numerous  petitions  and  remon- 
strances, consented  to  the  revival  of  the  original  regulation.^  This  serious 
grievance,  however,  produced  no  abatement  of  Quaker  loyalty  to  the  crown, 
which  was  attested  by  frequent  expressions  of  dutiful  homage,  and  particu- 
larly, in  the  present  year,  by  an  address  of  cordial  congratulation  on  the 
suppression  of  "the  unnatural  rebellion"  w^hich,  in  1715,  broke  forth  in 
Scotland  and  the  North  of  England.  But  no  share  of  the  reverence  enter- 
tained for  the  king  was  extended  to  the  provincial  governor  ;  against  whom 
every  cause  of  complaint,  however  trivial  or  inapplicable,  served  to  minister 
occasion  of  ill-humor  and  obloquy.  The  high  repute  of  the  province,  as 
a  scene  of  ease,  abundance,  and  well  rewarded  industry,  had  latterly  at- 
tracted increasing  numbers  of  settlers  who  did  not  belong  to  the  Quaker 
persuasion  ;  some  of  whom  were  persons  of  very  loose  morals,  and  all 
of  whom  were  averse  to  the  policy  by  which  the  Quakers  interwove  their 
own  sectarian  usages  and  principles  into  the  fabric  of  the  general  provincial 
law.  Gookin,  who  was  neither  a  votary  of  the  principles  nor  a  courtier 
of  the  especial  favor  of  the  Quakers,  was  suspected  by  them  of  inclining 
to  their  rivals,  and  favoring,  in  the  distribution  of  office  and  otherwise,  the 
recent  settlers  and  poorer  classes  of  people,  in  preference  to  the  more 
ancient  and  wealthy  Quaker  aristocracy  of  Pennsylvania. 

Numberless  disputes  and  recriminations  occurred  between  the  governor 
and  the  assembly  ;  in  which  he  strongly  denied  the  justice  of  their  suspi- 
cions, and  sharply  reprehended  their  disrespectful  behaviour  to  himself, 
while  they  retorted  upon  him  with  a  ready  flow  of  grave  yet  fretful  rhetoric, 
and  indefatigable  reiteration.  One  of  their  most  important  disputes  was  oc- 
casioned by  a  riotous  assemblage  of  people  at  Philadelphia,  who  interposed 
to  prevent  the  trial  of  a  clergyman  of  the  Episcopal  persuasion  by  the 
Quaker  laws  and  judges,  on  a  charge  of  fornication.  The  rioters  insisted 
that  the  Quakers  had  no  right  to  convert  a  charge,  which,  by  the  laws 
of  the  parent  state,  was  reserved  exclusively  for  ecclesiastical  inquiry  and 
censure,  into  a  secular  felony  or  misdemeanour,  cognizable  by  courts  of 
common  law  ;  and  though  the  governor  asserted  the  claims  of  the  provincial 
jurisprudence,  and  suppressed  the  tumult,  he  was  rated  by  the  assembly  for 
its  occurrence  with  as  much  austerity  and  perseverance  of  rebuke  as  if  he 
himself  had  been  its  open  ringleader.  The  governor  solemnly  and  indig- 
nantly repelled  these  insinuations  ;  and  the  Quakers  repeated  them  with 
their  usual  pertinacity  and  prolixity.  In  the  commencement  of  his  adminis- 
tration, Gookin  heard  himself  extolled  by  this  people,  and  William  Penn 
decried  by  them  as  an  unjust,  ambitious,  and  illiberal  man.  But  now  he 
was  assured  by  the  assembly  that  all  their  grievances  were  occasioned  by  the> 
eclipse  of  the  proprietary's  understanding,  which  abandoned  the  governor, 

'  The  affirmation  of  Quakers  had  been  previously'  declared  admissible  in  Britain,  in  all 
civil  suits,  by  an  act  of  parliament  in  1714. 


CHAP.  II.]  SIR  WILLIAM  KEITH'S  ADxMINISTRATIONc  51 

whom  he  would  have  wisely  controlled,  to  the  pernicious  counsels  of  evil 
men.  Shortly  after  this  disagreeable  communication,  Gookin,  in  a  brief 
address  to  the  assembly,  apprized  them  that  he  was  now  to  take  his  last  leave 
of  them,  as  he  was  assured  that  he  would  presently  be  superseded  in  his 
office  ;  he  requested  them  to  consider  the  expensive  voyage  that  awaited 
him  ;  and  without  farther  reflection  on  their  conduct,  declared  that  the  re- 
membrance of  the  prospects  he  had  sacrificed  in  the  hope  of  serving  the 
proprietary  and  the  people  of  Pennsylvania,  the  disappointments  he  had 
sustained,  and  the  uncertainty  of  obtaining  in  England  any  provision  for  his 
old  age,  altogether  weighed  so  heavily  on  his  spirits,  that  he  must  pray 
the  assembly  to  excuse  him  for  the  fewness  of  his  words-.  Though  possessed 
with  a  spirit  of  peevish,  pragmatical  disputation  and  self-conceit,  the  assem- 
bly was  not  entirely  divested  of  a  sense  of  justice  even  towards  the  ob- 
jects of  its  jealousy  ;  and  this  touching  address  elicited  an  immediate  vote 
of  two  hundred  pounds  to  the  governor,  to  defray  the  expenses  of  his  home- 
ward voyage. 

Gookin  was  succeeded  in  the  government  of  Pennsylvania  by  Sir  William 
Keith  [1717],  formerly  surveyor-general  of  the  customs  in  America  ;  a  man 
of  insinuating  .address  ;  a  shrewd,  plausible,  supple,  and  unprincipled  adven- 
turer ;  devoid  of  honor  and  benevolence  ;  governed  entirely  by  mean  vanity 
and  selfish  interest.  His  political  career  presents  a  moral  picture  not  un- 
worthy of  attention.  Owing  his  appointment  to  the  crown,  and  intrusted 
with  the  protection  of  the  interest  of  the  proprietary,  he  began  by  devoting 
himself  skilfully,  but  unreservedly,  to  the  pleasure  of  the  most  powerful 
party  in  the  province  ;  and  by  his  blandishments  and  dexterity  soon  gained 
in  a  very  high  degree  the  favor  and  good-will  of  the  Pennsylvanian  Qua- 
kers. In  the  prosecution  of  this  policy,  and  aided  by  his  natural  sagacity, 
he  promoted  many  useful  measures,  and  became  a  popular  governor.  But 
he  sacrificed  without  scruple  the  interest  of  the  proprietary  ;  and  when,  by 
the  death  of  William  Penn,  this  interest  devolved  to  persons  who  were 
capable  of  discerning  and  asserting  it,  the  wishes  and  orders  of  the  pro- 
prietary family  experienced  equal  neglect  from  the  governor.  Keith,  per- 
ceiving that  the  Pennsylvanian  Quakers  were  bent  on  promoting  the  absolute 
authority  of  their  provincial  assembly,  lent  himself  cordially  to  their  de- 
sign ;  and  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  widow  and  children  of 
Penn,  who  insisted  that  he  was  bound  to  conform  his  conduct  to  the  opin- 
ion of  the  provincial  counsellors  whom  they  appointed,  he  continued  to  be 
guided  solely  by  the  wishes  and  views  of  the  majority  of  the  assembly, 
and  treated  the  injunctions  of  the  council  with  the  most  open  disregard, 
whenever  they  dissented  from  this  standard  of  his  pohcy.  He  occupied 
the  chair  of  government  for  nine  years  ;  and  when  at  length  he  was  dis- 
placed by  the  proprietaries,  the  same  cause  that  produced  this  mark  of 
their  displeasure  procured  him  a  seat  and  the  possession  of  considerable 
influence  in  the  assembly.  Here  he  indulged  the  hope  of  being  again  ele- 
vated to  honor  and  distinction  by  the  subsidiary  rage  of  party  zeal,  which  he 
forthwith  essayed  to  enkindle  by  intrigues  that  caused  the  second  act  of  this 
political  drama  to  prove  shorter  than  the  first,  and  quickly  rendered  him 
as  odious  to  the  people  as  he  had  already  become  to  the  proprietaries.  For- 
saken, then,  by  every  provincial  party  and  authority,  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land ;  and,  as  a  last  resource,  betook  himself  to  the  favor  of  the  crown, 
which  he   studiously  cultivated  by  suggesting  and  advocating  measures  for 


52  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VHL 

the  advancement  of  royal  prerogative  in  the  colonies.  He  recommended, 
in  particular,  the  immediate  taxation  of  America  by  the  British  parliament. 
But  his  counsels  obtained  no  contemporary  notice  ;  his  servility  was  per- 
mitted to  be  its  own  sole  reward  ;  and  he  closed  his  hfe  at  London  in 
poverty,  obscurity,  and  contempt.^ 

One  of  the  first  transactions  that  signalized  the  administration  of  Gov- 
ernor ^  Keith  was  suggested  by  the  numerous  influx  of  strangers  into  the 
province.  Perceiving  that  the  wealthier  class  of  the  inhabitants  were  less 
desirous  of  increasing  the  strength  and  population  of  Pennsylvania  than 
of  preserving  the  Quaker  ascendency,  which  was  endangered  by  the  increas- 
ing resort  of  foreigners  and  necessitous  persons  of  a  different  religious  per- 
suasion, he  proposed  to  the  assembly  that  some  legislative  ordinance  should 
be  enacted  for  obstructing  such  unhmited  infusion  of  heterogeneous  senti- 
ments and  manners.  This  illiberal  counsel,  clothed  with  the  specious  pre- 
text of  danger  to  the  British  dominion,  and  to  the  stability  of  peace  with 
the  Indians,  from  the  number  of  German  emigrants  ^  who  resorted  to  Penn- 
sylvania, proved  exceedingly  palatable  to  the  assembly,  who  urged  the  gov- 
ernor to  adopt  or  suggest  some  measure  for  carrying  his  judicious  policy 
into  immediate  effect.  But  Keith,  having  gained  his  end  by  demonstrating 
a  spirit  so  agreeable  to  the  views  of  a  powerful  party  which  he  studied  to 
please,  was  too  prudent  to  proceed  farther  in  a  matter  of  such  importance, 
without  consulting  the  British  government  ;  and  apprising  the  assembly 
that  he  had  besought  the  king's  ministers  to  interpose  in  the  defence  of  the 
province  against  an  inundation  of  foreigners,  he  gratified  them  with  this  addi- 
tional proof  of  zeal,  and  with  the  hope  that  they  might  obtain  the  benefit 
they  desired,  without  being  compelled  themselves  to  undertake  the  ungra- 
cious measure  which  they  contemplated.  But  the  British  government 
would  lend  no  encouragement  to  Keith's  propositions  ;  and  the  Pennsylva- 
nian  Quakers  were  not  yet  prepared  to  incur  the  odium  of  closing  the  re- 
sources of  their  large  vacant  territories  against  destitute  strangers,  and  fugi- 
tives from  misery  and  persecution. 

Keith's  counsel,  however,  was  not  forgotten  ;  and  we  shall  find  that  it 
was  actually  carried  into  effect  a  few  years  after  he  was  displaced  from  the 
government.  He  continued  meanwhile  to  gratify  the  assembly  by  an  entire 
devotion  to  its  wishes  ;  restored  to  the  Quakers  (of  whom  many  have  al- 
ways demonstrated  a  far  stricter  fidelity  to  the  manners  than  to  the  princi- 
ples of  their  sectarian  society)  their  interrupted  privilege  of  wearing  their 
hats  in  courts  of  justice  ;  and  extolled  with  the  warmest  praise  their  "  du- 
tiful loyalty  and  amiable  spirit  with  respect  to  government."  The  only  in- 
stance in  which  he  dissented  from  the  opinion  of  the  prevailing  party  in  the 
province  was  in  the  support  he  gave  to  the  proposition  of  a  paper  cur- 
rency, which  was  eagerly  desired  by  the  poorer  and  more  enterprising  classes 
of  the  inhabitants  ;  and  which,  though  carried  into  effect,  was  restricted 
within  very  narrow  limits  by  the  apprehensive  caution  of  the  Quakers  and 
other  wealthy  planters.  In  renewing  the  provincial  treaties  with  the  Indians, 
he  commended  to  them  the  philanthropy  of  their  old  friend,  William  Penn, 

1  He  died  in  1749.  His  scheme  for  taxing  America  was  published  in  a  periodical  work, 
entitled  The  Citizen.  Some  account  of  it  is  preserved  in  another  periodical  work,  which, 
though  replete  with  curious  matter,  is  now  almost  entirely  forgotten,  —  The  Folit.ical  Register 
for  1767.     The  original  draught  of  the  scheme  is  published  in  Burk's  Histonj  of  Virginia. 

2  Proud,  the  Quaker  historian,  suggests,  apologetically,  that  the  persecuted  Mennonists  of 
Germany  were  at  this  time  resorting  in  considerable  numbers  to  Pennsylvania. 


CHAP.  II.]  PIRACY  ON  THE  AMERICAN  COASTS.  53 

and  the  pacific  principles  of  Quakerism,  to  which  he  imputed  the  early 
advancement  of  Pennsylvania  to  a  wealthy  and  powerful  estate  ;  but  he  en- 
forced his  recommendation  of  their  continued  friendship  with  the  colonists, 
by  assuring  them  that  he  could  bring  several  thousands  of  armed  men  into 
the  field  for  the  defence  of  his  people  and  their  Indian  allies.  Some 
manifestation  was  made  of  the  repugnance  of  Quaker  principles  to  negro 
slavery  by  an  act  of  assembly  [1722]  which  imposed  a  duty  on  the  importa- 
tion of  negroes  into  the  province.  Exempted  now  from  political  broils,  and 
continuing  happily  unacquainted  with  the  rage  and  desolation  of  war,  Penn- 
sylvania enjoyed  a  rapid  increase  of  agricultural  improvement,  commercial 
enterprise,  and  the  wealth  and  numbers  of  her  people.  But  amidst  this 
flourishing  scene,  the  controversial  leaven  of  human  nature  disclosed  its 
virulence  in  a  great  increase  of  forensic  litigation  ;  a  civil  strife  prevailed, 
less  fatal,  but  more  inglorious,  than  martial  broil  ;  and  notwithstanding  the 
institution  of  Peacemakers^^  and  the  solemn  and  repeated  remonstrances  of 
the  more  pious  members  of  the  Quaker  society,  the  surprising  number  of 
lawsuits,  and  the  unchristian  keenness  and  pertinacity  with  which  vexatious 
claims  and  frivolous  disagreements  were  pursued  and  prolonged,  continued 
to  afford  a  theme  of  sincere  regret  and  benevolent  counsel  to  all  wise  and 
good  men.^ 

The  situation  of  Carolina  at  this  time  exhibited  a  deplorable  contrast  to 
the  prosperous  condition  of  Pennsylvania.  Recently  afflicted  with  the  scourge 
of  war,  embarrassed  by  their  pubHc  debt,  yet  alarmed  with  the  rumors  of 
farther  hostile  designs  of  the  Spaniards  and  the  Indians,  and  filled  with  aver- 
sion and  contempt  for  the  selfish  and  oppressive  proprietaries  who  claimed 
the  sovereignty  of  the  province,  the  Carolinians  had  now  to  endure  a  heavy 
accession  to  dieir  calamities  from  the  prevalence  of  piracy  on  their  coasts. 
The  commercial  restrictions  imposed  by  Great  Britain  gave  rise  to  a  great 
deal  of  smuggling  in  almost  all  the  American  colonies  ;  and,  under  color 
of  aiding  in  the  evasion  of  those  obnoxious  restrictions,  pirates  were  able, 
not  unfrequently,  to  induce  m.any  of  the  colonists  to  trafiic  with  them  in  their 
nefarious  acquisitions.  Some  of  the  provincial  smugglers,  too,  became  pi- 
rates. Exasperated  by  seizures  of  their  vessels  and  cargoes,  and  by  the 
persuasion  they  entertained,  in  common  with  many  of  their  countrymen,  of 
the  injustice  of  British  pohcy,  — hardened  by  the  disgrace  of  detected  fraud, 
and  depraved  by  a  life  of  lawless  gambling  and  danger,  —  a  slight  exaggera- 
tion, rather  than  a  startling  change,  of  their  habits  was  sufficient  to  transport 
them  from  the  practice  of  illicit  trade  to  the  guilt  of  piratical  depredation. 
These  gangs  of  naval  robbers  were  likewise  frequently  recruited  by  British 
sailors,  who  had  been  trained  to  ferocity  and  injustice  by  the  legalized  piracy 
of  the  slave-trade.  Undeterred  by  the  fate  of  Kidd,  Captain  Quelch,  the 
commander  of  a  brigantine  which  had  committed  numerous  piracies,  ven- 
tured to  take  shelter,  with  his  crew,  in  Massachusetts,  in  the  year  1704.  A 
discovery  soon  took  place  of  their  guilty  practices  ;  and  having  been  brought 
to  trial  at  Boston,  Quelch  and  six  of  his  accomplices  died  by  the  hands  of 
the  executioner.  In  the  year  1717,  several  vessels  were  captured  on  the 
coast  of  New  England  by  Captain  Bellamy,  a  noted  pirate,  who  commanded 
a  vessel  carrying  twenty-three  guns,  and  a  crew  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  men. 
This  vessel  being  wrecked  shortly  after  on  Cape  Cod,  the  captain  perished 
in  the  waves  with  the  whole  of  his  naval  banditti,  except  six,  who,  gaining 
^See  Book  VII.,  Chap.  U.^anle.  *  Oldmixon.     Proud. 


£ 


# 


54  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

the  shore,  were  tried  and  executed  at  Boston.  During  the  first  presidency 
of  Nicholson,  a  piratical  band  was  captured  on  the  coast  of  Virginia  ;  and 
during  the  presidency  of  Spottiswoode,  a  troop  of  pirates  were  detected,  in 
the  disguise  of  merchants,  in  the  same  province,  and  four  of  them  were  ex- 
ecuted and  hung  in  chains.  In  consequence  of  repeated  complaints,  from 
the  British  merchants  trading  to  the  West  Indies  and  America,  of  the  dep- 
redations of  these  freebooters,  who  had  formed  their  principal  station  and  a 
regular  settlement  in  the  island  of  New  Providence,  George  the  First  issued 
a  proclamation,  offering  pardon  to  all  pirates  who  should  surrender  to  any 
of  his  colonial  governors  within  twelve  months,  and,  at  the  same  time,  de- 
spatched a  few  ships  of  war,  under  Captain  Woods  Rogers,  who,  repairing 
to  New  Providence,  assumed  possession  of  this  insular  den  of  robbers.  Al- 
most all  the  pirates,  who  were  stationed  there  at  the  time,  took  the  benefit 
of  the  royal  proclamation,  and  desisted  from  their  lawless  pursuits.^  [1718.] 

None  of  the  colonies  was  more  harassed  by  the  resort  and  the  depreda- 
tions of  pirates  than  Carolina  ;  and  here,  notwithstanding  the  proclamation 
of  the  king  and  the  operations  at  New  Providence,  the  evil  continued  to  pre- 
vail with  undiminished  extent  and  mahgnity.  Charles  Craven,  who,  next  to 
Archdale,  was  the  most  respectable  and  popular  governor  whom  the  Caro- 
linians ever  yet  obeyed,  had  recently  been  succeeded  in  the  presidency  of 
South  Carolina  by  Robert  Johnson,  the  son  of  a  previous  governor.  Sir  Na- 
thaniel Johnson.  The  new  governor  was  a  man  whose  wisdom,  integrity, 
and  moderation  might  have  rendered  the  people  contented  and  happy  ;  but 
he  was  fettered  by  instructions  from  the  proprietaries  that  provoked  univer- 
sal impatience  and  disaffection.  Yet  the  people  were  discriminating  enough 
to  acknowledge  Johnson's  personal  claims  on  their  respect :  and  the  vigor 
and  courage  he  exerted  for  the  extirpation  of  piracy  gained  him  a  great 
accession  of  popularity.  Steed  Bonnet  and  Richard  Worley,  two  pirate 
chiefs  who  had  fled  from  New  Providence  at  the  approach  of  Woods  Rog- 
ers, took  possession,  with  their  vessels,  of  the  mouth  of  Cape  Fear  River, 
where  they  again  s, -tempted  to  form  a  stronghold  of  piracy,  and  kept  all  the 
adjacent  coast  in  terror.  The  governor  with  one  vessel,  and  Captain  Rhett 
with  another,  sailed  Irom  Charleston  against  these  marauders  ;  and,  attacking 
them  with  soiperior  bravery  and  skill,  compelled  them,  after  a  severe  engage- 
ment, to  surrender.  Steed  Bonnet,  who  was  a  man  of  letters,  and  had  held 
the  rank  of  major  in  the  British  army,  together  with  forty-one  of  his  ac- 
complices, was  executed  .at  Charleston.  But  piracy  prevailed  still  more 
extensively  on  the  coast  of  North  Carolina  ;  and  this  region  had  been  for 
some  time  the  haunt  of  the  most  desperate  adventurer  of  the  age,  in  piratical 
enterprise,  and  in  every  kindred  crime. 

John  Theach  was  the  name  of  this  barbarous  miscreant  ;  but  he  was 
more  commonly  designated  by  his  favorite  appellation  of  Blackbeard^  de- 
rived from  his  attempt  to  heighten  the  ferocious  aspect  of  his  countenance, 
by  suffering  a  beard  of  unusually  dark  hue  to  grow  to  an  immoderate  length, 
and  adjusting  it  with  elaborate  care  in  such  an  inhuman  disposition  as  was  cal- 
culated to  excite  surprise,  aversion,  and  horror.  He  had  once  been  ac- 
knowledged supreme  commander  of  the  banded  pirates  at  New  Providence  ; 
but  for  some  reason  forsook  that  preeminence,  and,  confining  himself  to  the 
sway  of  a  single  crew,  preferred  to  retire  to  the  mouth  of  Pamlico  River,  in 
North  Carohna,  whenever  he  desired  to  refit  his  vessel  or  refresh  himself  on 
*  Oldmixon.     Hutchinson.     Universal  History.     Holmes.     Howell's  State  Trials. 


CHAP.  II.]  THEACH,  OR  BLACKBEARD,  THE  PIRATE.  55- 

shore.  In  battle,  he  has  been  represented  with  the  look  and  demeanour 
of  a  fury,  carrying  three  brace  of  pistols  in  holsters  slung  over  his  shoulders, 
and  lighted  matches  under  his  hat,  protruding  over  his  ears.  The  authority 
and  admiration  which  the  pirate  chiefs  enjoyed  among  their  fellows  was 
proportioned  to  the  audacity  and  extravagance  of  their  outrages  on  humani- 
ty ;  and  none  in  this  respect  ever  challenged  a  rivalship  with  Theach.  The 
force  of  his  pretensions  may  be  conceived  from  the  character  of  his  jests 
and  the  style  of  his  convivial  humor.  Having  frequently  undertaken  to 
personify  a  demon  for  the  entertainment  of  his  followers,  he  proposed  on 
one  occasion  to  gratify  them  still  further  by  an  anticipated  representation 
of  hell  ;  and  in  this  attempt  he  nearly  stifled  the  whole  crew  with  the 
fumes  of  brimstone  under  the  hatches  of  his  vessel.  In  one  of  his  ecsta- 
sies, whilst  heated  with  liquor,  and  sitting  in  his  cabin,  he  took  a  pistol  in 
each  hand,  and,  cocking  them  under  the  table,  blew  out  the  lights,  and 
then  with  crossed  hands  fired  on  each  side  at  his  companions,  one  of  whom 
received  a  shot  that  maimed  him  for  hfe.  He  kept  fourteen  women  whom 
he  called  his  wives,  and  who  were  alternately  the  objects  of  his  dalliance  and 
the  victims  of  his  cruelty. 

The  county  of  Bath,  adjacent  to  the  scene  of  his  retirement  in  Pamhco 
River,  was  thinly  peopled  ;  and  Theach,  protected  by  a  strong  guard,  re- 
paired frequently  on  shore,  and  visited  some  of  the  inhabitants  who  did  not 
disdain  to  associate  with  such  a  monster,  or  who  dreaded  to  provoke  his 
vengeance  by  rejecting  his  advances.  But  his  chief  security  was  derived 
from  the  profligacy  of  Charles  Eden,  the  governor,  and  Tobias  Knight,  the 
secretary,  of  the  province,  who  were  corrupted  by  the  pirate's  gold,  and 
consented  to  protect  him  in  return  for  a  share  of  it.  The  notoriety  of  this 
league  between  the  principal  officers  of  the  proprietary  government  and  the 
most  infamous  ruffian  of  the  age  discouraged  and  disgusted  every  honest 
man  in  North  Carolina,  relaxed  the  bonds  of  civil  government,  and  promoted 
a  general  depravation  of  manners.  Enriched  with  his  guilty  spoil,  and  ap- 
prized of  the  operations  of  Woods  Rogers  at  New  Providence,  Theach 
judged  it  expedient  to  secure  an  indemnity  for  the  past,  by  accepting  the 
benefit  of  the  king's  proclamation  ;  and  for  this  purpose  surrendered  himself 
with  twenty  of  his  men  to  his  patron.  Governor  Eden,  who  administered 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  wretches  by  whom  oaths  were  habitually  employed 
as  the  instruments  of  fraud,  the  expressions  of  rage  and  fury,  and  the  con- 
comitants of  rapine  and  bloodshed.  A  few  of  the  pirates  betook  them- 
selves to  honest  pursuits  ;  while  the  greater  number,  still  at  war  with  human 
welfare,  insulted  and  contaminated,  by  the  spectacle  of  their  wealthy  impu- 
nity and  the  example  of  their  vices,  the  society  which  they  had  plundered 
by  their  maritime  robberies. 

But  it  was  impossible  for  a  man  like  Theach,  whose  mind  was  loaded 
with  such  a  weight  of  dark  and  horrible  remembrance,  to  exist  without 
madness  or  compunction  in  a  state  that  admitted  even  the  shortest  inter- 
vals of  calm  reflection  ;  and  seeking  a  substitute  for  the  vehement  inter- 
est of  battle,  and  a  refuge  from  the  torment  of  his  conscience,  in  the  excite- 
ment of  gambling  and  the  stupefaction  of  debauchery,  he  soon  dissipated  his 
riches  and  w^as  reduced  to  want.  Without  a  moment's  scruple,  he  deter- 
mined on  a  return  to  his  former  occupation  ;  and  having  enlisted  a  suitable 
crew,  and  fitted  out  a  sloop  which  he  entered  at  the  custom-house  as  a 
common  trader,  he  embarked,  as  he  said,  for  a  commercial  adventure.     In 


56  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

a  few  weeks  he  returned  to  North  Carolina,  bringing  with  him  a  French 
ship  in  a  state  of  perfect  soundness  and  with  a  valuable  cargo,  which  he 
deposed  on  oath  that  he  had  found  deserted  at  sea  ;  —  a  statement  which 
Eden  and  Knight  accepted  without  hesitation.  But  it  obtained  credit  from 
no  body  else  ;  and  some  of  the  Carolinians  who  had  formerly  suffered  from 
Theach's  depredations,  instead  of  vainly  invoking  the  justice  of  a  governor 
w^ho  openly  connived  at  his  villany,  despatched  information  of  this  occur- 
rence to  the  government  of  Virginia.  Colonel  Spottiswoode  and  the  Vir- 
ginian assembly  straightway  proclaimed  a  large  reward  for  the  apprehension 
of  the  pirate  ;  and  Maynard,  the  heutenant  of  a  ship  of  war  which  was 
stationed  in  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake,  collecting  a  chosen  crew  in  two  small 
vessels,  set  sail  in  quest  of  Theach,  with  instructions  to  hunt  down  and 
destroy  this  plague  and  disgrace  of  humanity,  w^herever  he  could  be  found. 
Approaching  Pamlico  Sound  in  the  evening,  Maynard  descried  the  pirate 
at  a  distance,  watching  for  prey.  [Novembers] ,  1718.]  Theach,  surprised 
by  the  sudden  appearance  of  an  enemy,  but  determined  to  conquer  or  die, 
prepared  his  vessel  over  night  for  action,  and  then,  sitting  down  to  his  bot- 
tle, proceeded  to  stimulate  his  spirits  to  that  pitch  of  frenzy  in  which  he  had 
often  passed  victorious  through  a  whirlwind  of  danger  and  crime.  From  the 
difficult  navigation  of  the  inlet  through  which  the  assailants  had  to  penetrate 
in  order  to  approach  him,  and  from  his  own  superior  acquaintance  with  the 
soundings  of  the  coast,  Theach  was  able  next  day  to  manoeuvre  for  a  while 
with  advantage,  and  maintain  a  running  fight.  At  length,  however,  a  close 
encounter  ensued  ;  in  which,  after  great  slaughter  on  both  sides,  the  steady, 
deliberate  valor  of  Maynard  and  his  crew  prevailed  over  the  rage  and  des- 
peration of  the  pirates.  Such  is  generally  the  result  of  contests  in  which 
the  courage  of  the  one  party  is  supported  by  sentiments  of  justice,  honor, 
and  duty,  while  the  spirit  of  the  other  is  corrupted  by  conscious  wrong 
and  divided  by  ignoble  and  bewildering  impressions  of  disgrace  and  shame. 
Foreboding  defeat,  Theach  had  posted  one  of  his  followers  with  a  lighted 
match  over  his  powder  magazine  ;  that,  in  the  last  extremity,  he  might 
defraud  human  justice  of  a  part  of  its  retributive  triumph.  But  some  acci- 
dent or  mistake  prevented  the  execution  of  this  act  of  despair.  Theach, 
himself,  surrounded  by  slaughtered  foes  and  followers,  and  bleeding  from 
numerous  wounds,  in  the  act  of  stepping  back  to  cock  a  pistol,  fainted  from 
loss  of  blood,  and  expired  on  the  spot.  The  few  survivors  of  the  piratical 
crew  threw  down  their  arms,  and,  suing  for  life,  were  spared  from  the 
sword,  and  delivered  over  to  a  more  suitable  death. ^  Though  piracy  sus- 
tained an  important  check  from  the  various  operations  to  which  we  have 
adverted,  it  still  continued  to  linger  in  the  American  seas  ;  and  about  five 
years  after  this  period,  no  fewer  than  twenty-six  pirates  were  executed  at 
the  same  time  by  the  sentence  of  an  admiralty  court  in  Rhode  Island.'^ 

The  extirpation  of  the  pirates  who  had  infested  the  coasts  of  Carolina, 
though  it  delivered  the  inhabitants  from  a  grievous  calamity,  nowise  tended 
to  mitigate  the  discontent  which  the  conduct  of  their  proprietary  sovereigns 
had  provoked.     In  the  southern  province,  the  people  subdued  the  pirates 

'  Oldmixon.  Wynne.  Hewit.  Williamson.  M'Kinnen's  Tour  through  the  British  West 
Indies.  Howell's  State  Trials.  One  of  the  earliest  literary  compositions  of  Dr.  Franklin  (at 
this  time  apprentice  to  a  printer  in  Massachusetts)  was  a  ballad  on  the  death  of  the  pirate 
Theach,  which  was  sung  through  the  streets  of  Boston.     Franklin's  Memoirs. 

^  Oldmixon.  Holmes.  Some  of  the  pirates  executed  on  this  last  occasion  were  natives  of 
Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  New  York,  and  Virginia. 


CHAP.  II.]  CHIEF- JUSTICE  TROTT.  57 

and  defended  themselves  against  the  Spaniards  and  the  Indians  by  their  own 
unassisted  exertions  ;  and  in  the  northern  province,  piracy  had  been  abetted 
by  the  unprincipled  venahty  of  the  proprietary  officers.  Yet  it  was  in  South 
Carolina  that  impatience  and  disaffection  most  strongly  and  generally  pre- 
vailed. To  this,  as  the  wealthiest  of  the  two  provinces,  the  proprietaries 
devoted  the  largest  share  of  their  attention  ;  and  their  policy  of  late  years 
was  increasingly  offensive  to  the  people.  They  not  only  repealed  some 
useful  and  important  laws  which  had  been  ratified  by  their  own  provincial 
deputies  and  suffered  for  a  while  to  endure,  but  latterly  commanded  the  gov- 
ernor to  give  assent  to  no  law  whatever  till  after  a  draught  of  it  had  been 
submitted  to  themselves  in  England  and  sanctioned  by  their  express  ap- 
probation. Among  other  measures  which  the  colonists  were  desirous  of 
adopting  was  one  intended  to  counteract  the  inconvenience  arising  from  the 
scarcity  of  money  occasioned  by  the  late  wars,  to  the  expenses  of  which  the 
proprietaries  had  contributed  nothing,  though  they  owed  the  preservation  of 
their  large  estates  to  the  repulse  of  the  enemy.  The  assembly  proposed  to 
appreciate  the  exchangeable  value  of  country  commodities,  and  declare  them, 
at  such  estimated  price,  a  legal  tender  for  the  payment  of  all  debts.  But 
this  was  firmly  resisted  by  the  proprietaries.  Instead  of  demonstrating  a 
liberal  confidence  in  the  people,  they  sought  to  divide  them  by  party  spirit, 
and  manage  them  by  corruption  and  intrigue. 

Of  the  agents  whom  they  employed  for  this  purpose  the  most  notable 
was  Nicholas  Trott,  a  man  whose  talents,  information,  and  apparent  zeal 
for  provincial  liberty  had  gained  him  a  high  consideration  with  his  fellow- 
colonists  of  South  Carolina.  Finding  Trott  willing  to  exchange  honor  for 
profit,  the  proprietaries  appointed  him  chief  justice  of  the  province,  and 
added  to  this  promotion  various  other  offices  of  power  and  emolument. 
In  return  for  their  favors,  he  traduced  to  them  the  people  whose  interests 
he  had  deserted,  encouraged  their  most  unjust  pretensions,  and  reinforced 
by  his  counsel  their  objections  to  every  liberal  and  popular  design.  Univer- 
sal disgust  attended  the  detection  of  Trott's  perfidious  intrigues  ;  and  the 
proprietaries  gained  nothing  from  their  connection  with  him  but  a  copious 
supply  of  pernicious  counsel,  and  a  just  share  of  the  detestation  with 
which  his  apostasy  was  regarded.  In  addition  to  his  other  demerits,  Trott, 
who  had  now  contracted  an  insatiable  appetite  for  money,  was  guilty  of 
gross  partiality  and  corruption  in  the  discharge  of  his  judicial  functions. 
The  assembly  proposed  to  impeach  him  for  this  offence  ;  but  he  defied  their 
resentment,  and,  relying  on  his  commission  from  the  proprietaries,  protested 
that  he  was  answerable  to  them  alone  for  the  manner  in  which  he  dis- 
charged the  trust  conferred  by  it.  Governor  Johnson  and  a  majority  of 
the  council  united  with  the  assembly  in  strongly  reprobating  the  judicial 
malversation  of  Trott,  but  lamented  their  inabihty  to  suspend  his  functions. 
They  offered,  however,  to  join  with  the  assembly  in  demanding  redress  in 
a  competent  form  ;  and  a  commissioner  was  accordingly  deputed  from  the 
province  to  England,  to  solicit  from  the  proprietaries  the  removal  of  their 
chief  justice,  and  a  remission  or  modification  of  the  illiberal  instructions 
which  had  been  lately  communicated  to  the  governor.  On  the  arrival  of 
the  commissioner  at  London  [1719 1],  he  found  that  Lord  Carteret,  the 

'  Londonderry,  in  New  Hampshire,  was  colonized  this  year  by  about  a  hundred  families 

of  emigrants  from  Ulster,  in  Ireland.     They  were  the  descendants  of  Scotch  Presbyterians, 

who  were  induced,  in  the  reign  of  James  the  First,  to  settle   in  Ireland ;  and,  sharing  the 

sufferings  of  that  unhappy  country  in  the  reigns  of  Charles  the  First  and  James  the  Second, 

VOL.    II.  8 


58  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VHI. 

palatine  of  the  province,  was  absent  as  the  an'ibassador  of  Great  Britain 
at  the  court  of  Sweden  ;  and  after  an  attendance  of  three  months  on  the 
other  proprietaries,  he  was  at  last  informed  by  them  that  they  had  ascer- 
tained from  Trott's  letters  that  the  complaints  against  him  originated  solely 
in  a  factious  opposition  to  the  proprietary  government ;  and  that,  confiding 
in  the  fidelity  of  their  minister  and  the  wisdom  of  their  own  policy,  they 
would  neither  displace  the  one  nor  retract  the  other.  They  signified  in 
haughty  strains  to  the  governor,  the  council,  and  the  assembly,  that  the  pro- 
prietaries had  received  their  disloyal  and  presumptuous  application  with  the 
highest  displeasure  and  surprise.  In  farther  testimony  of  these  sentiments, 
they  commanded  the  governor  to  displace  all  the  counsellors  who  had  united 
with  him  and  the  assembly  in  promoting  the  late  deputation,  and  to  fill  the 
vacated  offices  with  certain  individuals  whom  they  particularized,  and  who 
had  been  gained  by  Trott,  and  recommended  by  him  to  their  favor.  On 
receiving  this  communication,  Johnson  plainly  foresaw,  from  the  temper  of 
the  people,  that  a  social  convulsion  would  ensue  ;  but,  true  to  imagined 
duty,  he  shrunk  not  from  executing  his  orders. 

About  this  time  a  rupture  having  taken  place  between  the  courts  of 
Great  Britain  and  Spain,  a  project  of  invading  South  Carolina  and  the  island 
of  New  Providence  was  formed  at  Havana,  the  capital  of  the  Spanish 
settlements  in  the  island  of  Cuba,  and  an  armament  was  collected  there  for 
the  expedition.  Johnson,  apprized  of  the  danger,  summoned  the  provincial 
assernbly  to  assist  him  in  putting  their  country  in  a  posture  of  defence. 
This  requisition  brought  the  dissensions  between  the  proprietary  government 
and  the  people  to  a  crisis.  The  assembly  refused  to  bestow  the  smallest 
pittance  of  the  public  money  ;  and  their  resolution,  far  from  being  weakened, 
was  confirmed  and  precipitated  by  the  officious  interposition  of  the  chief 
justice  in  support  of  the  governor's  demand.  But,  though  determined  no 
longer  to  spend  their  resources  in  defence  of  the  proprietary  system,  it  was 
not  their  intention  to  leave  the  colony  a  defenceless  prey  to  the  Spaniards. 
An  association  was  promptly  formed  by  them  for  uniting  the  whole  provincial 
population  in  opposition  at  once  to  the  foreign  enemy  and  the  proprietary 
government  ;  and  the  instrument  of  union  which  expressed  this  purpose 
was  instantly  circulated  through  the  province,  and  subscribed  by  every 
one  of  the  inhabitants,  except  a  very  few  retainers  of  the  disowned  au- 
thority. Governor  Johnson,  after  a  fruitless  altercation  with  the  assembly, 
who  vainly  solicited  him  to  unite  with  them,  and  accept  a  delegation  of  su- 
preme authority  from  their  hands,  attempted  to  dissolve  them  by  procla- 
mation, and  retired  from  Charleston  to  the  country,  in  the  hope  that  the  pop- 
ular ferment  would  gradually  subside.  But  the  assembly  ordered  the  proc- 
lamation to  be  wrested  from  the  marshal's  hands  ;  and  allowing  no  time  for 
a  relaxation  of  the  general  ardor,  proceeded  vigorously  to  consummate  the 
provincial  revolt.  Meeting  on  the  summons  of  their  own  speaker,  and  with 
the  entire  acquiescence  of  their  fellow-citizens,  they  chose  Colonel  Moore, 

liad  conceived  an  ardent  and  inextinguishable  thirst  for  civil  and  religious  liberty.  Notwith- 
standing the  triumph  of  the  Protestant  cause  at  the  British  Revolution,  some  penal  law^s  which 
were  still  permitted  to  subsist  against  Protestant  Dissenters  in  Ireland,  together  with  the  in- 
conveniences of  tithes  and  high  rents,  prompted  a  number  of  these  people  to  emigrate  to 
North  America.  They  regarded  the  residence  of  their  race  in  Ireland  as  a  state  of  bondage, 
and  nothing  was  more  offensive  to  them  than  to  be  termed  Irish  people.  They  introduced 
the  foot-spinning-wheel  and  the  culture  of  potatoes  into  America.  Thus  Ireland  repaid 
America  for  her  original  boon.  Belknap.  Jnte,  Book  I.,  Chap.  I.  In  the  same  year  the 
Aurora  Borealis  was  first  descried  in  New  England,  and  beheld  with  general  alarm  ;  being 
regarded  as  a  sign  of  the  last  judgment.     Holmes.     See  Note  I.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


CHAP.  II.]  JIEVOLT  OF  SOUTH  CAROLINA.  59^ 

a  man  of  bold,  enterprising  temper,  to  fill  the  office  they  had  tendered  to 
Johnson  ;  and  on  a  day  which  they  previously  announced,  proclaimed  him 
governor  of  South  Carolina,  not  under  the  proprietaries,  but  in  the  name 
of  the  king.  To  the  new  governor,  and  to  the  individual  whom  they  ap- 
pointed chief  justice,  they  assigned  salaries  twice  as  large  as  the  emoluments 
which  were  attached  to  these  offices  under  the  proprietary  system.  They 
next  chose  twelve  counsellors,  of  whom  Sir  Hovenden  Walker  (who  had 
emigrated  to  this  province)  was  named  president ;  and  thus  completed  the 
structure  of  a  provincial  government  framed  in  conformity  with  the  general 
will. 

The  late  governor,  who  had  attempted  meanwhile  to  disconcert  their 
measures,  and  succeeded  in  creating  some  embarrassment,  now  made  his 
last  and  boldest  effiart  to  compel  the  recognition  of  his  authority.  He  en- 
gaged the  commanders  of  some  British  ships  of  war  to  bring  their  vessels 
in  front  of  Charleston  ;  and  threatened  to  lay  the  city  in  ashes,  unless  an 
immediate  submission  to  the  proprietary  dominion  were  declared.  But 
the  people,  having  arms  in  their  hands  and  forts  in  their  possession,  bade 
defiance  to  his  menace  ;  and  now  finding  the  proprietary  cause  hopeless, 
he  abandoned  all  farther  attempts  to  support  it.  The  conduct  of  Rhett, 
who  had  more  than  once  distinguished  himself  as  a  naval  officer  in  the  service 
of  his  fellow-colonists,  was,  during  this  revolution,  strangely  equivocal.  He 
had  accepted  offices  of  emolument  from  the  proprietaries,  and  for  some 
time  prior  to  the  revolt  was  accounted  their  partisan  and  the  coadjutor  of 
Trott.  But  he  refused  to  act  in  concert  with  Johnson  ;  and,  uniting  with  the 
insurgents,  obtained  their  confidence,  and  preserved  his  emoluments.  "Not- 
withstanding this,  Rhett  preserved  his  credit  with  the  proprietaries,  to  whom 
he  represented  his  acceptance  of  a  popular  commission  as  a  device  to 
which  he  resorted  for  the  purpose  of  more  effectually  serving  their  interests  ; 
protesting,  moreover,  that  the  inflexibility  of  Johnson  was  one  of  the  main 
sources  of  the  discontent  and  defection  of  the  people,  and  utterly  incon- 
sistent with  good  pohcy ;  and  that,  in  the  experience  of  every  country, 
there  were  seasons  when  the  minds  of  men  would  not  bend  to  mere  cus- 
tomary authority,  when  the  rigid  exertion  of  official  power  tended  inevitably 
to  defeat  its  own  object,  and  when  lenity  proved  a  far  more  efficacious  rem- 
edy than  severity  to  counteract  the  stream  of  disaffection  against  existing 
rulers  and  established  institutions. 

During  this  revolutionary  movement,  the  Spaniards  sailed  from  Havana 
with  a  fleet  of  fourteen  ships,  and  a  land  force  consisting  of  twelve  hundred 
men,  against  South  Carolina  and  the  island  of  New  Providence.  Johnson 
represented  to  the  Carolinians  the  dangerous  consequences  of  military  op- 
erations under  illegitimate  command,  assuring  them,  that,  in  case  of  defeat, 
they  could  expect  only  the  treatment  of  pirates  ;  but  the  people  adhered 
firmly  to  their  purpose  ;  and  the  provincial  assembly,  or  convention  (as  they 
styled  themselves) ,  continued  to  Vansact  business  with  the  governor  whom 
they  had  appointed.  Martial  law  was  proclaimed  ;  all  the  inhabitants  of 
the  province  were  summoned  to  Charleston,  for  the  defence  of  the  capital ; 
and  heavy  taxes  were  imposed,  —  from  which,  by  a  rare  instance  of  gen- 
erous forbearance,  the  late  Governor  Johnson  and  his  estates  alone  w^ere 
exempted.  This  magnanimous  people  were  averse  to  render  the  fortune  of 
a  brave  and  honorable  man,  whom  circumstances,  rather  than  his  own  dis- 
position, had  placed   in  a  state  of  controversy  with  them,  tributary  to  a 


60  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

triumph  over  his  own  principles  and  dignity.  Happily  for  Carolina,  the 
Spaniards,  eager  to  acquire  possession  of  the  Gulf  of  Florida,  resolved 
that  their  expedition  should  commence  with  the  attack  of  New  Providence. 
They  were  vigorously  repulsed  from  this  island  by  Commodore  Rogers  ;  and 
soon  after  lost  the  greater  part  of  their  fleet  in  a  storm.  From  a  repetition 
of  their  enterprise,  which  they  subsequently  prepared  to  undertake,  they 
were  deterred  by  the  arrival  on  the  provincial  coast  of  a  British  ship  of 
war  commanded  by  Captain  (afterwards  Lord)  Anson,  so  renowned  at  a 
later  period  by  his  voyage  round  the  world,  who  displayed  a  skill  and  vigor 
in  behalf  of  the  province  that  procured  him  the  most  flattering  and  valuable 
testimonials  of  grateful  approbation  from  its  inhabitants. 

What  might  have  been  the  result  of  these  revolutionary  measures  of 
the  people  of  South  Carolina,  if  they  had  been  disallowed  by  the  British 
government,  it  is  impossible  to  divine.  During  the  absence  from  Britain  of 
George  the  First,  who  was  visiting  his  Hanoverian  dominions  [1720],  the 
agent  for  the  people  of  South  Carolina  and  the  proprietaries  of  this  prov- 
ince maintained  their  controversy  before  the  Lords  of  Regency  and  Coun- 
cil at  London,  who  pronounced  as  their  opinion  that  the  proprietaries  had 
forfeited  their  charter.  In  conformity  with  this  censure,  the  attorney-general 
was  ordered  to  institute  legal  proceedings  for  accomplishing  the  formal  dis- 
solution of  the  charter  ;  and  in  the  mean  time,  that  active  and  ambitious 
adventurer,  who  now  bore  the  rank  of  general  and  the  title  of  Sir  Francis 
Nicholson,  was  appointed  governor  of  South  Carolina  by  a  commission 
from  the  king.  Thus  the  colonists  of  this  province,  after  an  irksome  en- 
durance of  the  odious  and  despicable  sway  of  their  proprietaries,  by  one 
bold  and  irregular  effort,  succeeded  in  emancipating  themselves  from  the 
proprietary  system,  and  in  placing  their  country  under  the  immediate  protec- 
tion of  the  crown  of  Great  Britain.  It  had  long  been  suspected  that  the 
spirit  of  discontent  and  turbulence,  so  strongly  manifested  in  both  the  prov- 
inces of  Carolina,  was  nourished  in  a  great  measure  by  the  nature  of  their 
government ;  and  that  the  colonists  scanned  the  administration  of  an  officer 
appointed  by  their  own  fellow-subjects  with  less  reverence  and  indulgence 
than  they  might  be  expected  to  bestow  on  the  conduct  of  one  who  claimed 
the  dazzling  title  of  the  representative  of  royalty.  In  South  Carolina,  though 
the  forms  of  proprietary  government  were  abolished,  the  legal  substance  of 
proprietary  right  still  subsisted.  In  North  Carolina,  the  forms  of  obedience 
to  proprietary  jurisdiction  were  still  observed  ;  but  the  people  continued 
sullen,  disorderly,  and  discontented  with  their  situation.^ 

Hunter  was  succeeded  this  year  in  the  government  of  New  York  and  New 
Jersey  by  William  Burnet,  son  of  the  celebrated  Enghsh  bishop  and  histo- 
rian ;  a  man  of  superior  sense,  talent,  and  address  ;  pious,  though  of  a  con- 
vivial disposition  ;  a  learned  scholar  and  astronomer,  and  yet  a  shrewd 
politician  and  both  active  and  skilful  in  the  conduct  of  business.  He 
labored  with  equal  wisdom  and  assiduity  to  promote  the  welfare  of  the 
province,  and  cultivated  the  favor  of  the  people  with  a  success  which  only 
the  clamors  and  intrigues  of  an  interested  faction  prevented  from  being  as 
entire  and  immediate  as  it  proved  lasting  and  honorable.  Though,  in  the 
close  of  his  administration,  his  popularity  was  eclipsed  by  the  artifices  of 
those  who  opposed  his  views,  the  testimony  that  farther  experience  afforded 
of  the  tendency  of  these  views  to  promote  the  general  good  gained  him  a 

^  Hewit.  Raxnssiy ' 8  History  of  the  Revolution  of  South  Caiolina.  Williamson.  Life  of  Lord 
Anson. 


CHAP.  II.]    TRADE  BETWEEN  NEW  YORK  AND  CANADA.         g| 

time-honored  name,  and  a  reputation  coequal  with  his  deserts  ;  and  more 
than  twenty  years  after  his  death,  the  Swedish  philosopher  Kalm,  during 
his  travels  in  America,  heard  Burnet's  worth  commemorated  with  grateful 
praise  by  this  people,  who  lamented  him  as  the  best  governor  they  had 
ever  obeyed.  He  had  been  comptroller-general  of  the  customs  at  London, 
and  now  made  an  exchange  of  official  position  with  Governor  Hunter.  Aided 
by  the  counsels  of  Livingston  and  Alexander,  two  of  the  most  considerable 
inhabitants  of  New  York,  Morris,  the  chief  justice,  and  the  learned  and  in- 
genious Dr.  Golden,  author  of  the  history  of  the  Five  Nations,  and  after- 
wards deputy-governor  of  the  province,  —  Burnet  pursued  with  indefatiga- 
ble zeal  and  industry  the  most  judicious  plans  for  improving  the  relations 
between  the  colonists  and  their  ancient  Indian  aUies. 

In  the  competition  that  prevailed  between  the  English  and  the  French 
colonies  for  the  possession  of  trade  and  influence  with  the  Indians,  the 
English  (as  Gharlevoix  remarks)  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  being  able  to 
afford  their  commodities  to  the  Indians  at  much  cheaper  prices  than  the 
French  were  constrained  to  demand.  But  the  important  benefit  that  might 
have  been  derived  from  this  advantage  was  almost  wholly  intercepted  by  a 
commercial  intercourse  that  had  been  formed  since  the  peace  of  Utrecht, 
and  by  which  the  French  became  the  purchasers,  at  Albany  and  New  York, 
of  the  commodities  imported  by  the  English  for  the  Indian  market.  The 
increased  communication  and  superior  influence  which  the  French  were  thus 
enabled  to  acquire  with  the  Indian  race  was  perceived  by  some  friendly  chiefs 
of  the  Six  Nations,  and  pressed  by  them  on  the  attention  of  Governor 
Hunter  and  the  officers  whom  the  government  now  employed  under  the  title 
of  Commissioners  for  Indian  Afl^airs.^  But  no  remedy  was  applied  to  the 
mischief,  till  Burnet  prevailed  on  the  assembly  to  pass  an  act  for  a  tempora- 
ry suspension  of  trade  between  New  York  and  Canada.  As  the  immedi- 
ate operation  of  this  act  was  to  diminish  the  importation  of  the  English  goods 
which  heretofore  were  customarily  sold  to  the  French,  till  substitutional 
relations  of  commerce  were  formed  with  the  Indians,  it  excited  the  com- 
plaints of  the  American  importers  and  the  London  merchants,  whose  intrigues 
affected  the  governor's  popularity,  and  proportionally  embarrassed  his  ad- 
ministration ;  and  notwithstanding  the  penalties  attached  to  a  transgression 
of  the  act,  it  was  repeatedly  violated  by  the  contraband  dealings  of  the 
traders  of  Albany.  But  the  beneficial  consequences  of  the  measure  ere 
long  became  sensibly  apparent  ;  and  when  the  duration  of  the  act  expired, 
the  assembly  renewed  its  provisions  by  a  law  to  which  no  period  was  as- 
signed. 

Burnet  cultivated  the  favor  of  the  Indians  by  presents,  treaties,  and  com- 
plimentary attentions  ;  and  having  acquainted  himself  with  the  geography  of 
the  country,  he  was  struck  with  the  expediency  of  obtaining  the  command 
of  Lake  Ontario,  as  well  for  the  appropriation  of  the  trade  and  the  security 
of  the  friendship  of  the  Six  Nations,  as  to  frustrate  the  French  design  of 
confining  the  British  dominion  to  narrow  limits  along  the  sea-coast,  by 
means  of  a  chain  of  forts   stretching  from  Canada  to  Louisiana.     To  that 

'  The  residence  of  the  governors  at  New  York  rendered  it  necessary  that  some  person.«» 
should  be  commissioned  at  Albany  to  maintain  immediate  communication  with  the  Indians, 
receive  intelligence  from  them,  and  treat  with  them  in  sudden  emergencies.  This  gave  rise 
to  the  office  of  Commissioners  for  Indian  Affairs,  who  ordinarily  represented  the  British  gov- 
ernment in  transactions  with  the  Indians.  These  functionaries  received  no  salaries  ;  but  con- 
siderable sums  were  deposited  in  their  hands  for  occasional  presents  to  the  savages. 

F 


52  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

end,  he  commenced  the  erection  of  a  trading-house  at  Oswego,  in  the 
country  of  the  Senecas,  one  of  the  confederated  tribes  of  the  Six  Nations, 
—  a  measure  which  the  French,  whose  vigilant  jealousy  it  failed  not  to 
awaken,  promptly  endeavoured  to  counteract ;  and  by  their  interest  with  the 
Onondagas,  another  of  the  confederated  tribes,  they  obtained  permission  to 
rebuild  a  fort  which  France  had  once  possessed  in  their  peculiar  territory  at 
Niagara,  and  also  to  erect  a  mercantile  storehouse  at  the  same  place.  As 
soon  as  this  latter  transaction  was  known  to  the  other  members  of  the  Indian 
confederacy,  they  declared  the  permission  granted  by  the  Onondagas  abso- 
lutely null  and  void,  and  sent  deputies  to  the  French,  commanding  them 
forthwith  to  discontinue  the  operations  which  they  had  hastily  begun.  The 
French,  however,  advanced  their  buildings  with  increased  activity,  while 
the  Indians  were  amused  and  beguiled  of  their  purpose  by  the  arts  and 
influence  of  the  Chevalier  Joncaire,  a  French  gentleman,  whom  the  force 
and  pliancy  of  his  genius,  concurring  wuth  the  bent  of  his  taste,  rendered  a 
masterly  practitioner  of  diplomacy  and  intrigue.  He  had  lived  among  the 
Indians  from  the  beginning  of  Queen  Anne's  reign,  —  assuming  their  man- 
ners, and  speaking  their  language,  with  an  eloquent  embellishment  of  their 
peculiar  style  that  captivated  their  highest  admiration.  He  was  adopted  as 
a  brother  by  the  Senecas,  and  enjoyed  much  consideration  with  the  Onon- 
dagas. All  these  advantages  he  improved  to  the  advancement  of  his  coun- 
try's influence  and  dominion  ;  facilitating  the  admission  of  French  mission- 
aries to  the  Indian  settlements,  and  excelling  the  most  industrious  and  ac- 
complished of  the  Jesuits  in  the  zeal  and  success  of  his  endeavours  to  dis- 
solve the  existing  relations  of  friendship  between  the  Indians  and  the  Enghsh. 
Governor  Burnet  exerted  himself  with  great  diligence  and  ability,  and  not 
entirely  without  success,  to  counteract  the  intrigues  of  Joncaire,  and  rouse 
the  British  government  and  the  Six  Nations  to  a  resolute  opposition  to  the 
encroachments  of  France.  At  his  own  private  expense  he  completed  the 
building  of  a  fort  and  trading-house  at  Oswego,  in  defiance  of  the  menaces 
of  the  governor  of  Canada.  But,  unfortunately,  his  influence  was  now  im- 
paired and  his  administration  embarrassed  by  the  factious  intrigues  of  the 
Albany  traders  and  their  commercial  correspondents  at  London,  who,  for 
the  sake  of  a  few  years'  immediate  gain,  were  willing  to  sacrifice  the  lasting 
prosperity  of  New  York,  and  the  security  of  the  British  colonial  empire. 
While  the  Albany  traders  labored  to  destroy  his  popularity  in  the  province, 
the  merchants  of  London  who  were  connected  with  them  exerted  all  their 
interest  at  the  British  court  to  obtain  his  removal  from  New  York,  —  an  ob- 
ject which  their  unworthy  machinations  finally  succeeded  in  accomphshing.^ 
Burnet,  whose  patrimony  had  fallen  a  prey  to  the  fraud  and  delusion  of 
the  famous  adventure,  called  the  South  Sea  Scheme^  was  originally  induced 
to  accept  the  government  of  New  York  by  circumstances  not  more  credita- 
ble to  the  character  of  England  in  that  age,  than  the  narrow  policy  and 
mean  intrigue  which  ultimately  deprived  him  of  his  command.  France  and 
England  had  been  plunged  for  some  time  in  a  national  delirium  not  less  wild, 
and  far  more  fatal,  than  the  mania  of  the  tulip  trade,  which  broke  forth 
in  Holland  about  a  century  before.  The  frenzy  that  signalized  the  pres- 
ent epoch  was  excited  by  that  spirit  of  commercial  gambling  to  which  the 
first  impulse  was  given  by  the  projects  of  the  notorious  John  Law,  a 
Scotchman,  and  the  son  of  an  obscure  goldsmith  in  Edinburgh. 

*  Charlevoix's  Le«er5.     Kalm's  Travels.     Oldmixon.     W.Smith.     Laws  of  J^ew  York  (ed- 
ited by  Livingston  and  Smith),  from  1691  to  1751. 


CHAP.  II.]  JOHN  LAW.  Q$ 

This  extraordinary  person  was  endowed  by  nature  with  a  wonderful 
capacity  of  profound  and  extensive  calculation,  and  a  strong  concurrent  taste 
for  every  pursuit  and  research  that  was  fitted  to  cultivate  and  develope  his 
peculiar  genius.  He  applied  himself  to  the  investigation  of  every  branch 
of  knowledge  relative  to  banks,  lotteries,  and  the  trading  companies  of  Lon- 
don ;  he  studied  the  means  of  supporting  them,  and  of  cherishing  the  public 
hope  and  confidence  on  which  they  mainly  depended.  Having  penetrated 
the  innermost  secrets  of  the  policy  of  these  establishments,  he  increased 
his  knowledge  by  obtaining  a  mercantile  situation  in  Holland,  where  he 
succeeded  in  fully  acquainting  himself  not  only  with  the  springs  and  princi- 
ples, but  with  the  minutest  practical  details,  of  the  system  pursued  in  that 
masterpiece  of  financial  establishments,  the  Bank  of  Amsterdam.  By  dint 
of  reflecting  on  the  information  he  had  acquired,  and  of  combining  such 
a  variety  of  knowledge,  he  composed  a  system  which  was  admirable  for 
its  order  and  the  concatenation  of  the  numerous  and  diversified  operations 
which  it  involved,  —  a  system  founded  at  least  as  much  upon  skilful  ac- 
quaintance with  the  human  mind,  as  upon  the  science  of  numbers,  —  but 
which  implied  an  entire  disregard  of  good  faith,  equity,  and  humanity,  and 
afforded  the  amplest  scope  to  fraud,  perfidy,  and  injustice.  The  author  of 
this  scheme  was  an  abandoned  villain,  devoid  of  all  sense  of  religion, 
morality,  or  real  honor.  Having  slain  a  man  in  a  duel,  he  fled  from 
Britain, 1  and  was  accompanied  in  his  exile  by  an  adulterous  paramour, 
whom  he  had  seduced  from  her  husband.  His  avarice  was  insatiable  ; 
and  all  his  extensive  schemes  and  combinations  were  subservient  to  the 
gratification  of  that  ignoble  passion.  His  taste  for  gaming  (in  the  practice 
of  which  he  was  remarkably  successful) ,  together  with  his  elegant  manners 
and  sprightly  conversation,  procured  him  the  intimate  acquaintance  of  many 
persons  of  distinction,  who  disgraced  their  rank  and  impaired  their  fortunes 
by  their  commerce  with  such  an  associate.  In  the  exhausted  state  to  which 
the  late  war  had  reduced  the  exchequers  of  all  the  European  potentates,  he 
foresaw  that  they  must  necessarily  adopt  some  extraordinary  measures  to  re- 
cruit their  finances  ;  and  the  hopes  he  indulged  of  successfully  reahzing  his 
great  project  were  increased  by  the  allurement  which  it  presented  to  any 
government  that  would  not  scruple  to  prefer  a  speedy  to  an  honest  extrication 
from  financial  embarrassment.  His  system  was  calculated  to  enable  a  sove- 
reign to  pay  his  debts,  not  by  retrenching  his  luxury  and  profusion,  but  by 
attracting,  under  specious  pretences,  to  himself,  all  the  gold  and  silver  of  his 
subjects  ;  and  the  machinery  by  which  this  end  was  to  be  accomplished 
consisted  of  a  bank,  the  real  capital  of  which  was  to  be  the  revenues  of 
the  state,  and  the  accruing  capital  some  branch  of  commerce  little  known, 
and  therefore  easily  misrepresented  and  exaggerated.  The  engines  on  which 
he  mainly  relied  were  the  covetousness  and  credulity  of  mankind.  Law  the 
less  regretted  his  exile,  when  he  reflected  that  such  a  scheme  would  be 
most  efficaciously  conducted  in  a  country  where  the  sovereign  enjoyed  ab- 
solute power. 

Repairing  to  France,  he  unfolded  his  views,  to  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  who, 
notwithstanding  the  extenuated  condition  of  his  treasury,  is  reported,  on  the 
bare  exposition  of  the  project,  to  have  rejected  it  with  expressions  of  abhor- 
rence.    But  Law  found  a  less  scrupulous  patron  in  the  regent,  Duke  of  Or- 

*  It  appears  from  Wood's  Life  of  Law  that  this  adventurer  was  actually  tried  and  con- 
demned to  be  hanged,  but  escaped  from  prison  while  his  fate  was  in  suspense. 


64  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

leans  ;  and  in  the  year  1717,  with  the  encouragement  of  this  infamous  prince, 
he  commenced  his  operations  by  the  estabhshment  of  a  national  bank,  which 
was  followed  soon  after  by  the  memorable  Western^  or  JVIississippi  Com- 
pany. The  professed  object  of  this  association  was  the  aggrandizement  and 
cultivation  of  the  colonies  of  France  in  North  America  ;  and  the  French 
government  enhanced  its  delusive  credit  by  assigning  to  it  the  whole  territo- 
ry of  Louisiana.!  The  detail  of  the  projector's  success, —  of  the  frantic 
eagerness  with  which  Frenchmen  of  all  ranks  plunged  their  fortunes  into 
the  gulf  which  his  profound  and  masterly  villany  had  prepared  for  them,  — 
and  of  the  wide-spread  ruin  and  misery  that  ensued,  —  is  foreign  to  our 
purpose,  and  belongs  to  the  historian  of  France.  But  the  operation  of 
Law's  evil  genius  was  not  confined  to  that  country.  There  is  a  diffusively 
contagious  influence  in  the  ferment  of  any  strong  passion  among  a  multi^ 
tude  of  people  ;  and  while  the  French  delusion  lasted,  a  kindred  spirit  of 
daring  fraud  and  desperate  gambling  was  awakened  in  England. 

From  the  Mississippi  Scheme  of  Law,  the  project,  scarcely  less  famous, 
of  the  South  Sea  Company  of  England  was  borrowed,  by  the  imitative  craft 
of  Sir  John  Blunt,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  successfully 
recommended  to  the  inhabitants  of  this  country  by  the  cooperation  of  a  crew 
of  artful  and  rapacious  associates.  A  frenzy  ensued,  which,  if  more  tran- 
sient, was  also  more  general  and  more  extravagant,  than  that  which  pos- 
sessed the  French  ;  and  productive  of  scenes  and  adventures,  in  which  it 
is  difficult  to  discriminate  the  mingling  shades  of  crime  and  folly,  —  to 
distinguish  between  the  gambling  of  fools  and  knaves,  alike  transported  with 
a  rage  for  sudden  enrichment.  New  projects  were  proclaimed,  and  joint- 
stock  companies  ^  were  formed  every  day  for  carrying  them  into  effect, 
under  the  patronage  of  many  of  the  royal  ministers  and  the  chief  nobility, 
and  even  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  The  most  chimerical  desij^ns  were 
embraced  and  seconded  by  persons  of  all  ranks,  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor, 
professional,  commercial,  and  literary  ;  and  one  obscure  projector,  in  par- 
ticular, received  in  a  single  morning  the  subscriptions  of  a  thousand  persons 
for  the  execution  of  a  project  which  he  declined  to  explain  at  the  time,  but 
promised  to  disclose  a  month  after, — as  he  effectually  did,  by  decamping 
with  his  booty.  Some  persons,  whom  sincere  delusion  had  originally 
plunged  into  tlie  prevalent  speculations,  were  ultimately  hurried  by  the 
temptation  of  gain,  or  driven  by  the  fear  of  ruin,  consciously  to  promote  the 
general  error,  in  order  to  sell  their  stock  with  advantage,  or  shift  from 
themselves  the  consequences  of  its  approaching  depreciation.  In  other  in- 
stances a  contrary  progress  of  sentiment  was  manifested  ;  and  the  South 
Sea  Scheme,  in  particular,  at  one  time  raised  such  a  flood  of  eager  avidity 

'  A  great  many  persons  were  induced  by  Law's  representations  to  repair  to  this  territory 
and  undertake  its  colonization.  Of  these,  a  body  of  German  emigrants  alone  succeeded  in 
rearing  a  flourishing  settlement.  Most  of  the  others,  ruined  or  disappointed  by  the  fall  of  the 
Mississippi  Company,  forsook   the   province.     Jefferys'   History  of  the  French  Dominions  in 


North  and  South  America.   To  recruit  the  colonial  population,  an  edict  was  issued  by  the  French 
nt,   commanding  the  apprehension  and 
by      \        ^        ■■  -:  "" 

man  and  admirable  philosopher,  George  Edwards,  the  famous  British  ornithologist,  during  his 


government,  commanding  the  apprehension  and  transportation  to  America  of  all  the  vaga- 
bonds by  whom  the  cities  and  highways  of  France  were  infested.     To  this  edict  an  excellent 


travels  in  France,  in  the  year  1720,  had  very  nearly  fallen  a  victim.  Annual  Register  for 
1776.  Law,  revisiting  his  native  country,  acquired  a  small  estate,  under  the  name  of  which 
his  descendants  not  only  veiled  their  ancestral  infamy,  but  actually  procured  a  title  of  nobility 
in  France  !     One  of  them  attained  the  rank  of  Marshal,  under  the  Emperor  Napoleon. 

2  About  a  hundred  years  later  we  have  seen  this  commercial  gambling  reappear  as  a  nation- 
al epidemic  in  England;   though,  happily,  with  less  extent  and  mischief. 


CHAP.  II.]   ADMINISTRATION   OF  SHUTE  IN  MASSACHUSETtS.  Q^ 

and  extravagant  hope,  that  the  majority  of  the  directors  were  themselves 
swept  along  with  it,  in  opposition  to  their  own  better  knowledge  and  original 
purpose  and  inclhiation.  With  the  rapacity  there  was  blended  the  prodi- 
gality and  improvidence  congenial  to  habits  of  ignoble  hazard  ;  sudden 
wealth,  actually  amassed,  or  immediately  expected,  was  spent  or  anticipated 
with  reckless  profusion  ;  and  tasteless  luxury,  extravagance,  and  sensuality 
prevailed  with  unprecedented  sway  in  England. 

At  length  the  various  Bubbles,  as  they  were  aptly  termed,  burst,  one  after 
another,  in  rapid  succession  [September,  1720]  ;  public  credit  received  a 
staggering  shock,  and  mercantile  character  and  morality  an  odious  and  per- 
nicious taint ;  vast  multitudes  of  people  found  themselves  reduced  from  afflu- 
ent or  competent  estate  to  absolute  beggary  ;  and  all  England  resounded 
with  the  waihng  of  grief  and  disappointment,  or  the  raving  of  indignation 
and  despair.  The  spirit  of  commercial  gambling,  which  had  lately  prevailed 
in  some  of  the  American  colonies,  was  doubtless  animated  in  some  degree 
by  the  contagious  fervor  of  the  delusion  that  reigned  in  the  parent  state  ; 
and  an  additional  excitement  to  it  was  at  one  time  portended  by  an  over- 
flowing of  the  stream  of  folly  and  frantic  enterprise  in  England.  A  joint- 
stock  company  was  formed  at  London  for  the  purchase  and  cultivation  of 
waste  lands  in  Massachusetts.  But  the  project  dissolved  in  the  general 
wreck  of  kindred  speculations,  before  there  was  time  to  obtain  the  accession 
of  any  tributary  associates  in  America.^  The  monstrous  fraud  and  folly  dis- 
played by  the  people  of  England,  and  the  infamy  reflected  by  the  foregoing 
transactions  on  their  princes,  nobles,  statesmen,^  and  merchants,  were  cal- 
culated to  promote  other  sentiments  than  respect  and  attachment  to  the 
parent  state  in  the  minds  of  the  sensible  and  discerning  part  of  the  colonial 
population.  We  shall  find  in  the  sequel,  that  the  deplorable  scene  to  which 
we  have  now  adverted  was  attended  with  consequences  important  to  the 
progress  of  society  in  America,  by  suggesting,  or  at  least  promoting, 
the  project  which  issued  in  the  plantation  of  Georgia. 

*  It  was  happy  for  New  England  that  the  seasonable  close  of  the  British 
commercial  frenzy  prevented  the  communication  of  a  share  of  this  malady 
from  enlarging  the  catalogue  of  evils  which  her  history  at  the  present  epoch 
discloses.  The  administration  of  Governor  Shute  in  Massachusetts  was  by 
no  means  productive  of  the  harmony  and  satisfaction  which  its  commence- 
ment betokened.  Shute  was  a  humane  and  honorable  man,  — diverted  from 
ambition  by  the  love  of  ease  and  social  pleasure,  —  totally  unaccustomed 
to  the  conduct  of  civil  affairs, — and  afflicted  with  a  hasty  and  impatient 
temper,  which  habits  of  military  command  had  not  tended  to  moderate.  His 
English  friends  had  received  and  imparted  to  him  a  strong  prepossession 
against  the  provincial  party  opposed  to  Governor  Dudley  ;  and  his  un- 
guarded demonstration  of  this  prejudice  speedily  rendered  the  party  which 
was  the  object  of  it  inimical  to  himself.  In  Massachusetts  and  New 
Hampshire,  at  this  period,  a  great  deal  of  discontent  was  excited  by  the 
proceedings  of  certain  officers  of  the  crown  with  regard  to  the  pine-trees 
reserved  for  the  use  of  the  royal  navy  on  vacant  lands.     The  second  par- 

^  Private  Life  of  Louis  the  Fifteenth.     Smollett.     Hutchinson. 

'  Among  other  distinguished  persons,  the  Earl  of  Sunderland,  Aislabie,  the  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer  (who  was  expelled  the  House  of  Commons),  and  Craggs,  the  secretary  of  state, 
were  judged  to  have  corruptly  promoted  the  delusion  of  the  South  Sea  Scheme.  A  season- 
able death  preserved  Craggs  from  sharing  the  disgrace  of  Aislabie,  and  allowed  his  name  to 
repose  under  the  shade  of  the  poetical  wreath  by  which  it  was  decked  by  the  Muse  of  Pope. 
VOL.    II.  9  F* 


QQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII 

liamentary  statute  on  this  subject  ordained  that  the  offence  of  cutting  down 
any  of  these  trees  might  be  proved  by  the  oath  of  a  single  witness,  and  pun- 
ished, without  the  intervention  of  a  jury,  by  a  judge  of  the  admiralty 
court,  who  owed  his  office  to  the  crown,  and  enjoyed  it  only  during  the 
royal  pleasure.  Notwithstanding  this  arbitrary  provision,  which  was  highly 
resented  by  the  colonists,  there  were  many  more  accusations  than  convic- 
tions of  infraction  of  the  law.  The  people  retorted  the  complaints  of  the 
royal  surveyor  of  woods,  and  declared  that  he  sometimes  neglected  to 
mark  distinctly  the  trees  he  meant  to  reserve,  at  other  times  laid  claim  to 
trees  which  were  unsuitable  to  the  objects  of  the  act,  and  perpetually 
harassed  them  with  vexatious  litigation.  These  disputes  provoked  a  ques- 
tion of  the  abstract  right  of  the  British  government  to  appropriate  the  trees 
at  all  ;  and  the  people  and  their  assemblies  openly  expressed  their  opinion 
that  they  were  unjustly  deprived  of  the  produce  of  land  which  their  own 
money  had  purchased  and  their  own  exertions  defended  and  preserved. 
The  cheap  hberality  of  allowing  a  small  price  for  suitable  trees  furnished  to 
the  British  government  by  the  colonists  themselves  would  have  accom- 
plished the  purposes  of  the  acts  of  parliament  in  a  manner  much  more 
effectual  and  advantageous. 

Shute,  offended  with  a  remonstrance  of  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  in 
which  they  hinted  that  he  had  not  fairly  represented  to  the  king  the  con- 
troversy between  the  surveyor  and  the  people,  requested  that  this  remon- 
strance might  not  be  printed  ;  and  when  the  assembly  answered  that  it  was 
their  duty  and  their  purpose  to  print  it,  he  announced  to  them,  in  the  heat 
of  anger,  and  with  an  ignorance  and  rashness  which  he  had  occasion  to 
deplore  during  the  remainder  of  his  presidency,  that  "  the  king  had  com- 
mitted to  him  the  power  of  the  press,"  and  that  nothing  could  be  lawfully 
published  in  the  province  w^ithout  his  permission.  This  declaration  ren- 
dered him  ever  after  an  object  of  jealous  dislike  and  suspicion  to  the  colo- 
nists. In  another  instance,  he  broached  a  new  and  offensive  pretension 
which  was  equally  unsuccessful.  It  was  the  custom  that  the  assembly, 
on  electing  a  speaker,  should  present  to  the  governor  the  person  on  whom 
their  choice  had  fallen,  and  who  was  to  be  the  organ  of  their  official  com- 
munications with  him.  Shute  attempted  to  construe  this  practice  into  a 
recognition  of  the  governor's  right  to  negative  the  appointment  of  the  as- 
sembly, and  refused  to  acknowledge  the  speakership  of  Cooke,  a  distin- 
guished patriot,  and  the  leader  of  the  party  who  were  accounted  Dudley's 
opponents  ;  but  as  the  provincial  charter  afforded  no  sanction  to  this  preten- 
sion, his  assertion  of  it,  though  backed  by  an  opinion  he  produced  from  the 
attorney-general  of  England  and  the  Lords  of  Trade,  only  involved  him  in 
a  fruitless  and  irritating  controversy.  His  importunities  with  the  assembly 
to  attach  a  fixed  salary  to  his  own  office  were  equally  unsuccessful.  So 
far  from  gratifying  him  in  this  particular,  they  progressively  diminished  the 
allowance  which  was  annually  voted  to  him,  —  even  while  the  depreciation 
of  the  provincial  currency  was  daily  reducing  the  real  value  of  the  salary 
far  below  its  nominal  amount.  To  the  deputy -governor,  William  Dummer, 
they  voted  the  niggardly  pittance  of  thirty-five  pounds  ;  which  he  refused 
to  accept,  protesting  that  he  would  not  disparage  the  honor  of  serving  the 
king  by  uniting  it  with  a  pecuniary  recompense  so  paltry  and  affronting. 
Shute  subsequently  attempted  to  soothe  the  assembly  by  conciliating  lan- 
guage and  moderation  of  demeanour  ;  but  it  would   have  required   more 


CHAP.  II.J  VIOLENT  OPPOSITION  TO  SHUTE.  '  67 

patience  than  he  possessed  to  disarm  the  jealousy  which  he  had  akeady 
excited. 

The  state  of  the  currency  tended  to  increase  the  pubhc  discontent, 
while  it  sapped  the  foundations  of  honor  and  morahty.  Creditors,  clergy- 
men, and  all  persons  subsisting  on  salaries  or  the  interest  of  money,  com- 
plained of  their  losses  and  hardships  ;  and  executors,  agents,  and  trustees 
of  every  other  description  were  exposed  to  the  most  potent  temptations 
unjustly  to  retain  the  property  of  their  constituents.  The  governor,  who 
probably  perceived  that  this  evil  could  be  radically  cured  only  by  paying 
the  public  debts  and  restraining  the  emission  of  paper  money,  increased 
his  own  unpopularity  by  opposing  the  project  of  a  state  bank,  and  other 
delusive  schemes  which  were  suggested  for  relieving  the  country  of  its 
financial  difficulties.  Through  the  gloom  of  general  discontent  and  appre- 
hension, the  real  blemishes  in  Shute's  conduct  were  beheld  in  an  exag- 
gerated view  ;  the  mistakes  of  inexperience  and  the  effusions  of  intemperate 
passion  were  maligned  as  the  indications  of  deep  and  deliberate  design  to 
establish  arbitrary  government ;  and  the  whole  province  of  Massachusetts 
was  pervaded  by  the  conviction,  that  public  liberty  was  in  the  utmost  dan- 
ger, and  could  be  saved  only  by  a  vigorous  and  united  opposition  to  Shute's 
administration.  Never  did  any  people,  in  pursuit  of  a  generous  purpose, 
commit  a  wider  departure  from  moderation,  good  sense,  and  equity.  To 
such  a  violent  and  unreasonable  pitch  did  the  suspicion  and  ill-humor  of 
the  Massachusetts  assembly  mount,  that  all  who  were  reckoned  the  gov- 
ernor's friends,  or  who  honestly  counselled  a  more  moderate  demeanour 
towards  him,  became  the  objects  of  its  displeasure  ;  and  Jeremiah  Dum- 
mer,  the  provincial  agent  at  London,  having  apprized  them  that  Shute's 
conduct  was  generally  approved  in  England,  and  that  vindictive  measures 
against  Massachusetts  were  meditated  by  the  British  ministry,  and  would 
assuredly  be  embraced  unless  the  people  should  evince  a  more  reason- 
able temper,  was  dismissed  from  his  office  by  the  blind  wilfulness  which 
misconstrued  his  warning  intelligence.^  The  assembly  repeatedly  compelled 
the  governor  to  yield  to  their  desires,  by  explicitly  declaring  that  they  would 
not  vote  his  salary  till  he  had  done  so  ;  and  Britain  was  punished  for  her 
injustice  in  depriving  the  colonists  of  their  old  charter,  by  the  habit  they 
now  acquired  of  contending  with  and  prevaihng  over  the  representative  of 
royalty.  In  the  Indian  war  by  which  the  presidency  of  Shute  was  signal- 
ized, the  assembly  openly  invaded  his  functions,  by  assuming  the  direction 
of  mihtary  operations,  and  requiring  the  officers  to  maintain  correspond- 
ence with  them  ;  declaring  (with  more  manly  sense  than  constitutional  for- 
mality) that  all  who  were  paid  by  the  public  were  the  responsible  servants 
of  the  public  ;  though  they  subsequently  perceived  the  prudence  of  re- 
tracting and  apologizing  for  this  pretension.  In  short,  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts were  at  this  time  transported  to  such  an  excess  of  opposition  and 
animosity  against  the  royal  governor,  and  the  policy,  real  or  supposed,  of 
the  parent  state,  that  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  trembled  for  the  con- 
sequences that  might  result  to  the  general  liberties  of  New  England,  and 
instructed  their  agent  at  London  to  keep  a  watchful  eye  on  the  proceedings 
of  the  parliament,  and  give  heed  that  Connecticut  might  not  be  involved  in 
the  vengeance  whiclvMassachusetts  seemed  determined  to  provoke  and  brave. 

'  Yet  the  agent's  intelligence  was  confirmed  by  communications  from  various  English  friends 
of  the  colonists.  Neal,  in  particular,  the  historian  of  the  Puritans  and  of  New  England,  strongly 
urged  the  Massachusetts  assembly  to  retrace  its  steps,  "if  it  meant  to  save  the  country." 


g3  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

The  war  which  broke  out,  during  Shute's  administration,  between  the 
States  of  New  England  and  their  ancient  enemies,  the  Indians  inhabiting  the 
eastern  territory  betwixt  New  England  and  Nova  Scotia,  was  ushered  by  a 
long  prologue  of  reproachful  complaint,  menace,  and  violence  on  the  part 
of  the  savages,  prompted  by  the  insidious  counsels  of  the  French  and  their 
provincial  officers  in  Canada.  These  Indians  had  repeatedly  acknowledged 
themselves  the  subjects  of  the  British  monarchy,  and  in  every  treaty  of 
peace  with  the  English  had  penitentially  designated  their  wars  with  them  as 
rebellions  ;  seemingly  without  attaching  much  importance  to  this  language, 
or  even  entertaining  any  just  or  fixed  notion  of  its  meaning.  Extensive 
territories  on  the  rivers  Kennebec  and  St.  George  w^ere  purchased  by  the 
New  England  governments  from  the  chiefs  of  these  tribes  at  an  early  period  ; 
but  the  lands  remaining  long  unoccupied  by  the  purchasers,  the  precise 
extent  of  the  acquisitions  was  in  some  instances  forgotten  by  the  vendors, 
who  possessed  no  written  records,  and  who  were  permitted  by  the  courtesy 
of  the  colonists  to  hunt  and  fish  in  every  part  of  the  purchased  territory  not 
actually  subjected  to  cultivation.  In  some  instances  disagreements  arose  be- 
tween the  two  races  from  bargains  being  differently  understood  by  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  Indians,  even  when  they  had  been  conducted  with  much  care  and 
solemnity.  As  few  of  either  race  understood  well  the  other's  language, 
their  treaties  and  other  arrangements  required  the  offices  of  an  interpreter 
■whose  honesty  could  not  always  be  relied  on,  and  whose  deceptions  it  was 
not  always  possible  to  detect.^  The  Indians,  moreover,  were  not  at  first 
aware,  that  the  Europeans,  by  their  system  of  agriculture,  and  the  erection 
of  mills  and  dams,  would  diminish  the  supphes  of  game  and  fish  which  the 
land  and  its  waters  had  previously  affiarded  ;  and  when  they  found  by  ex- 
perience that  this  was  actually  the  consequence  of  admitting  foreigners  to 
settle  among  them,  they  repented  of  their  hospitality,  and  were  inclined  to 
eject  their  new  neighbours,  as  the  only  means  of  restoring  the  country  to 
its  pristine  state. 

Their  enmity  to  the  Enghsh  was  industriously  fomented  by  the  French, 
whose  interests  they  preferably  espoused,  and  to  whose  rehgious  faith  they 
had  for  many  years  been  warmly  devoted.  Of  late  they  were  chiefly  direct- 
ed by  the  counsels  of  Sebastian  Rasles,  an  aged  Jesuit  of  great  learning, 
genius,  and  talent,  and  still  greater  zeal  for  the  propagation  of  the  Catholic 
faith  and  the  enlargement  of  the  French  dominion  in  America.  He  had  now 
resided  about  forty  years  among  the  Indians,  contentedly  burying  in  savage 
deserts  the  finest  accomplishments  of  European  education  ;  and  deprived 
of  all  opportunity  of  exercising  his  high  proficiency  as  a  critic  and  classical 
linguist,  except  when  his  missionary  labors  afforded  him  leisure  for  episto- 
lary controversy  with  the  ministers  of  Boston.  He  corresponded  in  the 
Indian  tongue  with  many  of  his  savage  converts,  male  and  female,  whom 
he  had  taught  to  read  and  wTite  ;  and  strengthened  his  claims  on  the  in- 
terest and  admiration  of  their  countrymen  by  successful  attempts  in  Indian 
poetry,  —  or,  to  speak  more  properly,  in  poetical  compositions,  of  which 
the  language,  imagery,  and  strain  of  sentiment  were  derived  from  Indian 

^  It  is  curious  to  find  that  Indian  tradition  has  ascribed  to  some  of  the  earliest  European 
colonists  a  trick  precisely  similar  to  the  fabled  device  of  Queen  Dido  for  enlarging  the  site  of 
the  colonial  settlement  she  founded  at  Carthage.  This  coincidence  ©f  sentiment  and  tradition 
is  ascribed  by  an  accomplished  American  writer  to  "  the  proneness  of  barbarous  people, 
while  they  feel  the  superiority  of  civilized  men,  to  attribute  all  the  difference  which  results 
from  the  intercourse  to  cunning  rather  than  to  wisdom."  General  Cass's  Discourse  before  the 
American  Historical  Society^  1836. 


efiAP.  11]  INTRIGUES  OF  RASLES.  (J9 

models.^  His  intrepid  courage,  fervent  zeal,  and  ceaseless  intrigue  in  behalf 
of  his  faith  and  his  country  rendered  him  an  object  of  remarkable  detesta- 
tion to  the  colonists  of  New  England,^  and  gained  him  the  repute  of  a  saint 
and  a  hero  with  the  French.  By  the.  Indians  among  whom  he  lived  at 
Norridgewock  he  was  regarded  with  unbounded  love  and  admiration,  and 
they  were  always  ready  to  hazard  their  hves  in  his  defence.  His  ascenden- 
cy over  them  was  diligently  employed  to  promote  the  interests  of  France. 
He  made  even  the  offices  of  devotion  serve  as  incentives  to  their  ferocity^ 
and  kept  a  flag,  whereon  was  depicted  a  cross  surrounded  by  bows  and  ar- 
rows, which  he  used  to  hoist  on  a  pole  at  the  door  of  his  chapel,  when 
he  gave  them  absolution,  previously  to  their  engaging  in  any  martial  enter- 
prise. He  encouraged  them  to  believe  that  their  forefathers  were  deceived 
and  abused  in  the  ancient  venditions  of  their  lands  to  the  colonists  of  New 
England,  and  that  these  colonists  w^ere  committing  encroachments  beyond 
the  limits  even  of  the  titles  which  they  had  dishonestly  acquired  ;  and  he 
labored  strongly  to  impress  upon  them  that  the  English  traders  by  whom 
they  were  visited  dealt  fraudulently  with  them,  and,  by  vending  spirituous 
liquors  among  them,  debauched  their  morals,  and  frustrated  the  good  work 
that  he  himself  was  laboring  to  accomphsh.^  This  last  topic  was  not  less 
efficacious  than  the  others  ;  though  the  Jesuit's  allusibns  to  it  were  much 
more  successful  in  provoking  his  Indian  disciples  to  anger  against  the 
British  colonists,  than  in  persuading  them  to  a  virtuous  amendment  of  their 
own  habits.  It  was,  indeed,  quite  natural  that  the  Indians  should  at  once 
indulge  themselves  in  copious  enjoyment  of  the  pleasures  of  intoxication, 
and  yet  blame  and  hate  the  purveyors  and  instruments  of  this  vice.  The 
dissensions  between  Governor  Shute  and  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  had 
unfortunately  prevented  the  erection  of  public  barter-houses  ;  and  the  In- 
dians were  still  exposed  to  all  the  causes  of  quarrel  and  complaint  supplied 
by  the  fraud  and  selfishness  of  private  traders. 

Acquainted  with  the  hostile  influence  which  was  thus  exerted  upon  his 
savage  neighbours.  Governor  Shute,  soon  after  his  accession  to  the  com- 
mand of  Massachusetts,  held  a  conference  with  their  chiefs,  and  vainly  urged 
them  to  admit  a  New  England  clergyman  to  reside  among  their  people. 
Rasles  interposed  in  the  discussion  that  took  place,  with  a  protestation,  that, 
although  the  French  king  had  ceded  Nova  Scotia  to  England,  he  never  in- 
tended to  include  in  this  cession  any  territory  to  which  the  Indians  them- 
selves might  justly  lay  claim.  At  first,  it  seemed  likely  that  a  mutual  decla- 
ration of  war  would  have  resulted  from  the  conference,  as  the  Indians  be- 
gan by  angrily  reclaiming  a  great  part  of  the  territory  sold  by  their  ancestors  ; 
but  that  extremity  was  avoided  and  the  reclamation  abandoned  by  the  advice 
of  the  elder  sachems,  who  apologized  for  the  language  of  their  brethren,  to 
the  great  disappointment  of  Rasles,  who,  in  his  letters  to  the  governor  of 
Canada,  lamented  the  unsteady  and  irresolute  behaviour  of  the  Indians.    An 

'  See  Note  II.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

*  When  some  of  the  New  England  traders,  who  occasionally  met  with  him,  threatened  him 
with  the  vengeance  of  their  countrymen,  if  they  should  ever  take  Norridgewock,  his  answer 
was  merely  a  significant  accentuation  of  the  monosyllable,  "  /f." 

3  The  conduct  of  his  own  countrymen,  in  this  respect,  to  the  savages  was  at  least  equally 
reprehensible.  "We  know,"  says  Charlevoix,  "  that  an  Indian  will  give  all  that  he  is  worth 
for  one  glass  of  brandy.  -Against  this  strong  temptation  to  our  traders,  neither  the  exclama- 
tions of  tiieir  pastors,  nor  the  zeal  and  authority  of  the  magistrates,  nor  respect  for  the  laws,  nor 
the  dread  of  the  judgments  of  the  Almighty,  have  proved  of  anv  avail.  Even  in  the  streets  of 
Montreal  are  seen  the  most  shocking  spectacles,  the  never-failing  effects  of  the  di-unkenness 
of  these  savages,"  &c. 


70  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

unfriendly  peace  ensued,  checkered  with  abundance  of  dispute,  and  at  length, 
in  the  autumn  of  this  year  [August,  1720],  more  seriously  interrupted  by 
an  attack  on  some  traders  who  resorted  annually  from  Massachusetts  to 
Canso,  in  Nova  Scotia,  where  the^  Indians,  overpowering  them  by  surprise, 
robbed  them  of  all  their  wares,  and  put  several  of  them  to  death.  This 
outrage  excited  the  greater  indignation,  when  it  was  known  that  some  of 
the  French  at  Cape  Breton  had  openly  assisted  the  Indian  enterprise  ;  and 
notwithstanding  the  anxious  desire  of  Governor  Shute  to  avoid  an  imme- 
diate recourse  to  hostihties,  the  Massachusetts  assembly  passed  an  ordi- 
nance for  levying  a  force  and  compelling  the  Indians  to  make  satisfaction 
for  the  insult  and  injury  they  had  committed.  This  ordinance  was  resented 
by  Shute  as  an  invasion  of  his  prerogative  ;  and  as  the  council  united  with 
him  in  denying  its  validity,  no  farther  prosecution  of  its  vindictive  purpose 
was  attempted  for  the  present.  Encouraged  by  their  impunity,  the  Indians 
continued  to  repeat  their  insults  and  menaces  ;  and  a  strong  party  of  them, 
marching  with  French  colors  to  a  frontier  settlement  of  New  England,  ve- 
hemently accused  the  colonists  of  wresting  from  them  the  territory  which 
God  had  bestowed  on  their  race,  and  declared  that  they  had  now  come  to 
expel  the  intruders  for  ever.  [1721.]  After  a  long  conference  with  some  of 
the  provincial  officers,  their  fickleness,  or  their  sense  of  equity,  again  pre- 
vailed ;  they  freely  acknowledged  that  the  claims  of  the  colonists  were  just, 
and  solemnly  protested  that  they  would  never  in  future  molest  them.  On 
returning  to  their  settlements  around  Norridgewock,  they  were  ashamed  to 
confess  the  dereliction  of  their  hostile  purpose,  and  at  once  consoled  their 
vanity,  and  deceived  their  pastor,  Rasles,  by  vaunting  the  courage  and 
firmness  they  pretended  to  have  exerted  in  menacing  the  English,  and  in 
sternly  refusing  to  make  any  concessions  to  those  hostile  heretics.^  But 
whatever  pleasure  Rasles  might  have  derived  from  this  assurance  was  speed- 
ily counterbalanced  by  an  open  demonstration  of  pacific  purpose  towards 
the  rivals  of  his  countrymen. 

On  the  death  of  their  chief,  the  Indians,  in  opposition  to  Rasles'  urgent 
advice,  elected  for  his  successor  a  sachem  who  had  always  deprecated  war 
with  the  Enghsh  ;  and  by  his  influence  the  tribes  were  persuaded  to  send 
hostages  to  Boston  as  sureties  for  their  good  behaviour,  and  for  the  indem- 
nification of  the  injury  inflicted  on  the  colonists  at  Canso.  Vaudreuil,  the 
governor  of  Canada,  was  highly  displeased  and  alarmed  by  this  intelligence. 
In  a  letter  to  Rasles,  he  condemned  the  faint-hearted  demeanour,  as  he 
termed  it,  of  the  Indians,  and  entreated  the  priest  still  to  persist  in  stimu- 
lating, them  to  warlike  purpose.  In  aid  of  Rasles'  exertions,  Vaudreuil  pre- 
vailed with  all  his  Indian  alhes  in  Canada  to  send  deputies  to  Norridgewock, 
to  assure  the  Indians  there  of  powerful  support  in  any  war  they  might  under- 
take with  New  England.  The  government  of  Massachusetts,  apprized  of 
these  transactions,  indignantly  complained  of  the  perfidious  hostility  of  the 
French  governor  in  thus  stirring  up  enemies  against  them  during  the  sub- 
sistence of  peace  between  France  and  England.  But  Vaudreuil  was  able 
to  justify  himself  to  his  sovereign  ;  and  apprehended  Httle  danger  to  his  rep- 
utation from  charges  which  the  accusers  were  not  likely  ever  to  be  able  to 
substantiate  by  satisfactory  proof.  An  application  was  then  made  to  the  In- 
dians, requiring  them  to  deliver  up  Rasles  ;  and  on  their  refusal,  a  party  of 

^  To  such  tergiversation  as  this  we  may  impute  the  erroneous  accounts  of  these  treaties 
and  transactions  by  Charlevoix  and  other  French  writers. 


CHAP.  II.]  LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR  DUMMER.  7| 

New  England  militia  made  a  sudden  incursion  into  the  territory  of  Norridge- 
vvock,  and  would  have  seized  the  priest,  if  the  Indians  had  not  seasonably 
conveyed  him  beyond  their  reach.  [November,  1721.]  The  assailants, 
however,  obtained  possession  of  Rasles'  strong-box  and  of  all  his  papers, 
which  were  found  to  contain  the  amplest  proof  of  the  intrigues  by  which 
he  and  Vaudreuil  fomented  the  hostility  of  the  Indians  against  the  English. ^ 

This  insult  to  their  principal  settlement  and  their  beloved  pastor  failed 
not  to  excite  the  resentment  of  the  Indians  ;  though  the  expediency  of 
deliberate  preparation  restrained  the  infliction  of  their  vengeance  for  a  while. 
[1722.^]  At  length,  however,  it  broke  forth  in  such  a  burst  of  predatory 
hostility  on  the  frontiers  of  New  England,  as  provoked  a  declaration  of 
war  from  the  governments  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  Nev- 
ertheless, hopes  of  peace  were  still  indulged  by  Governor  Shute,  who, 
though  a  brave  officer,  and  incapable  of  declining  the  hostile  overtures  of 
a  civilized  antagonist,  displayed  extreme  reluctance  to  martial  controversy 
with  savages  ;  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  intimidate  the  Eastern  Indians 
into  submission  by  the  intervention  of  the  Six  Nations,  whose  friendship 
the  State  of  New  York,  by  the  wise  counsels  of  Governor  Burnet,  was 
sedulously  endeavouring  to  recultivate.  By  the  persuasions  of  Burnet,  the 
Six  Nations  were  induced  to  send  deputies  to  New  England,  who,  after  a 
conference  with  Shute  and  the  Massachusetts  assembly  (whose  disagree- 
ment seems  not  to  have  escaped  their  penetration),  consented  to  threaten 
the  Eastern  Indians  with  an  invasion  from  the  confederated  tribes,  unless  an 
immediate  peace  were  concluded  with  the  Enghsh.  But  whether  the  threat 
was  feebly  expressed,  or  the  Eastern  Indians  were  fortified  by  rage  and  hope 
against  its  influence,  they  paid  no  attention  to  it ;  and  a  series  of  skirmish- 
ing engagements  ensued  between  them  and  the  provincial  militia.  The 
savages,  to  whose  success  surprise  and  sudden  attack  were  essential,  sus- 
tained some  defeats  ;  but  the  military  operations  of  the  colonists  were  un- 
important, and  the  efficacy  of  them  was  obstructed  by  the  incessant  disputes 
and  collisions  between  Shute  and  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts.  In  the 
close  of  this  year,  Shute,  finding  that  the  public  prejudice  against  him 
daily  increased,  and  having  privately  obtained  permission  from  the  king,  sud- 
denly departed  from  the  scene  of  his  authority,  and  returned  to  England. 

The  supreme  command  in  Massachusetts  devolved,  in  consequence,  on 
WiUiam  Dummer,  the  Heutenant-governor,  who,  though  he  had  incurred 
some  popular  jealousy  from  his  friendship  with  Shute,  never  ceased  to  de- 
mean himself  with  decent  dignity,  real  patriotism,  and  sound  discretion.  He 
was  a  stranger  to  that  punctilious  pride  which  magnifies  disagreements, 
prolongs  collisions,  and  never  graciously  yields  the  strictness  of  political  the- 
ory and  ordinance  to  the  irregular,  but  irresistible,  movements  of  the  general 
will.  When  he  first  convoked  the  two  houses  of  assembly,  — and,  without 
alluding  to  the  unhappy  dissensions  that  had  prevailed,  announced  that  he 
was  ready  to  unite  with  them  in  any  measure  calculated  to  promote  the  king's 
service  and  the  good  of  the  province,  —  Sewell,  an  aged  counsellor,  former- 
ly a  judge,  and  who  had  held  office  during  the  subsistence  of  the  first  pro- 

'  Among  his  papers  was  found  a  dictionary,  which  he  had  composed,  of  the  Norridgewock 
language,  and  which  was  deposited  in  the  library  of  Harvard  College.    Hohnes. 

'  This  year  the  French  colony  of  Louisiana  was  reduced  to  such  straits,  that  many  of  the  in- 
habitants forsook  it,  and  united  themselves  to  the  English  colonists  in  Carolina.  The  number 
of  these  emigrants  was  so  great,  that  the  Carolinians  were  much  incommoded  by  them,  and 
advised  Bienville,  the  French  governor  of  Louisiana,  to  take  measures  for  preventing  the  far- 
ther desertion  of  his  province.     Holmes. 


72  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [COOK  VHI. 

vincial  charter,  addressed  the  audience  with  a  gravity  and  simplicity  of 
manner,  and  a  primitive  style  of  eloquence,  characteristic  of  the  fathers  of 
New  England.  "  If  your  Honor  and  the  honorable  board  please  to  give 
me  leave,"  he  said,  "  I  would  speak  a  word  or  two  upon  this  solemn  oc- 
casion. Although  the  unerring  providence  of  God  has  brought  your  Honor 
to  the  chair  of  government  in  a  cloudy  and  tempestuous  season,  yet  you 
have  this  for  your  encouragement,  that  the  people  you  have  to  do  with  are  a 
part  of  the  Israel  of  God,  and  you  may  expect  to  have  of  the  prudence  and 
patience  of  Moses  communicated  to  you  for  your  conduct.  It  is  evident 
that  our  Almighty  Saviour  counselled  the  first  planters  to  remove  hither 
and  settle  here  ;  and  they  dutifully  followed  his  advice  ;  and  therefore  he 
will  never  leave  nor  forsake  them  nor  theirs  :  so  that  your  Honor  must  needs 
be  happy  in  sincerely  seeking  their  happiness  and  welfare,  which  your 
birth  and  education  will  incline  you  to  do.  Difficilia  qua;,  pulchra,  I 
promise  myself  that  they  who  sit  at  this  board  will  yield  their  faithful  ad- 
vice to  your  Honor,  according  to  the  duty  of  their  place."  The  prediction 
of  this  venerable  counsellor  was  fulfilled  :  and,  though  some  jealousy  con- 
tinued for  a  while  to  attach  to  the  deputy-governor,  and  prompted  the  assem- 
bly to  various  acts  of  encroachment  upon  his  functions,  yet  he  finally  suc- 
ceeded in  refuting  injurious  suspicion  by  steady  virtue  and  unaffected  mod- 
eration ;  and  was  enabled  to  conduct  the  government  with  harmony,  satis- 
faction, and  respect.^ 

The  Norridgewock  Indians,  aided  now  by  the  cooperation  of  all  the 
other  tribes  in  alliance  with  the  French,  carried  on  the  war  with  great 
fury  and  havoc  on  the  frontiers  of  New  England.  [1723.^]  Among  other 
inhabitants  of  New  Hampshire  who  endured  their  ravages,  were  certain 
families  of  the  Quaker  persuasion  ;  of  whom  some  were  killed  and  scalped, 
and  others,  carried  away  into  captivity,  were  treated  with  peculiar  cruelty, 
for  refusing,  at  the  command  of  their  captors,  to  dance^  —  a  pastime  pro- 
hibited by  the  sober  canons  of  Quakerism.  The  escape  of  one  Quaker  was 
ascribed  to  his  practice  of  keeping  firearms  in  his  house,  a  circumstance 
which  perhaps  contributed  to  the  destruction  of  his  brethren,  by  weakening 
the  safeguard  of  their  pacific  principles.  The  Indian  hostilities  were  en- 
countered and  retorted  with  the  utmost  skill  and  bravery  by  the  govern- 
ment and  the  militia  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire,  aided  by  a 
subsidiary  force  from  Connecticut.  The  assembly  of  Connecticut  at  first 
declined  to  participate  in  the  war,  judging  it  a  mere  insignificant  partial 
quarrel  with  the  Norridgewocks,  and  being  induced  to  doubt  of  its  justice 
by  the  reluctance  to  engage  in  it  that  Governor  Shute  manifested.  But, 
finally  ascertaining  that  their  doubts  had  wronged  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  perceiving  the  extended  hostilities  in  which  this  people  were  in- 
volved by  French  intrigue,  they  readily  furnished  a  liberal  contingent  of 
troops  and  money  to  aid  their  friends  in  a  war,  from  the  troubles  of  which 
their  own  local  situation  might  have  enabled  them  to  enjoy  a  cheap  and 
selfish  exemption.  The  Six  Nations,  notwithstanding  the  assurance  they 
gave  in  the  preceding  year,  declined  publicly  or  generally  to  espouse  the 
quarrel  of  the  colonists  ;  but  declared  that  they  had  signified  to  their 
young  men,  that  any  who  were  so  disposed  might  unite  themselves  with  the 
New  England  forces.     Only  a  very  few  of  the  Mohawks  embraced  this  per- 

'  Oldmixon.     Hutchinson.     W.  Smith.     Belknap.      Trumbull.     Collections  of  the   Rhode 
Island  Historical  Society. 
*  Dr.  Increase  Mather  died  this  year  at  Boston,  at  the  age  of  eighty-five.  ,     '  '  ' 


CHAP.  II.]  WAR  WITH  THE  EASTERN  INDIANS.  73 

mission,  and  their  services  were  brief  and  inefficient.  To  particularize  the 
successive  expeditions  and  petty  engagements  of  which  this  Indian  war  was 
productive  would  involve  a  detail  too  cumbrous  and  minute  for  general 
history.  The  skilful  vigor  and  heroic  intrepidity  of  the  colonists  have 
been  honorably  commemorated  by  the  provincial  annalists,  in  their  ample 
narrations  of  the  various  martial  achievements,  which,  among  other  im- 
portant results,  contributed  to  preserve  among  the  colonial  population  a 
spirit  of  military  enterprise,  and  familiarized  great  numbers  of  persons  with 
the  hardships,  dangers,  and  operations  of  war. 

The  most  remarkable  event  by  which  the  war  was  signalized  was  the 
sudden  attack  and  entire  destruction  of  the  Indian  settlement  of  Norridge- 
wock  by  a  force  consisting  of  four  companies  of  the  provincial  militia, 
amounting  in  all  to  two  hundred  and  eight  men.  [1724.]  The  Indians 
were  completely  surprised,  and  defeated  with  great  slaughter.  The  New 
England  officers  had  given  orders  to  spare  Rasles,  the  Jesuit,  whom  they 
ardently  desired  to  take  prisoner  ;  but,  to  their  great  disappointment,  this  re- 
markable man  was  slain  by  a  soldier  to  whom  he  refused  to  surrender  ^ 
Both  the  Catholic  Indians  and  their  French  allies  were  much  scandalized 
by  what  they  deemed  the  sacrilegious  impiety  of  the  victors,  who  account- 
ed it  no  sacrilege  at  all  to  strip  Rasles'  chapel  of  its  plate,  and  valued 
themselves  on  testifying  a  zealous  abhorrence  of  idolatry  by  destroying  the 
crucifixes  and  other  Cathohc  imagery  which  the  chapel  and  village  displayed. 
The  Norridgewock  tribe,  after  this  fatal  blow,  never  recovered  their  former 
strength  or  spirit  ;  but  the  war  was  still  continued  by  their  allies,  the  Pe- 
nobscots,  and  the  Canadian  auxiliaries. 

The  conduct  which  the  British  colonists  imputed  to  Vaudreuil,  the  gov- 
ernor of  Canada,  was  so  flagrant  a  breach  of  the  treaty  of  peace  subsisting 
between  the  crowns  of  England  and  France,  and  was  so  strongly  attested  by 
the  additional  evidence  recently  obtained  by  the  colonists,  that,  in  spite  of 
the  failure  of  their  previous  application,  they  were  induced  again  to  hope 
that  a  spirited  remonstrance  might  inspire  him  with  alarm  at  the  responsi- 
bility he  was  incurring,  and  produce  some  beneficial  effect.  [1725.]  With 
this  view,  commissioners  were  despatched  to  Canada  by  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire,  with  instructions  to  demand  from  Vaudreuil  restitution  of 
the  captives  who  had  been  carried  within  his  jurisdiction,  and  to  remon- 
strate with  him  on  his  unjust  and  dishonorable  policy  in  instigating  the  In- 
dians to  hostilities  with  the  people  of  New  England.  Vaudreuil  received  the 
envoys  with  great  politeness,  and  at  first  attempted  to  deny  that  he  had 
given  any  countenance  whatever  to  the  enemies  of  their  countrymen  ; 
but,  closely  pressed  with  proofs  of  his  intrigues,  which  he  was  unprepared 
to  meet,  and  especially  with  the  production  of  his  letters  to  Rasles,  the 
Jesuit,  which  appeared  to  strike  him  with  a  penetrative  shame,  he  could  not 
help  perceiving  that  the  interest  of  his  reputation,  as  a  man  of  honor,  im- 
periously demanded  that  the  complaints  of  New  England  should  be  stifled 
as  quickly  as  possible  ;  and,  accordingly,  he  promised  to  do  everything 
in  his  power  to  dispose  the  Indians  to  peace,  and  to  induce  them  to  re- 
s-tore their  captives  for  a  reasonable  ransom.  The  English  commissioners 
remarked  that  they  found  the  governor  much  more  candid  and  amenable 

'  About  twenty  vears  after  the  death  of  Rasles,  his  hostile  policy  among  the  Indians  was  re- 
sumed and  employed  by  another  Jesuit,  of  equal,  if  not  higher,  capacity,  against  the  English 
in  Georgia.     See  a  note  to  Book  IX.,  post. 
VOL.    II.  10 


74  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

to  reason,  justice,  and  humanity,  when  they  conversed  with  him  alone,  than 
when  any  of  the  French  Jesuits  were  present  ;  and  that  Vaudreuil,  no  less 
than  the  Indians,  was  manifestly  awed  and  controlled  by  these  ecclesiastics, 
who  possessed  at  this  time  a  flourishing  seminary  and  extensive  influence 
in  Canada. 

The  benefit  of  this  embassy  was  experienced  soon  after  in  the  discontin- 
uance of  hostilities  by  the  Indians  of  Canada,  and  the  proposition  of  peace 
and  friendship  by  the  tribes  inhabiting  the  eastern  quarters  of  New  England. 
A  treaty  was  accordingly  negotiated  with  them  soon  after  by  Dummer  and 
Wentworth,  the  deputy-governors  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire, 
and  by  one  of  the  officers  of  the  British  government  in  Nova  Scotia  ;  and, 
unlike  the  fate  of  former  pactions,  it  was  followed  by  a  peace  of  long  du- 
ration. This  unusual  result  proceeded  from  no  peculiar  excellence  in  the 
treaty,  which  differed  not  from  the  former  ones  in  any  material  respect  ; 
but  from  the  prudence  of  Dummer  and  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  in  es- 
tablishing without  farther  delay  the  trading-houses  formerly  projected  at 
the  rivers  St.  George,  Kennebec,  and  Saco,  where  the  Indians  speedily 
found,  that,  in  exchange  for  their  furs  and  skins,  they  were  supplied  with 
the  European  goods  which  they  wanted  on  better  terms  than  they  obtained 
from  the  French,  or  even  the  private  English  traders.  A  law  was  then  en- 
acted for  restraining  private  traffic  with  the  Indians  ;  but  the  estabhshment  of 
the  pubhc  trading-houses,  where  goods  were  furnished  at  a  cheaper  rate 
than  private  traders  could  aflx)rd,  rendered  the  law  as  superfluous,  as,  with- 
out this  measure,  it  would  have  been  unavailing.  Dummer  engaged  that 
the  Indians  should  be  suppHed  with  goods  at  the  same  prices  for  which  they 
were  sold  in  Boston  ;  and  the  government  endeavoured  to  reconcile  this 
paction  with  commercial  advantage,  by  making  wholesale  purchases  of 
goods,  which  were  afterwards  disposed  of  to  the  Indians  at  the  Boston  retail 
prices.  But  the  profit  thence  accruing  was  so  inadequate  to  the  charge 
of  trading-houses,  truck-masters,  garrisons,  and  the  vessels  employed  in 
transporting  the  goods,  that  the  province  was  practically  subjected  to  a 
considerable  tribute  for  the  benefit  of  the  Indians.  However,  the  measure 
was  generally  approved,  as  tending  to  the  preservation  of  peace,  and  more 
reputable  than  the  payment  of  a  pension  expressly  assigned  for  this  pur- 
pose.^ 

Meanwhile,  Governor  Shute  was  actively  employed  in  prosecuting  vin- 
dictive measures  at  the  court  of  London  against  the  assembly  of  Massachu- 
setts ;  to  which  there  was  communicated,  in  the  year  1723,  a  summons  to 
answer  the  complaint  he  exhibited  to  the  king  in  council.  This  complaint 
charged  the  assembly  with  various  encroachments  on  the  royal  prerogative  ; 
particularly  in  the  tenor  of  their  resolutions  with  respect  to  the  reserved 
pine-trees  ;  in  refusing  to  admit  the  governor's  negative  on  their  choice  of  a 
speaker  ;  in  assuming  the  appointment  of  public  fasts  ;  in  interrupting  their 
own  sessions  by  long  adjournments  ;  and  in  suspending  military  officers,  and 
arrogating  the  direction  of  military  operations.     The  house  of  representa- 

*  The  cruelties  which  the  Indians  had  committed  during  this  war  seem  to  have  created  the 
most  violent  antipathy  against  the  whole  Indian  race  in  the  minds  of  the  settlers  on  the  fron- 
tiers of  New  Hampshire.  The  Indians  kept  these  feelings  alive  after  the  peace  by  visiting  the 
survivors  of  families  who  had  suffered  from  their  hostilities,  and  boasting  of  the  tortures  they 
had  inflicted  on  their  relatives.  The  consequence  was,  that,  "  when  any  person  was  arrested 
for  killing  an  Indian  in  time  of  peace,  he  was  either  forcibly  rescued  from  the  hands  of  justice, 
or,  if  brought  to  trial,  invariably  acquitted  ;  it  being  impossible  to  empanel  a  jury,  some  of 
whom  had  not  suffered  by  the  Indians,  either  in  their  persons  or  families."     Belknap. 


CHAP.  II.]        EXPLANATORY  CHARTER  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.  75 

lives  at  first  received  this  formidable  intimation  with  more  spirit  than  pru- 
dence, —  voting,  with  contemptuous  brevity,  that  the  complaint  was  ground- 
less, and  that  an  agent  should  be  instructed  to  employ  lawyers  to  justify 
their  conduct.  But  as  the  council  unanimously  refused  to  concur  in  a 
proceeding  so  wantonly  insolent,  the  assembly  transmitted  a  particular  an- 
swer to  the  several  articles  of  complaint,  and  an  address  to  the  king,  in  which 
they  justified  every  part  of  their  behaviour.  They  also  despatched  Cooke, 
who  had  been  the  chief  advocate  of  all  the  obnoxious  measures,  to  defend 
them  in  England.  The  provincial  council,  who  dissented  from  the  house 
of  representatives  on  every  point  embraced  in  the  governor's  complaint, 
except  the  disputed  negative  on  the  choice  of  a  speaker,  composed  an  ad- 
dress to  the  king  on  this  point,  but  forbore  to  allude  to  the  others,  lest 
they  should  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  enemies  of  provincial  liberty  at  the 
British  court.  A  more  moderate  temper,  meanwhile,  was  gradually  dis- 
closed in  the  house  of  representatives,  of  which  one  of  the  first  indications 
was  the  prudent  measure  of  reappointing  their  experienced  friend  and 
advocate,  Jeremiah  Dummer,  to  the  office  of  provincial  agent  in  Britain. 
But,  at  length,  after  divers  debates  and  discussions  at  London  respecting 
the  articles  of  complaint,  the  reports  of  the  attorney  and  solicitor-general, 
and  of  the  Lords  of  Trade,  and  finally  the  determination  of  the  king  in  coun- 
cil, proved,  all,  in  the  most  unqualified  terms,  unfavorable  to  the  Massachu- 
setts assembly.  The  provincial  agents,  in  this  emergency,  by  the  advice  of 
their  English  friends,  consented  to  acknowledge  that  the  proceedings  of  the 
assembly  had  been  faulty  in  relation  to  the  king's  woods  and  the  mterference 
with  military  operations,  and  pledged  themselves  that  such  violation  of 
constitutional  principles  would  not  again  be  repeated. 

By  the  prudent  conduct  of  the  agents,  and  the  interest  of  the  English 
friends  of  the  province,  the  British  government  was  induced  to  propose 
merely  that  an  explanatory  charter  should  be  accepted  by  the  assembly,  ex- 
pressly declaring  the  governor's  power  to  negative  the  speaker,  and  limiting 
the  assembly's  adjournment  by  act  of  its  own  will  to  two  days  ;  —  with  the 
intimation,  that,  if  this  lenient  ofl^er  were  rejected,  the  whole  controversy 
between  Shute  and  the  assembly  would  be  submitted  to  the  British  par- 
liament. An  explanatory  charter  to  the  foregoing  effect  was  accordingly 
prepared,  and  transmitted  to  Boston  for  the  approbation  or  rejection  of  the 
assembly.  [August  20,  1725.]  Though  the  temper  of  the  house  was 
now  reduced  to  a  far  more  moderate  strain  than  it  had  formerly  indulged, 
yet,  of  eighty  representatives  of  the  people,  no  fewer  than  thirty-two  voted 
that  the  charter  should  be  rejected  ;  and  a  similar  opposition  was  made 
by  four  members  of  the  council.  [Jan.  15,  1726.]  But,  by  a  majority  in 
both  these  chambers,  a  resolution  was  carried  for  accepting  the  charter, 
and  couched  in  terms  of  loyalty  and  satisfaction  that  imported  rather  the 
reception  of  a  favor  than  the  resignation  of  a  right.  This  accommodating 
behaviour  of  the  assembly,  by  which  a  controversy  that  at  one  time  be- 
tokened the  most  dangerous  consequences  was  amicably  composed,  has 
been  ascribed  in  a  considerable  degree  to  the  prudence  of  William  "Dum- 
mer, the  lieutenant-governor,  and  the  influence  which  his  liberal  administra- 
tion had  enabled  him  to  acquire.  An  interruption  of  the  general  harmony 
was  portended  by  the  announcement  of  Shute's  approaching  return,  which, 
hovyever,  he  was  happily  induced  to  defer  by  reflecting  that  he  had  strangely 
omitted  to  complain  of  the  treatment  he  had  received  in  respect  of  salary, 


76  HISTORY   OF   NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

and  to  obtain  any  favorable  provision  with  regard  to  a  matter  so  deeply- 
interesting  to  him.  While  he  was  assailing  the  provincial  agents  with  re- 
newed complaints  on  this  subject,  and  tarrying  at  London  in  lingering  diffi- 
dence of  their  soothing  assurances  that  the  province  would  doubtless  provide 
for  him  in  a  handsome  manner,  his  return  was  intercepted  for  ever  by  the 
death  of  the  king.  On  the  accession  of  George  the  Second  to  the  British 
throne,  the  intrigues  of  some  London  merchants  and  of  a  faction  in  the  prov- 
ince of  New  York,  aided  by  the  interest  of  Colonel  Montgomery,  who  had 
been  groom  of  the  bedchamber  to  the  new  monarch  while  he  was  Prince 
of  Wales,  caused  Burnet  to  be  removed  from  New  York, —  the  command 
of  which  and  of  New  Jersey  was  committed  to  Montgomery  ;  and,  as  a 
compensation  to  Burnet,  the  government  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hamp- 
shire, withdrawn  from  Shute,  was  conferred  upon  him.^ 

The  disappointment  which  Burnet  sustained  by  these  ministerial  arrange- 
ments was  very  severe,  and  perceptibly  affected  his  health  and  spirits. 
Though  embarrassed  in  his  pecuniary  circumstances,  and  an  enemy  to 
pomp  and  parade,  he  had  conducted  himself  with  such  disinterestedness 
and  generosity  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  that  he  carried  thence  noth- 
ing with  him  to  New  England  but  the  hbrary  which  accompanied  him  from 
Britain.  The  hopes  he  had  begun  to  indulge  of  repairing  his  fortune,  and 
of  executing  his  political  schemes  for  the  advantage  of  New  York,  he 
was  now  compelled  to  forego,  in  order  to  assume  the  direction  of  a  people 
whose  reported  jealousy  of  their  governors  excited  in  his  mind  the  most 
disagreeable  forebodings  of  an  unquiet  administration.  Very  different  were 
the  sentiments  which  his  appointment  inspired  in  the  people  of  New 
England,  who  regarded  the  name  of  Burnet  as  a  pledge  of  civil  and  re- 
ligious liberty,  and  beheld  with  approving  eye  the  wisdom  and  integrity  by 
which  already  this  name  was  illustrated  in  America.  A  deputation  was 
sent  to  conduct  him  in  state  to  his  new  government  ;^  and  such  a  multhude 
of  carriages  and  horsemen  thronged  to  meet  his  approach  to  Boston,  that 
he  entered  the  town  with  a  more  numerous  attendance  and  more  splendid 
cavalcade  than  ever  before  or  after  graced  the  arrival  of  a  British  governor. 
But  the  apprehensions  of  Burnet  were  unhappily  fulfilled,  and  the  provincial 
expectations  completely  disappointed. 

In  New  York  and  New  Jersey  he  was  distinguished  by  his  indifference 
with  respect  to  his  own  official  .emoluments  ;  but,  either  from  a  change  in 
his  temper,  or  from  the  strain  and  tenor  of  the  instructions  which  he  now 
received  from  Britain,  this  was  the  object  of  his  earhest  and  most  eager 
concern  in  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  ;  and  the  people  heard  with 
little  pleasure  the  magnificent  reception  they  had  given  him  cited  as  a  mani- 
fest proof  of  the  abihty  of  the  country  to  afford  him  a  large  and  perma- 

*  Hutchinson.     Belknap.     Douglass.     Trumbull.     Holmes.     W.  Smith. 

2  "  One  of  the  committee  who  went  from  Boston  to  meet  him  on  the  borders  of  Rhode 
Island,  and  conduct  him  to  the  seat  of  government,  was  the  facetious  Colonel  Tailer.  Burnet 
complained  of  the  long  graces  which  were  said  by  clergymen  on  the  road,  and  asked  Tailer 
when  they  would  shorten.  He  answered,  '  The  graces  will  increase  in  length  till  you  come  to 
Boston  ;  after  that,  they  will  shorten  till  you  come  to  your  government  of  New  Hampshire, 
where  your  Excellency  will  find  no  grace  at  all.'  "  Belknap.  Though  a  pious  man,  Burnet 
laid  very  little  stress  on  modes  and  forms.  "A  little  more  caution  and  conformity  to  the 
different  ages,  manners,  customs,  and  even  prejudices  of  different  companies  would  have 
been  more  politic ;  but  his  open,  undisguised   mind  could  not  submit  to  it.     Being  asked  to 


iline  with  an  old  charier  senator^  who  retained  the  custom  of  saying  grace  sitting,  the  grave 
gentleman  desired  to  know  which  would  be  more  agreeable  to  his  Excellency,  that  grace  should 
be  said  standing  or  sitting;  the  governor  replied, '  Standing  or  sitting,  any  way  or  no  way, just 


CHAP.  II.]     BURNET  GOVERNOR  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.  77 

nent  income.  The  assembly  of  New  Hampshire  consented  to  settle  on  him 
for  three  years  an  annual  salary  of  two  hundred  pounds  ;  ^  but  the  assem- 
bly of  Massachusetts,  though  they  voted  to  him  at  once  the  sum  of  four- 
teen hundred  pounds,  besides  handsome  presents  for  his  travelling  expenses, 
refused  to  enact  any  ordinance  for  a  fixed  or  permanent  salary.  It  was  in 
vain  that  he  reminded  them,  that  the  wisdom  of  parliament,  in  the  parent 
state,  had  made  it  an  established  custom  to  grant  the  civil  list  to  the  king 
for  life,  and  expressed  his  hope  that  the  representatives  of  the  people  in 
Massachusetts  would  not  acknowledge  themselves  exceeded  in  duty  to  his 
Majesty  by  any  portion  of  his  subjects.  It  was  forcibly  answered  by  the 
assembly,  that  the  cases  were  widely  different  ;  that  the  king  was  the  com- 
mon father  of  his  people,  and  that  his  interests  were  inseparably  united 
with  theirs  ;  whereas  a  provincial  governor,  after  the  close  of  his  brief 
administration,  was  affected  neither  by  the  welfare  nor  by  the  decay  of  the 
society  over  which  he  had  presided,  and  could  not,  therefore,  justly  expect 
the  same  confidence  from  it  which  the  nation  at  large  reposed  in  the  monarch. 
The  governor  demanded  if  it  were  consistent  with  reason  or  justice,  that 
he  should  be  fettered  in  the  discharge  of  his  duty  to  the  king  by  dependence 
on  the  people  for  the  means  of  subsistence  ;  and  the  assembly  endeavoured 
to  defeat  or  diminish  the  force  of  this,  his  strongest  plea,  by  declaring  their 
willingness  to  determine,  annually,  his  salary,  by  a  vote  referring  to  the  cur- 
rent and  not  to  the  past  year  ;  protesting  withal  that  it  would  be  time  for 
him  to  complain  when  an  inadequate  or  dishonorable  provision  was  ten- 
dered. Burnet  replied  by  reminding  them  reproachfully  of  the  manner  in 
which  they  had  dealt  with  Shute  ;  and  in  addition  to  the  impohcy  of  thus 
identifying  himself  with  the  case  of  that  unpopular  governor,  he  committed 
the  imprudence  of  threatening  that  the  legislature  of  Great  Britain  would 
allocate  a  fixed  salary  upon  the  province,  '•'■  and  'perhaps  do  something  else 
besides ^^^  —  a  vague  menace  of  danger,  which  excited  equal  jealousy  and  in- 
dignation. He  explained  the  meaning  of  it,  in  the  progress  of  the  contro- 
versy, by  assuring  them,  that,  if  the  British  government  should  be  provoked 
to  call  the  attention  of  parliament  to  their  conduct,  the  provincial  charter 
would  be  dissolved  without  the  slightest  scruple  or  opposition.  The  assem- 
bly vainly  solicited  him  to  accept  the  sums  they  had  voted,  and  to  adjourn 
their  session.  He  declared  he  was  not  at  liberty  to  accept  any  thing  but 
a  fixed  salary  ;  and,  availing  himself  of  the  powers  conferred  on  the  gov- 
ernor by  the  late  explanatory  charter,  he  refused  to  prorogue  them,  un- 
less they  would  comply  with  his  demands.  Some  time  after,  he  adjourned 
the  session  from  Boston  to  the  town  of  Salem,  which  he  remarked,  with 
unbecoming  levity,  was  a  name  propitious  to  harmony  ;  and  declared  that  he 
would  next  try  the  effect  of  a  session  at  the  town  of  Concord.  But  this 
jocular  treatment  of  an  affair  of  great  public  interest  and  importance  was 
not  more  effectual  than  his  arguments  and  menaces  had  been  ;  and  the  as- 
sembly, in  their  several  migrations,  evinced  a  spirit  not  to  be  affected  by 
change  of  place. ^  Some  of  the  members  now  began  to  regret  Governor 
Shute,  who  had  declared  that  he  would  contentedly  accept  a  salary  of  five 
hundred  pounds  a  year  ;  while  Burnet  refused  to  accept  a  tender  of  more 

'  By  this  assembly  it  was  enacted  that  the  qualification  of  an  elector  of  New  Hampshire 
should  be  a  real  estate  of  the  value  of  fifty  pounds. 

'  The  dispute  between  Burnet  and  the  Massachusetts  assembly  excited  a  good  deal  of  in- 
terest in  the  other  American  provinces,  and  in  particular  attracted  the  comments  of  the 
Vennsylvanian  newspapers,  which  were  first  established  about  this  time.    Franklin's  Meinoirg. 


78  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIIl. 

than  double  this  amount.  Strongly  impressed  with  the  justice  of  their 
cause,  the  assembly,  in  an  address  to  the  crown,  declared  that  they  were 
resolved,  and  were  convinced  that  the  same  purpose  would  also  prevail  with 
succeeding  assemblies,  to  provide  "  ample  and  honorable  support "  to  the 
royal  governor  ;  but  that  their  fidelity  to  their  constituents  would  not  per- 
mit them,  by  the  estabhshment  of  a  fixed  salary,  to  separate  the  interest  of 
the  governor  from  the  general  interest  of  the  province.  The  presentation 
of  this  address,  and  the  support  of  the  assembly's  plea  at  the  court  of 
London,  were  confided  to  the  provincial  agent,  in  conjunction  with  Jonathan 
Belcher,  whose  public  spirit  on  a  former  occasion  we  have  already  re- 
marked, and  who  now  exerted  the  utmost  zeal  to  promote  the  success  of  his 
countrymen  in  a  controversy  so  warmly  and  deeply  interesting  to  them. 

As  the  assembly  were  precluded,  by  their  disagreement  with  the  govern- 
or, from  levying  money  to  defray  the  expenses  incurred  by  their  agents  in 
England,  the  funds  requisite  for  this  purpose  were  contributed  by  the  mer- 
chants of  Boston,  whom  the  assembly  thanked  for  their  patriotism,  and 
promised  with  all  convenient  speed  to  reimburse.  But  they  were  very  soon 
apprized  that  their  address  to  the  king  had  been  unfavorably  received,  and 
that  the  Lords  of  Trade  had  pronounced  in  a  report  to  the  privy  council, 
that  Massachusetts,  with  the  most  ungrateful  disloyalty,  was  endeavouring 
to  wrest  the  small  remains  of  prerogative  from  the  hands  of  the  crown, 
in  order  to  render  itself  independent  of  the  parent  state  ;  and  had  recom- 
mended an  immediate  introduction  of  the  controversy  between  the  provin- 
cial assembly  and  the  governor  to  the  attention  of  parhament.  Grieved,  but 
not  dismayed,  by  this  intelHgence,  the  assembly  still  refused  to  yield  to 
the  governor's  demand  ;  protesting  that  it  was  better  that  the  liberties  of 
the  people  should  be  withdrawn  by  the  British  parliament,  than  surren- 
dered by  their  own  representatives.  In  this  determination  they  were  en- 
couraged to  persist  by  the  advice  of  the  provincial  agents  at  London,  who 
soon  after  communicated  their  private  opinion,  that,  notwithstanding  the  rec- 
ommendation of  the  Lords  of  Trade  and  the  privy  council,  the  royal  min- 
isters had  no  serious  intention  of  bringing  the  matter  under  the  consideration 
of  parhament.  The  assembly,  in  order  to  animate  the  popular  resolution, 
caused  this  private  communication  from  the  agents  to  be  printed  and  pub- 
lished ;  —  an  imprudent  step,  which  might  have  been  attended  with  the  most 
injurious  consequences  to  the  province,  if  an  alteration  of  the  posture  of 
affairs  had  not  been  produced  by  the  sudden  and  unexpected  death  of  the 
governor.  The  resentment  he  had  excited  did  not  survive  him  for  a 
moment ;  so  great  a  peacemaker  and  tamer  of  human  enmity,  sometimes, 
is  death.  It  was  universally  acknowledged  that  he  had  displayed  an  hon- 
orable, disinterested,  and  generous  disposition  in  every  particular  of  his 
short  administration,  except  in  the  one  unhappy  instance  in  which  he  of- 
fended by  an  inflexible  adherence  to  illiberal  instructions  ;  and  he  was 
conducted  to  the  grave  with  the  respectful  solemnity  of  a  public  funeral, 
and  with  demonstrations  of  esteem  creditable  alike  to  the  liberality  of  those 
who  entertained  this  sentiment,  and  to  the  merit  of  the  individual  who 
inspired  it. 

Jonathan  Belcher,  who  was  still  in  England,  on  learning  Burnet's  death, 
employed  all  the  interest  of  the  connections  he  had  acquired  as  deputy 
of  the  province,  to  procure  for  himself  the  vacant  appointment  ;  and  the 
British  government  were  induced  to  bestow  it  upon  him  by  the  hope  that 


CHAP.  II.]  BELCHER  GOVERNOR  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.  79 

his  influence  with  his  countrymen  would  be  successfully  exerted  to  procure 
their  submission  to  the  royal  instructions  with  regard  to  a  permanent  salary. 
It  would  seem,  indeed,  that  he  gave  somq  pledge  or  assurance  to  this  ef- 
fect ;  and  perhaps  his  view  of  the  merits  of  the  controversy  was  altered  by 
the  elevated  sphere  from  which  he  now  regarded  it,  and  by  the  altered  in- 
terest he  acquired  in  its  issue  :  the  same  constitutional  jealousy  of  the  ad- 
ministrators of  executive  authority,  which  he  had  hitherto  deemed  a  principle 
deserving  continual  and  unrelaxed  application,  might  not  improbably  seem 
to  him  illiberal  and  affronting  when  it  was  directed  against  his  own  person. 
On  his  arrival  in  the  province  (in  the  following  year  [1730]),  his  first  ad- 
dress to  the  assembly  conveyed  an  urgent  application  in  behalf  of  the  very 
measure  against  which  his  counsel  and  his  exertions  had  been  recently  di- 
rected. He  read  to  the  assembly  the  royal  instructions,  by  which  he  was 
required  to  demand  a  fixed  salary,  and  in  which  it  was  signified,  that,  if  this 
demand  were  resisted  any  longer,  "  his  Majesty  will  find  himself  under  a 
necessity  of  laying  the  undutiful  behaviour  of  the  province  before  the  legis- 
lature of  Great  Britain,  not  only  in  this  single  instance,  but  in  many  others 
of  the  same  nature  and  tendency,  whereby  it  manifestly  appears  that  the  as- 
sembly, for  some  years  last  past,  have  attempted,  by  unwarrantable  practices, 
to  weaken,  if  not  cast  off,  the  obedience  they  owe  to  the  crown,  and  the 
dependence  which  all  colonies  ought  to  have  on  the  mother  country.''^  The 
instructions  concluded  by  directing  the  governor,  in  case  of  the  non-compli- 
ance of  the  assembly,  to  return  straightway  to  Great  Britain.  He  added, 
that  he  was  commanded  to  inform  them  that  the  king's  great  lenity  and 
goodness  had  hitherto  withheld  this  controversy  from  the  consideration  of 
parliament,  in  order  yet  to  give  them  a  final  opportunity  of  voluntarily  dem- 
onstrating a  due  regard  to  the  suggestions  of  royal  wisdom.  A  merely 
selfish  apostate  from  popular  principles  would,  perhaps,  have  added  no  far- 
ther comment  on  this  formidable  message.  But  Belcher  continued  to  ad- 
dress the  house  in  a  speech  which  affords  a  memorable  example  of  the 
absurdity  into  which  a  man  of  sense,  talent,  and  honor  may  be  driven, 
when  he  swerves  from  the  straight,  simple  paths  of  probity  and  consistency. 
He  reminded  the  people  of  the  exertions  he  had  made  to  defend  them  from 
the  measure  which  he  now  required  them  to  adopt  ;  and  declared  that  his 
opinion  of  their  past  conduct  in  resisting  it  was  quite  unaltered.  But  they 
had  now,  he  said,  struggled  long  enough  to  perceive  that  farther  resistance 
was  unavaihng,  and  ought  accordingly  to  yield.  They  had  hitherto,  he  al- 
lowed, opposed  the  royal  injunctions  with  the  same  commendable  patriotism 
with  which  Cato,  in  his  httle  provincial  senate  of  Utica,  defied  the  tyran- 
nical mandates  of  Caesar  ;  but  he  hoped  that  they  would  not  imitate  the 
folly  of  Cato  in  committing  suicide,  instead  of  prudently  submitting  to  irre- 
sistible power.  In  conclusion,  he  cautioned  them  to  remember  that  the 
illustrative  case  of  Cato  was  not  in  all  respects  parallel  to  their  situation  ; 
inasmuch  as  Caesar  was  a  tyrant,,  whereas  the  British  king  was  the  protector 
of  the  hberties  of  his  subjects.  This  ridiculous  harangue  seems  to  have  pro- 
duced no  other  effect  than  that  of  diminishing,  by  its  glaring  absurdity,  the 
displeasure  which   Belcher's  conduct  was  calculated  to  provoke. 

The  assembly  conceived  that  they  were  at  once  exemplifying  the  clas- 
sical parallel  which  he  suggested,  and  evading  the  immoral  catastrophe 
which  he  condemned,  by  declining  all  voluntary  accession  to  the  injury  of 
their  own  liberties.     They  voted  him  a  handsome  reward  for  his  services  m 


gQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VHI. 

England,  and  the  sum  of  one  thousand  pounds  for  the  management  of  public 
affairs  in  the  province,  without  any  specification  of  the  period  of  time  to 
which  this  recompense  corresponded  ;  and  firmly  declined  making  any  other 
or  farther  provision.  Belcher,  then  despairing  of  success,  endeavoured  to 
obtain  a  relaxation  of  his  instructions,  and  easily  prevailed  with  the  assem- 
bly to  present  an  address  to  the  crown  soliciting  pernjission  for  him  to  ac- 
cept the  sums  that  were  voted.  This  permission  was  granted,  on  condition 
of  his  persisting  to  urge  the  royal  instructions,  —  a  stipulation  to  which 
Belcher  ceased  to  pay  any  attention,  and  which  at  length  the  British  gov- 
ernment itself  abandoned  by  the  communication  of  a  general  permission 
to  accept  whatever  grants  the  assembly  might  think  proper  to  bestow. 
Thus,  successfully  for  Massachusetts,  terminated  her  long  and  important  con- 
troversy with  the  crown  respecting  the  emoluments  of  the  royal  governors, 
whose  dependence  on  the  popular  approbation  of  their  conduct  was  finally 
ascertained.  This  result,  and  the  manifest  satisfaction  with  which  it  was 
regarded  by  Belcher,  secured  to  him  some  years  of  tranquil  and  popular 
administration  in  Massachusetts  ;  but  exposed  him  to  the  jealous  suspicions 
of  the  British  ministers,  of  which  he  experienced  the  inconvenience  in  his 
government  of  New  Hampshire.  The  functions  of  the  deputy-governor  of 
this  province,  and  of  surveyor  of  the  king's  woods  in  New  England,  had 
been  recently  conferred  by  the  British  ministers  on  Colonel  Dunbar,  an 
Irish  officer,  whose  only  recommendation  to  such  important  trusts  appears 
to  have  been  his  single-minded  devotion  to  royal  prerogative  and  despotic 
policy.  Convinced  of  his  merit  in  this  respect,  the  British  ministry  retained 
him  in  his  office  as  a  proper  counterpoise  to  Belcher,  who,  though  created 
by  themselves  the  superior  officer  of  Dunbar,  vainly  complained  of  the  in- 
trigues by  which  his  deputy  endeavoured  to  collect  a  party  against  him.  In 
the  execution  of  the  unpopular  duties  connected  with  his  office  of  surveyor 
of  woods,  Dunbar  conducted  himself  with  a  violence  and  severity  that  in 
some  instances  produced  open  resistance  from  the  inhabitants  ;  and  because 
Belcher,  sensible  of  the  inexpediency  of  judicial  procedure  directed  against 
a  whole  people,  and  aware  of  the  provocation  that  Dunbar's  insolence  had 
given,  contented  himself  with  issuing  a  proclamation  commanding  the  magis- 
trates to  execute  and  warning  the  people  to  obey  the  laws,  he  was  denounced 
to  the  British  ministers  by  Dunbar  as  the  patron  of  the  rioters  and  the  ene- 
my of  royal  prerogative. ^ 

It  is  not  easy  to  understand  the  policy  of  the  British  government  in  the 
controversies  we  have  remarked  with  Massachusetts,  nor,  indeed,  to  be- 
lieve that  any  consistent  scheme  of  policy  w^as  actually  entertained  or  pur- 
sued. So  often  did  the  king's  ministers  forego  their  own  solemn  threats 
to  submit  the  whole  controversy  between  the  crown  and  the  province  to  the 
consideration  of  parliament,'  that  the  provincial  assembly  seems  at  length 
to  have  supposed  that  this  backwardness  must  have  been  caused  by  a 
secret  conviction  that  the  parHament  was  uiclined  to  aid  the  colonists  in 
resisting  the  royal  prerogative.  Rashly  adopting  this  erroneous  supposition, 
or  some  other  not  less  delusive  notion,  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  a  few 

'  Oldmixon.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  W.Smith.  S.Smith.  In  a  collection  of  original 
drafts  of  state  papers,  preserved  by  the  late  George  Chalmers,  and  kindly  submitted  to  my 
perusal  by  his  executor,  I  find  a  letter  (dated  the  5th  of  March,  1731)  from  the  Lords  of  Trade 
to  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  strongly  recommending  the  support  of  Colonel  Dunbar ;  and  add- 
ing, that,  "  In  Massachusetts  Bay,  it  is  but  too  evident  that  any  man  who  does  his  duty  to 
the  crown  makes  himself  liable  to  the  ill-will  of  the  people.  ' 


CHAP.  II.]  FRENCH  FORT  AT  CROWN  POINT.  81 

years  after,  departed  from  its  usual  policy,  and  itself  invoked  parliamentary 
interposition,  by  presenting  a  petition  to  the  House  of  Commons  [1733], 
in  which  it  was  contended  that  the  privilege  of  directing  and  controlling 
the  issues  from  the  provincial  treasury  ought  to  belong,  not  to  the  governor 
(to  whom  the  charter  expressly  reserved  it),  but  to  the  representatives  of 
the  people.  The  issue  of  this  proceeding  is  calculated  to  increase  our  sur- 
prise that  the  ministry  should  have  hesitated  any  longer  to  extend  the  range 
of  parliamentary  interposition  beyond  this  isolated  topic  of  dispute  ;  for  the 
House  of  Commons,  on  considering  the  Massachusetts  petition,  voted  imme- 
diately that  it  "  was  frivolous  and  groundless ^  an  high  insult  upon  his  Ma- 
jesty''s  government^  and  tending  to  shake  off  the  dependency  of  the  said  colony 
upon  this  kingdom^  to  which  by  law  and  right  they  are  and  ought  to  he 
subject.''''  A  member,  at  the  same  time,  having  called  the  attention  of 
the  House  to  a  censure  which  the  Massachusetts  assembly  had  passed  on 
its  agent,  Jeremiah  Dummer,  for  attending  a  parliamentary  committee  which 
required  him  to  furnish  information  respecting  one  of  the  American  trade 
acts,  — the  House  unanimously  resolved,  "  that  the  presuming  to  call  any 
person  to  account^  or  pass  a  censure  upon  him^  for  evidence  given  by  such 
person  before  the  House.,  was  an  audacious  proceedings  and  a  high  violation 
of  the  privileges  of  this  House.''''  ^  Notwithstanding  these  demonstrations  of 
the  readiness  of  parliament  to  lend  its  powerful  aid  to  promote  the  ascend- 
ency of  the  parent  state  and  curb  the  provincial  assembly,  the  ministers 
of  the  crown,  averse  to  the  introduction  of  a  wide  and  dehcate  discussion 
of  colonial  affairs  and  schemes  of  colonial  policy,  with  which  they  were 
but  slenderly  acquainted,  and  fearful,  perhaps,  of  strengthening  the  influence 
and  opposition  of  the  British  Tories,  and  increasing  the  general  distractions 
of  the  empire,  —  or,  perhaps,  from  mere  indolence  and  neglect,  —  forbore 
to  execute  their  repeated  threats  of  impeaching  the  general  conduct  of  Mas- 
sachusetts before  the  parliament,  and  exposing  the  province  to  the  extremity 
of  parliamentary  vengeance. 

During  the  period  that  had  already  intervened  since  the  peace  between 
New  England  and  the  Eastern  Indians,  and  for  many  years  after,  the  history 
of  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut  consists  of  nothing  more  remarkable 
than  the  foundation  and  extension  of  the  towns  and  villages  that  were  formed 
within  the  jurisdictions  of  these  States.  At  New  York,  a  fallacious  tran- 
quillity was  produced  by  the  calm, .  negligent  indolence  of  Montgomery, 
who  had  abetted  the  intrigues  against  Burnet  with  no  other  view  than  to 
possess  himself  of  an  office  and  salary  which  a  premature  death  suffered 
him  but  a  short  time  to  enjoy.  The  intrigues  which  had  conduced  to  his 
elevation  now  attained  their  utmost  success,  in  procuring  an  order  from  the 
king  in  council,  by  which  all  the  laws  suggested  by  Burnet  and  enacted  by 
the  assembly  of  New  York,  with  regard  to  commerce  with  Canada,  were 
repealed.  [1729.]  This  measure  was  productive  of  the  most  pernicious 
consequences ;  tending  to  undermine  the  English  trade  at  Oswego,  to  pro- 
mote the  French  commerce  at  Niagara,  and  to  alienate  the  Six  Nations  from 
their  fidelity  to  Great  Britain.^  The  French  perceived  and  diligently  im- 
proved their  advantage.  Before  three  years  more  had  elapsed,  they  erected 
[1731]  a  fort  at  Crown  Point,  in  the  very  centre  of  the  territories  of  the 
Six  Nations,  and  consequently  within  the  provincial  limits  of  New  York. 
This  commanding  post  not  only  enabled  them  to  prevent  the  attempts  of 
*  Oldmixon.     Gordon.  2  Trumbull.    W.  Smith. 

VOL.    II.  11 


32  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

English  troops  to  penetrate  into  Canada,  but  afforded  a  convenient  magazine 
to  their  own  scouting  parties,  and  a  stronghold,  to  which,  in  future  wars, 
their  Indian  auxiliaries  might  retreat  from  plundering  and  scalping  expedi- 
tions against  the  English  frontiers.  So  careless  and  supine  w^as  the  govern- 
ment of  New  York,  that  the  first  intimation  it  received  of  this  encroachment, 
and  of  its  obvious  consequences,  proceeded  from  Governor  Belcher  and 
the  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  who  offered  to  unite  in  an  embassy  to 
Canada,  and  in  every  ulterior  measure  that  might  be  requisite  to  compel 
the  French  to  evacuate  their  settlement  at  Crown  Point.  But  this  offer, 
and  the  important  subject  to  which  it  related,  experienced  equal  neglect ; 
although  four  companies  of  soldiers  were  now  maintained  by  the  crown,  at 
an  annual  charge  of  nearly  eight  thousand  pounds,  at  New  York.^ 

The  change  which  a  revolutionary  movement  had  introduced  into  the  gov- 
ernment of  South  Carolina,  about  nine  years  before,  was  now  legally  ascer- 
tained and  completed.  A  corresponding  change  was  likewise  extended  to 
the  northern  province.  Sir  Francis  Nicholson,  who  administered  the  gov- 
ernment of  South  Carohna  during  four  years,  conducted  himself  in  this  sit- 
uation with  a  judicious  and  spirited  attention  to  the  public  welfare,  which 
proved  highly  grateful  to  the  inhabitants,  and  honorably  brightened  the  clos- 
ing scene  of  his  political  life  in  America.  The  intriguing  politician  seemed 
now  to  be  lost  in  the  eager,  busy,  and  ostentatious  patron  of  public  improve- 
ment ;  and  the  distinction  which  he  formerly  courted  from  an  enlargement 
of  his  authority,  he  w^as  now  contented  to  derive  from  a  liberal  and  pop- 
ular exercise  of  it.  He  promoted  the  establishment  of  schools  and  the  spread 
of  education,  contributing  his  own  time  and  money  in  aid  of  these  useful 
purposes  ;  and  he  prevailed  with  the  English  Society  for  propagating  the 
Gospel  to  send  a  number  of  clergymen  to  the  province,  and  endow  them 
with  liberal  salaries  in  addition  to  the  provincial  stipends.  He  concluded  a 
treaty  of  peace  with  the  powerful  Indian  tribe  called  the  Creeks  ;  and 
by  presents  and  flattering  attentions  gained  the  friendship  of  the  still  more 
powerful  Cherokees,  whose  numbers  amounted  to  twenty  thousand  persons, 
of  whom  six  thousand  were  warriors.  Although  Britain  and  Spain  had  pub- 
licly signified  their  commands  to  Nicholson  and  the  governor  of  Florida  to 
maintain  a  friendly  intercourse  between  the  two  settlements,  it  was  very 
soon  discovered  that  the  remains  of  the  Yamassee  tribe,  who  took  refuge 
after  their  defeat  within  the  Spanish  territory,  were  encouraged  by  the 
Spaniards  in  the  predatory  incursions  by  which  they  still  occasionally  har- 
assed the  frontier  settlements  of  Carolina  ;  and  the  government  of  this  prov- 
ince, perceiving  the  necessity  of  guarding  against  the  insidious  hostility  of 
its  rival,  began  to  cultivate  the  friendship  of  the  Cherokees  with  a  diligence 
and  address  that  reminds  us  of  the  ancient  policy  of  New  York  with  regard 
to  the  Six  Nations. 

It  was  in  the  present  year  that  the  proprietaries  of  Carolina  were  finally 
divested  of  the  authority  which  they  had  so  long  abused,  in  both  the  prov- 
inces distinguished  by  this  name.  An  act  of  parliament  recognized  and 
sanctioned  a  treaty  that  had  been  concerted  with  all  the  proprietaries  except 
Lord  Carteret,  afterwards  Earl  of  Granville  (who  possessed  an  eighth  share), 
for  the  surrender  of  their  titles  and  interest  in  Carolina  to  the  king,  in  con- 
sideration of  the  sum  of  seventeen  thousand  five  hundred  pounds.^     Seven 

^  W.  Smith.     Williams's  History  of  Vermont. 

2  The  proprietaries  who  sold  their  shares  were  Henry,  Duke  of  Beaufort,  William,  Lord 
Craven,  James  Bertie,  the  Honorable  Doddington  Greville,  Henry  Bertie,  Mary  Danson, 
Elizabeth  More,  Sir  John  Colleton,  John  Cotton,  and  Joseph  Blake. 


GHAP.  II.]   THE  CAROLINAS  SURREJNDERED  TO  THE  CROWN.      g3 

eighth  parts  of  the  arrears  of  quitrents  due  from  the  colony  to  the  proprieta- 
ries, and  amounting  to  upwards  of  nine  thousand  pounds,  were  also  pur- 
chased by  the  crown  at  the  same  time  for  five  thousand  pounds.  Lord 
Carteret  surrendered  his  interest  in  the  government  of  the  province,  but 
chose  to  retain  his  share  of  the  property  of  the  soil,  of  which  an  eighth 
part  was  assigned  to  him  along  the  Virginian  frontier.  The  two  provinces 
of  North  and  South  Carolina  were  thus  vested  in  the  crown,  which  hence- 
forth exercised  the  prerogative  of  appointing  the  governors,  by  whom  the 
executive  power  was  administered,  and  nominating  the  counsellors,  who, 
in  concurrence  with  the  provincial  representatives,  formed  the  legislative  as- 
semblies. As  a  boon  to  the  people  thus  assumed  into  a  nearer  connection 
with  the  government  of  the  parent  state,  an  act  of  parliament  was  passed 
permitting  the  planters  and  merchants  of  Carolina  to  export  rice  directly  to 
any  part  of  Europe  southward  of  Cape  Finisterre,  in  vessels  manned  ac- 
cording to  the  requisitions  of  the  Acts  of  Navigation.^ 

In  the  following  year.  Sir  Alexander  Cumming  conducted  seven  chiefs 
of  the  Cherokees  on  a  visit  to  England,  where  they  affixed  their  marks 
to  a  treaty  of  friendship  and  alliance  with  Britain,  which  was  also  signed 
by  the  Lords  of  Trade.  [1730.]  When  they  were  presented  to  the  king, 
they  laid  their  national  emblems  of  sovereignty  at  his  feet,  and  formally 
avowed  themselves  his  subjects,  and  acknowledged  his  dominion  over  all 
their  countrymen,  who  (they  averred)  had  fully  authorized  them  to  declare 
this  recognition.  They  promised  especially  to  assist  the  English  in  the 
pursuit  and  recapture  of  fugitive  slaves.  They  were  amazed  and  con- 
founded at  the  splendor  of  the  British  court  ;  comparing  the  king  and  queen 
to  the  sun  and  moon,  the  princes  to  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  themselves  to 
invisible  motes  in  the  rays  of  a  dazzling  effulgence  of  grandeur  ;  and,  loaded 
with  presents,  both  useful  and  ornamental,  were  reconveyed  to  their  own 
country  by  Robert  Jolinson,  the  deposed  governor  of  the  proprietaries,  to 
whom  the  kmg  committed,  once  more,  the  government  of  South  Carolina, — 
and  whom  he  enabled  to  gratify  the  inhabitants  with  the  intelligence  of  a  total 
remission  of  the  arrears  of  their  quitrents,  and  of  a  royal  gift  of  seventy 
pieces  of  cannon  for  the  defence  of  the  colony.  [1731.]  In  consequence 
of  the  treaty,  and  of  the  impressions  which  the  chiefs  received  in  England 
and  communicated  on  their  return  to  their  countrymen,  the  Cherokees,  for 
many  years,  preserved  an  uninterrupted  peace  with  the  colonists.  South 
Carolina  now  began  to  make  rapid  advances  in  wealth  and  prosperity.  Two 
years  afterwards  [1733],  anew  race  of  emigrants  resorted  to  it.  John 
Peter  Purry,  a  native  of  Switzerland,  having  visited  the  province  and  as- 
certained its  resources,  applied  for  a  grant  of  lands  to  the  British  govern- 
ment, which  agreed  to  give  him  a  suitable  portion  of  ground  and  four 
hundred  pounds  sterhng  for  every  hundred  able-bodied  men  whom  he  should 
transport  from  Switzerland  to  Carolina.  He  speedily  carried  thither  a  hun- 
dred and  seventy  poor  Switzers,  who  were  not  long  after  joined  by  two 
hundred  mor^,  and  founded  a  town  to  which  they  gave  the  name  of  Pur- 
rysburg. 

The  policy  adopted  by  the  British  government,  of  employing  at  the  first 
the  same  functionaries  who  had  enjoyed  commissions  under  the  proprieta- 
ries, proved  more  fortunate  in  South  than  in  North  Carohna,  where  Bur- 
rington,  a  weak,  imprudent,  intemperate  man,  as  governor,  and  Porter,  a 
*  «iut.  2  George  II.,  Caps.  28  and  34.     Oldmixon.     Hewit.     Smollett.    Holmes. 


34  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

man  of  the  most  corrupt  disposition  and  brutal  manners,  as  judge  of  the 
Court  of  Admiralty,  rendered  the  people  for  a  few  years  as  unquiet  and 
unhappy  under  the  royal  as  they  had  ever  been  under  the  proprietary  sway. 
At  length  Porter  was  dismissed,  in  consequence  of  an  impeachment  by  the 
assembly,  who  ascertained  that  he  had  never  pronounced  a  single  judgment 
without  having  first  extorted  a  bribe  ;  and  Burrington  was  superseded  by 
Gabriel  Johnstone  [1734],  under  whose  prudent  administration  the  colony 
began  to  reap  the  benefits  of  industry,  order,  and  submission  to  the  laws. 
New  settlements  were  then  formed,  and  the  population  manifested  a  vigorous 
principle  of  increase.  But  many  years  elapsed  before  the  factious,  turbu- 
lent spirit  which  bad  government  had  nourished  among  this  people  subsided. 
Governor  Johnstone,  perceiving  the  necessity  of  renovating  the  popular 
character,  at  every  session  pressed  the  assembly  to  make  some  provision 
for  the  support  of  public  worship  and  the  education  of  youth.  Attending  to 
the  letter,  but  neglecting  the  spirit  of  his  advice,  they  passed  a  law,  totally 
inconsistent  with  religious  liberty,  for  the  support  of  a  particular  church ; 
and  imposed  taxes  for  the  professed  purpose  of  founding  schools,  but  always 
diverted  the  produce  of  them  to  other  applications.^  The  laws  that  were 
enacted  for  the  formation  of  a  religious  establishment  retained  their  force, 
for  they  were  supported  by  the  spirit  of  party  ;  but  learning  (says  the  histo- 
rian of  this  province)  was  neglected,  because  she  belonged  to  no  party  at 
all.  Both  in  North  and  in  South  Carolina,  vast  emissions  of  paper  money 
had  been  made  ;  a  depreciation  of  the  provincial  currency  ensued  to  the 
monstrous  extent  of  seven  hundred  per  cent.;  ^  and  all  the  fraud,  gambling, 
and  embarrassment  naturally  consequent  on  such  a  state  of  matters  contin- 
ued long  and  severely  to  afflict  the  inhabitants  of  both  provinces.^ 

Pennsylvania  still  continued  to  enjoy  a  progressive  advance  in  wealth  and 
population.  Sir  William  Keith  was  succeeded,  in  1725,  by  Major  Gordon, 
who,  conducting  himself  with  firmness,  and  at  the  same  time  with  prudence, 
and  moderation,  obtained  general  respect.  But  the  illiberal  counsel  which 
Keith  had  imparted  in  the  commencement  of  his  administration  operated  af- 
ter his  departure.  Crowds  of  emigrants  still  continued  to  flock  to  Pennsyl- 
vania ;  and  in  the  year  1729  no  fewer  than  six  thousand  two  hundred  and 
eight'*  European  settlers  resorted  to  this  province.  Alarmed  at  such  an 
influx  of  strangers,  the  assembly  in  the  same  year  enacted  a  law  discredita- 
ble in  the  highest  degree  to  Pennsylvanian  sense  and  generosity.  It  was 
entitled  "  An  Act  to  prevent  Poor  and  Impotent  Persons  from  being  im- 

'  After  the  American  Revolution,  says  Williamson,  the  assembly  of  North  Carolina,  aware 
of  the  bonds  which  connect  knowledge  with  liberty,  and  ignorance  with  despotism,  founded 
a  university  in  this  province.  "  The  honor  of  endowing  a  public  seminary  of  learning,"  he 
adds,  "  of  instructing  the  rising  generation,  and  training  them  up  in  useful  knowledge,  was 
reserved  for  men,  who,  by  suffering  together,  had  acquired  mutual  confidence  and  esteem  ;  for 
men,  who,  by  securing  their  independence,  had  acquired  a  proper  degree  of  self-respect  and 
national  spirit." 

*  That  is,  seven  hundred  pounds  of  Carolinian  money  was  equivalent  to  no  more  than  one 
hundred  pounds  sterling. 

^  Oldmixon.     Hewit.     Williamson.     Charlevoix's  Travels.     Wynne. 

■*  They  are  thus  particularized  by  Anderson,  in  his  Historical  Deduction  of  the  Origin  of 
Commerce  :  — 

English  and  Welch  passengers  and  servants  .....  267 

Scotch  servants 43 

Irish  passengers  and  servants 1155 

Palatine  passengers  . 243 

At  Newcastle,  in  Delaware,  passengers  and  servants,  chiefly  from  Ireland  4500 

Total        .        .        .    6208 


CHAP.  II.]  THOMAS  AND  JOHN  PENN.  g5 

ported  into  this  Province,"  and  imposed  a  tax  of  five  shillings  per  head  on 
all  new  comers  to  Pennsylvania.^  This  scandalous  obstruction  of  the  pro- 
visions of  nature  and  the  common  rights  of  mankind  proved  far  more  in- 
jurious to  the  authors  than  to  the  objects  of  the  law.  Many  vessels, 
freighted  with  industrious  and  respectable  emigrants,  altered  their  original 
destination  to  Pennsylvania,  and,  repairing  to  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and 
South  Carolina,  enlarged  the  strength  and  prosperity  of  those  colonies  with 
the  materials  which  Pennsylvanian  illiberality  had  so  unworthily  cast  away. 
Among  other  pernicious  consequences,  this  Pennsylvanian  law  tended  to 
rivet  the  bonds  of  negro  slavery,  by  increasing  the  scarcity  of  free  laborers 
in  the  province.  It  was  not  long  before  the  provincial  legislators  became 
sensible  of  the  impolicy  of  taxing  the  resort  of  men  to  a  thinly  peopled 
country,  where  labor  was  already  inconveniently  dear  ;  and,  hastening  to 
repeal  their  unjust  and  fooHsh  law,  they  derived,  in  their  turn,  a  considerable 
advantage  from  the  oppression  which  the  German  emigrants  endured  shortly 
after  at  New  York,  and  which  induced  great  multitudes  of  these  useful  settlers 
to  resort  to  Pennsylvania  during  the  eighteenth  century. 

Thirty-one  years  were  elapsed  since  Pennsylvania  had  beheld  any 
member  of  the  family  which  it  acknowledged  as  its  proprietary  sovereigns. 
But  now  [August,  1732]  Thomas  Penn,  a  son  of  the  founder,  and  himself 
one  of  the  proprietaries  of  the  province,  arrived  from  England  in  Penn- 
sylvania, and  continued  to  reside  in  it  for  a  number  of  years.  His  arrival 
was  greeted  with  expressions  of  honor,  affection,  and  esteem  from  the  whole 
provincial  population.  Multitudes  of  people  thronged  to  gaze  upon  the 
features  of  a  Penn,  and  with  loud  acclamations  testified  the  warmth  and  sin- 
cerity of  dehght  with  which  they  beheld  the  son  of  that  great  man,  to  whose 
talent,  wisdom,  and  benevolence  they  ow^ed  their  beloved  country  and  happy 
lot.  Entering  Philadelphia  at  the  head  of  a  cavalcade  of  eight  hundred 
horsemen,  he  received  an  address  of  congratulation  from  the  assembly, 
framed  in  all  the  quaint  simplicity  of  Quaker  speech,  —  felicitating  him  on 
his  arrival,  —  declaring  that  the  memory  of  William  Penn  was  an  object 
of  everlasting  gratitude  and  honor,  —  and  affirming,  with  some  disregard  of 
accuracy,  that  all  the  efforts  and  artifices  of  wicked  men  had  ever  proved 
unavailing  to  disturb  the  cordiality  between  the  people  of  Pennsylvania 
and  their  proprietaries.  [1733.]  The  Indians  received  him  with  equal  re- 
gard ;  and,  at  a  conference  which  he  held  with  them,  expressed  the  pleasure 
with  which  they  brightened  the  chain  of  friendship  with  a  son  of  Onas.  But 
Thomas  Penn  was  ill  fitted  to  sustain  his  hereditary  honors  ;  and  all  trie  n 
dulgence  and  partiaHty  of  the  colonists  were  unable  to  disguise  from  them 
how  unworthy  he  was  of  the  sentiments  which  they  associated  with  the  name 
of  Penn.  His  manners  were  reserved  and  forbidding  ;  his  disposition  sor- 
did and  illiberal  ;  and  the  large  private  estate  which  he  inherited  from  his 
father  in  Pennsylvania,  the  only  part  of  his  patrimony  which  he  seemed  to 
appreciate  or  studied  to  improve.  A  reception  still  more  affectionate  than 
he  had  met  with  attended  the  arrival  of  his  brother,  John  Penn,  the  eldest 
son  of  the  first  proprietary,  in  the  year  1734.  "  What  may  we  not  hope," 
said  the  assembly,  in  their  address  to  him,  "  from  the  son  of  so  great  a 
man,  educated  under  his  care,  and  influenced  by  his  example  ?  "    The  mild 

^  Proud,  the  Quaker  historian,  takes  no  notice  of  this  law.  On  the  contrary,  he  extols 
the  virtue  and  wisdom  of  the  Quakers,  which,  by  rendering  Pennsylvania  a  happy  country, 
promoted  the  rapid  increase  of  its  population. 


36  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  [BOOK  VIII. 

and  benevolent  character  of  John  Penn  seemed  likely  to  justify  these  hopes  ; 
but,  unfortunately,  his  stay  in  the  province  proved  of  very  short  continuance. 
His  return  to  England  was  hastened  (as  his  father's  had  once  been)  by  the 
conduct  of  the  proprietary  of  Maryland  ;  Lord  Baltimore  having  now  made 
one  more  ineffectual  attempt  to  prevail  with  the  British  government  to  cancel 
the  decree  by  which  his  ancestor  was  deprived  of  the  Delaware  territory.^ 

The  act  of  parliament  which  we  have  recently  noticed,  for  promoting 
the  commerce  of  Carolina,  was  not  the  only  British  statute  relative  to  North 
America  which  was  enacted  since  the  peace  of  Utrecht.  In  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Second,  the  provinces  of  New  England  were  indulged  with  a 
free  importation  of  European  salt  for  the  encouragement  of  their  fisheries. 
The- same  indulgence  was  now  extended,  first  to  Pennsylvania,  and  after- 
wards to  New  York,  by  statutes  ^  which  declared  that  the  interest  of  Brit- 
ain required  that  the  inhabitants  of  these  colonies  should  be  induced  to 
extend  their  fisheries,  "  which  will  enable  the  said  inhabitants  to  purchase 
more  of  the  British  manufactures."  In  England,  landed  property  had  al- 
ways been  exempted  from  responsibility  for  debts,  except  of  a  rare  and 
peculiar  description.  But  as  the  English  merchants  and  manufacturers  were 
generally  creditors  of  their  American  correspondents,  it  was  judged  inex- 
pedient to  permit  this  exemption  to  have  place  in  the  colonies  ;  and  an  act 
of  parliament^  was  accordingly  passed,  rendering  all  lands,  houses,  negroes, 
and  estates  of  every  description,  real  or  personal,  in  America,  liable  for  the 
satisfaction  of  debts  of  all  kinds  whatsoever  due  by  the  colonists  to  British 
subjects.  An  absurd  attempt  was  made  to  enforce  in  one  of  the  States  an 
assimilation  of  the  English  and  provincial  laws  of  intestate  succession.  By 
an  order  of  the  English  privy  council,  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  was 
commanded  to  repeal  its  ancient  ordinance,  by  which  all  the  children,  male 
and  female,  of  a  parent  dying  intestate,  were  admitted  to  succeed  equally 
to  the  whole  of  his  estate  ;  and  to  substitute  in  its  place  the  English  law 
of  primogeniture.  But,  happily,  this  impolitic  measure  was  evaded  by  the 
Connecticut  assembly.^ 

The  whole  strain  of  British  legislation  with  regard  to  America  disclosed 
the  purpose  of  raising  up  a  nation  of  customers  for  the  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers of  the  parent  state,  and  acknowledged  the  idea  that  the  American 
communities  existed  solely  for  the  advantage  of  Britain.  Sir  Josiah  Child, 
in  his  Discourses  on  Trade,  which  were  published  about  the  year  1670,  repre- 
sented New  England  as  likely  to  prove  rather  a  rival  than  a  tributary  to  the 
commercial  greatness  of  Britain  ;  adding,  that  "  there  is  nothing  more  preju- 
dicial, and,  in  prospect,  more  dangerous,  to  any  mother  kingdom,  than  the 
increase  of  shipping  in  her  colonies."  The  same  views  were  maintained 
by  Dr.  Davenant,  in  his  Discourse  on  the  Plantation  Trade,  composed  in 
the  reign  of  William  and  Mary.  The  House  of  Commons,  in  the  year 
1719,  passed  a  resolution  declaring  "that  the  erecting  manufactories  in 
the  colonies  tended  to  lessen  their  dependence  upon  Great  Britain."  George 
the  First,  in  the  speech  with  which  he  opened  the  session  of  parliament  in 
the  year  1721,  observed,  "that  the  nation  might  be  supplied  with  naval 
stores  from  our  own  colonies  in  North  America  ;  and  that  the  cultivation 
of  this  useful  and  advantageous  branch  of  commerce  would  divert  the  colo- 

'  Oldmixon.     Kalm's  Travels.     Proud. 

'  13  George  I.,  Cap.  5.,  and  3  George  II.,  Cap.  12. 

3  5  George  II.,  Cap.  7.  Trumbull. 


CHAP.  IL]  BISHOP  BERKELEY'S  PROJECT.  37 

nies  from  setting  up  manufactures  which  directly  interfered  with  those  of 
Great  Britain."  In  some  of  the  provinces  a  manufacture  of  hats  had 
arisen,  both  for  the  supply  of  the  other  colonies  and  for  foreign  exporta- 
tion. With  the  view  of  stifling  or  checking  this  manufacture,  an  act  of 
parliament^  was  passed,  in  the  year  1732,  which  declared  that  it  was  highly 
prejudicial  to  the  hat-makers  of  England  ;  and  prohibited  the  exportation 
of  hats  made  in  America,  even  from  one  province  to  another.  By  the 
same  act,  all  American  colonists  were  restrained  from  undertaking  this 
manufacture,  without  a  previous  apprenticeship  of  seven  years  ;  and  all 
provincial  hat-makers  were  forbidden  to  engage  more  than  two  apprentices 
at  a  time,  or  to  employ  or  instruct  negroes  to  aid  them  in  their  business. 
The  colonists  had  long  carried  on  an  extensive  trade  with  the  French  West 
India  Islands,  from  which  they  obtained  rum,  sugar,  and  molasses,  in  return 
for  lumber  and  provisions.  This  commerce  was  menaced  with  entire  de- 
struction, in  the  year  1733,  by  an  act  of  parliament,^  which  the  English 
West  India  merchants  and  planters  had  sufficient  interest  to  procure,  and 
which  imposed  heavy  duties  on  all  rum,  sugar,  and  molasses  imported  into 
America,  except  from  the  West  India  plantations  of  Britain.  The  fate  of 
this  statute  was  remarkable.  So  generally  was  it  disregarded  by  the  colo- 
nists, that  the  British  government  judged  it  prudent  to  connive  at  their  ille- 
gal proceedings,  and  prohibited  the  custom-house  officers  from  levying 
duties  or  arresting  vessels  in  conformity  with  its  provisions.  Yet  the  law, 
which  was  thus  practically  admitted  to  be  inexpedient,  and  suffered  to  be 
openly  violated  and  contemned,  was  continued,  by  successive  reenactments, 
till  the  year  1761,  when  an  attempt  was  made  to  suppress  the  extensive 
smuggling  to  which  it  had  given  rise,  by  diminishing  very  considerably  the 
duties  it  imposed.  The  Hatters'  Act,  as  it  was  not  a  more  liberal  trait  of 
poHcy,  so  it  proved  not  a  more  fortunate  exertion  of  power.  Internal  smug- 
gling, which  it  was  impossible  to  check,  rendered  it,  from  the  first,  almost 
entirely  inoperative  ;  and,  as  the  provincial  communities  advanced  in  strength 
and  spirit,  its  continuance  was  regarded  by  them  with  displeasure,  as  a  badge 
of  servitude  and  oppression.^ 

North  America,  at  the  present  period,  received  a  visit  from  one  of  the 
most  admirable  and  distinguished  philosophers  that  England  or  Europe  has 
ever  produced  ;  and  whom  only  a  breach  of  good  faith  on  the  part  of  the 
mother  country  prevented  from  ending  his  days  as  an  American  colonist. 
Dr.  Berkeley,^  afterwards  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  in  the  meridian  of  his  fame, 
and  possessor  of  one  of  the  wealthiest  ecclesiastical  endowments  in  Ire- 
land, conceived  the  benevolent  project  of  improving  the  education  of  the 
European  colonists,  and  converting  the  American  Indians  to  Christianity, 
by  the  ministry  of  a  college  to  be  erected  at  the  expense  of  the  parent  state  ; 
and  offered  to  resign  his  opulent  preferment,  and  to  dedicate  the  remainder 
of  his  life  to  the  instruction  of  American  youth  in  this  college ;  requiring  for 
his  labors  only  the  moderate  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds.  So  powerful 
was  the  influence  of  this  disinterested  example,  that  three  junior  fellows  of 
Trinity  College,  at  Dublin,  consented  to  exchange  their  possessions  and 

1  5  Geoi-ge  H.,  Cap.  22. 

'6  George  H.,  Cap.  13.  It  was  for  affording  information  to  the  parliamentary  committee 
which  digested  this  act,  that  Jeremiah  Dummer  incurred  that  censure  from  his  constituents, 
the  Massachusetts  assembly,  which  provoked,  as  we  have  seen,  the  indignation  of  the  House 
of  Commons. 

3  Gordon.     Pitkin. 

*  "  To  Berkeley  every  virtue  under  heaven."     Pope. 


38  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  VIII. 

prospects  in  tneir  native  land  for  a  share  in  Berkeley's  pious  exile  and  phi- 
lanthropic labors.  Berkeley,  having  printed  his  Proposal ^  caused  it  to  be 
submitted  to  King  George  the  First,  by  the  Abbe  Altieri,  Vi^ho  was  one  of 
a  small  society  of  learned  men  with  whom  this  monarch  delighted  to  unbend 
his  mind  in  familiar  conversation.  The  king  approved  the  scheme,  and 
commanded  Sir  Robert  Walpole  to  introduce  and  recommend  it  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  A  charter  for  the  erection  of  the  projected  college 
was  granted  ;  and  a  parliamentary  address  made  provision  for  its  endow- 
ment, by  authorizing  the  appropriation  of  a  considerable  public  fund  for  this 
purpose.  Berkeley,  accompanied  by  his  friends,  and  carrying  with  him  a 
large  collection  of  books,  repaired  to  Rhode  Island^  in  1728,  and  remained 
there  for  several  years,  preparing  to  lay  the  foundation  of  his  institution,  and 
awaiting  the  remittance  of  the  pubHc  donation.  An  extension  of  his  scheme, 
suggested  by  his  acquaintance  with  the  actual  condition  of  America,  em- 
braced the  rehgious  instruction  of  the  unhappy  negroes  who  were  detained 
there  in  a  state  of  slavery.  This  was  opposed  by  certain  planters  (of  what 
particular  province  has  not  been  specified) ,  who  had  conceived  the  notion 
that  slavery  was  legally  incompatible  with  the  reception  of  the  rite  of  bap- 
tism. It  was  by  no  means  an  unnatural  supposition  of  those  planters,  that 
the  law  of  England,  which  declares  Christianity  to  be  part  and  parcel  of 
itself,  would  refuse  to  authorize  the  infliction  of  slavery  on  those  whom  the 
ordinance  of  baptism  had  designated  as  the  objects  of  divine  grace  and  the 
adopted  brethren  of  the  Saviour  of  mankind. 

But  there  is  something  monstrous  in  the  consideration,  that  these  planters 
(except,  indeed,  such  of  them  as  were  professed  infidels)  must,  according 
to  their  own  religious  principles,  have  purposed  to  frustrate  divine  grace,  and 
check  the  spread  of  Christianity,  lest  municipal  law  should  compel  them  to 
grant  temporal  freedom  to  baptized  and  converted  negroes.  "  To  unde- 
ceive them  in  this  particular,"  says  Berkeley,  "  it  seemed  a  proper  step  that 
the  opinion  of  his  Majesty's  attorney  and  solicitor-general  (Yorke  and  Tal- 
bot) should  be  procured.  This  opinion  they  charitably  sent  me,  signed  by 
their  own  hands  ;  and  it  was  accordingly  printed  at  Rhode  Island,  and  dis- 
persed throughout  the  plantations."  But  no  opportunity  was  afforded  of  as- 
certaining how  far  the  opposing  planters  would  have  been  satisfied  with  this 
guaranty  of  the  slavery  of  the  negroes'  bodies,  notwithstanding  the  emanci- 
pation of  their  souls.  For  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  who  never  heartily  embraced 
the  project  of  Berkeley,  was  delivered,  by  the  death  of  George  the  First, 
from  the  only  inducement  that  had  prompted  him  to  support  it  ;  and  the 
celebrated  General  Oglethorpe  found  his  influence  in  parliament  sufficient  to 
divert  the  funds  that  were  promised  to  Berkeley  into  a  different  channel. 
They  were  assigned  to  himself  for  the  purpose  of  transporting  foreign  and 
British  Protestants  to  the  new  colony  of  Georgia,  which  he  had  undertaken 
to  found.  After  a  succession  of  applications  from  Berkeley,  and  of  excuses 
from  the  minister,  Gibson,  Bishop  of  London,  at  length  obtained  from 
Walpole  an  answer  that  left  nothing  farther  to  be  asked  or  expected.  "  If 
you  put  this  question  to  me  as  a  minister,"  said  Sir  Robert,  "  I  must  and 
can  assure  you  that  the  money  shall  undoubtedly  be  paid  as  soon  as  the 
public  convenience  will  allow  ;  but  if  you  ask  me  as  a  friend,  whether  Dean 
Berkeley  should  continue  in  America  expecting  the  payment  of  the  twenty 
thousand  pounds,  I  advise  him  by  all  means  to  return  home  to  Europe  and 
'  During  his  residence  here,  he  composed  his  Mciphron,  o^  The  Minute  Philosopher. 


CHAP.  II.]  BISHOP  BERKELEY'S  PPvOJECT.  39 

to  give  up  his  present  expectations."  Berkeley,  informed  of  this  conference 
by  his  friend  Gibson,  abandoned  his  scheme,  presented  a  small  landed  prop- 
erty which  he  had  purchased,  together  with  a  thousand  volumes  of  books, 
to  Yale  College,  in  Connecticut,  distributed  the  remainder  of  his  library 
among  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island,  and  returned  to  Britain  in  1731, 
—  leaving  America  enriched  by  his  liberality,  and  improved,  or  at  least  in- 
vited to  improvement,  by  his  example.^ 

*  Bishop  Stock's  Life  of  Berkeley.  Berkeley's  Works.  Holmes.  Berkeley  was  so  forcibly- 
struck  with  the  grand  prospective  career  of  American  society,  that  he  poured  forth  his  senti- 
ments on  this  theme  in  the  only  poetical  composition  of  which  he  is  known  to  have  been  the 
author.    It  is  printed  in  the  second  volume  ofhis  works,  and  entitled,  — 

VERSES  ON  THE  PROSPECT  OF  PLANTING  ARTS  AND  LEARNING  IN  AMERICA. 

The  Muse,  disgusted  at  an  age  and  clime 

Barren  of  every  glorious  theme. 
In  distant  lands  now  waits  a  better  time, 

Producing  subjects  worthy  fame. 

In  happy  climes,  where  from  the  genial  sun 

And  virgin  earth  such  scenes  ensue, 
The  force  of  art  by  nature  seems  outdone, 

And  fancied  beauties  by  the  true. 

In  happy  climes,  the  seat  of  innocence, 

Where  nature  guides  and  virtue  rules, 
Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and  sense 

The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools, — 

There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age. 

The  rise  of  empire  and  of  arts. 
The  good  and  great,  inspiring  epic  rage. 

The  wisest  heads,  and  noblest  hearts  : 

Not  such  as  Europe  breeds  in  her  decay,  — 

Such  as  she  bred  when  fresh  and  young. 
When  heavenly  flame  did  animate  her  clay, 

By  future  poets  shall  be  sung. 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way  : 

The  first  four  acts  already  past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day : 

Time's  noblest  ofispring  is  the  last. 

Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in  his  Prophecy  concerning  the  Future  State  of  Several  Nations.,  antici- 
pated Berkeley's  conjecture,  and  predicted  that  "  America  will  be  the  seat  of  the  fifth  empire." 


VOL.    II.  12 


APPENDIX    II. 

State  of  Population,  Laws,  Trade,  and  Manners  in  the  North  American  Provinces.  —  Virginia 
—  New  England  —  Comparison  of  New  England  and  Canadian  Manners.  —  Maryland.  — 
Carolina.  —  New  York.  —  New  Jersey.  —  Pennsylvania  and  Delaware  —  the  Tunkers. 

It  is  certain  that  all  the  North  American  provinces  had  made  great  ad- 
vances in  population  [1733],  both  from  native  increase  and  the  resort  of 
European  emigrants,  since  the  commencement  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
though,  from  the  total  absence  of  reports  of  the  population  of  some  of  the 
provinces,  and  the  manifest  inaccuracy  and  mutual  contradiction  of  most  of 
the  reports  that  have  been  transmitted  with  regard  to  others,  it  is  but  an  im- 
perfect view  of  the  actual  advance  at  this  epoch,  that  we  are  able  to  obtain. 
Partial,  also,  though  somewhat  ampler  and  more  interesting,  is  the  infor- 
mation (additional  to  what  has  been  conveyed  in  the  preceding  chapters) 
which  may  be  collected  with  regard  to  the  state  of  society  and  manners  ex- 
hibited in  those  provinces  at  the  present  period. 

In  Virginia,  as  we  have  already  seen,^  the  number  of  inhabitants  amount- 
ed, in  the  year  1703,  to  60,606,  —  of  whom  about  one  half  were  negro 
slaves.  The  militia  of  the  province  then  reckoned  in  its  ranks  the  number 
of  9,522.  In  the  year  1722,  the  militia-men  amounted  to  18,000,^  — 
which,  without  supposing  a  proportional,  manifestly  imphes  a  very  con- 
siderable, increase  of  the  general  population.^  The  administration  of 
Colonel  Spottiswoode  in  this  province  was  terminated  in  the  year  1723. 
His  representations  of  the  necessity  of  vigorous  measures  for  counteracting 
the  encroaching  policy  of  France  excited  the  displeasure  of  the  British 
ministers,  who  were  unconvinced  by  his  reasoning  and  offended  by  his 
urgency  ;  and  affecting  to  credit  the  secret  complaints  preferred  against 
him  by  a  party  of  planters  and  merchants,  whose  frauds  in  the  tobacco 
trade  he  had  detected  and  w^as  endeavouring  to  prevent,  they  sacrificed  to 
spleen  and  intrigue  a  man  w^hose  enterprising  talents  and  inflexible  virtue 
might  have  rendered  the  most  valuable  service  to  the  interests  of  Britain  in 
America. "^  It  is  remarkable  that  Burnet  and  Spottiswoode,  the  two  most 
distinguished  opponents  of  the  poHcy  of  France,  should  both  have  been 
the  victims  of  selfish  and  dishonest  interests  and  machinations.  Spottis- 
woode was  succeeded  by  Sir  Hugh  Drysdale,  of  whose  administration 
nothing  farther  has  been  recorded  than  that  it  terminated  in  1727,  when  the 
government  was  conferred  on  General  Gooch. 

At  Williamsburg,  which  w^as  now  the  seat  of  government  of  this  prov- 
ince, there  were  three  public  buildings,  which  were  accounted  the  most 
magnificent  specimens  of  architecture  in  North  America,  —  the  College, 

»  Book  I.,  Chap.  III.,  ante.  ^  Beverly.  ~ 

3  Oldmixon's  enumeration  of  70,000  is  certainly  too  low. 

*  Spottiswoode  remained  in  Virginia,  and  died  there  in  the  year  1739.  His  merit  began  to 
.be  generally  acknowledged  before  his  death  ;  and  on  the  breaking  out  of  the  Spanish  war,  in 
that  year,  he  was  appointed  to  command  the  colonial  forces  in  an  expedition  against  the  set- 
tlements of  Spain.  But  he  did  not  live  to  enjoy  the  returning  smiles  of  royal  favor.  One  of 
the  counties  of  Virginia  was  named  Spottsylvania,  in  honor  of  his  services.  "  The  name  of 
Spottiswoode,"  says  Burk,  "  has  descended  to  us  with  scarcely  sufficient  alloy  to  constitute  a 
human  character." 


APP.  II.]  STATE   OF  VIRGINIA.  91 

the  State-house,  and  a  costly  structure  which  Governor  Nicholson  had  pro- 
moted, and  which  bore  the  pompous  title  of  the  Capitol.  A  luxurious  and 
expensive  hospitality,  and  a  great  deal  of  card-playing,  prevailed  among  the 
upper  classes  of  inhabitants  ;  and  hunting  and  cock-fighting  were  favorite 
amusements  of  persons  of  all  ranks.  A  small  work,  entitled  The  Present 
State  of  Virginia^  by  Hugh  Jones,  was  pubHshed  at  London  in  1724. 
The  substance  of  this  uninteresting  performance  is  embraced  in  the  second 
edition  of  the  work  of  Oldmixon.  "  In  Virginia,"  says  Jones,  who  was 
a  clergyman  of  the  church  of  England,  and  had  been  a  fellow  of  William 
and  Mary  College,  "there  is  no  ecclesiastical  court ;  so  that  vice,  profane- 
ness,  and  immorality  are  not  suppressed.  The  people  hate  the  very  name 
of  the  Bishop's  Court."  —  "  All  which  things,"  he  gravely  adds,  "  make  it 
absolutely  necessary  for  a  bishop  to  be  settled  there,  to  pave  the  way  for 
mitres  in  English  America  !"  Williamsburg  contained  a  theatre  for  dramatic 
performances  ;  the  first  institution  of  the  kind  that  arose  in  the  British  colo- 
nies. Many  persons  of  high  extraction,  but  narrow  fortune,  had  repaired 
from  England  to  this  province,  as  a  scene  where  humble  industry  was  not 
exposed  to  the  scornful  glance  of  aristocratic  pride  ;  and  were  soon  enabled 
to  exchange  a  straitened,  dependent  estate  of  insolvent  gentility  in  the 
mother  country,  for  wealth,  respect,  usefulness,  and  happiness  in  Virginia 
It  was  customary  also  for  young  women,  whom  misfortune  or  imprudence 
had  deprived  of  reputation  in  Britain,  to  transport  themselves  to  Virginia, 
where,  in  many  instances,  a  second  spring  of  hope,  character,  and  felicity 
rewarded  their  expatriation.  Printing  was  first  established  in  this  province 
in  the  year  1729  ;  and  the  first  Virginian  newspaper  w^as  published  at 
Williamsburg  in  1736.  From  Virginia  and  Maryland  there  were  now  an- 
nually exported  about  one  hundred  thousand  hogsheads  of  tobacco  (valued  at 
eight  pounds  per  hogshead) ,  and  two  hundred  ships  were  commonly  freight- 
ed with  the  tobacco  produce  of  these  two  provinces.  The  annual  gain  de- 
rived by  the  parent  state  from  this  trade  was  about  five  hundred  thousand 
pounds.  The  articles  of  iron  and  copper  ore,  beeswax,  hemp,  and  raw 
silk  were  first  exported  from  Virginia  to  England  in  1730. 

A  report  on  the  state  of  Virginia,  presented,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne, 
to  the  Lords  of  Trade  in  England,  contains  the  following  statements.  "  On 
every  river  of  this  province,  there  are  men,  in  number  from  ten  to  thirty,  who 
by  trade  and  industry  have  got  very  complete  estates.  These  gentlemen 
take  care  to  supply  the  poorer  sort  with  goods  and  necessaries,  and  are  sure 
to  keep  them  always  in  their  debt,  and  consequently  dependent  on  them. 
Out  of  this  number  are  chosen  the  council,  assembly,  justices,  and  other 
officers  of  government.  The  inhabitants  consider  that  this  province  is  of 
far  greater  advantage  to  her  Majesty  than  all  the  rest  of  the  provinces  be- 
sides on  the  main  land  ;  and  therefore  conclude  that  they  ought  to  have 
greater  privileges  than  the  rest  of  her  Majesty's  subjects.  The  assembly 
think  themselves  entitled  to  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  an  English  par- 
liament, and  begin  to  search  into  the  records  of  that  honorable  house  for 
precedents  to  govern  themselves  by.  The  council  imagine  they  stand  al- 
most upon  equal  terms  with  the  British  House  of  Lords."  These  state- 
ments were  probably  deduced  as  much  from  jealous  apprehension  as  from 
accurate  observation.  The  revenue  of  the  provincial  government  was  pro- 
portioned to  the  state  of  trade  ;  a  considerable  part  of  it  arising  from  a 
tax  of  two  shillings  a  hogshead  on  exported  tobacco.     The  quitrents,  ac- 


92  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APRIL 

cording  to  the  calculation  of  Sir  William  Keith,  yielded,  at  this  time,  three 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds  per  annum.  Complaints  were  frequently  pre- 
ferred by  the  Virginians,  of  the  tyrannical  insolence  with  which  they  were 
treated  by  the  commanders  of  English  ships  of  war  appointed  to  cruise  off 
the  coast  for  the  protection  of  trade.  But  the  grievance  which  they  chiefly 
deplored,  and  by  which  discontent  and  impatience  were  kept  perpetually 
alive,  arose  from  the  pressure  of  the  Trade  Laws,  which  were  rendered  doubly 
severe  by  the  heavy  duties  with  which  the  importation  of  tobacco  into 
England  was  loaded.  Though  sentiments  of  attachment  to  the  parent  state 
were  still  cherished  among  the  Virginians,  —  already,  says  their  historian, 
had  they  begun  generally  to  question  her  right  to  impose  the  commercial 
restrictions.  Their  jealousy  of  the  power  and  policy  of  England  appears 
from  the  uniform  opposition  of  the  Virginian  assembly  to  the  royal  recom- 
mendations for  the  repair  of  forts,  "which,"  says  Burk,  "had  ever  been 
objects  of  aversion  to  the  people  of  this  colony  since  the  celebrated  memo- 
rials of  Nicholson."^ 

The  population  of  New  England  had  advanced  as  rapidly  as  that  of  Vir- 
ginia. Massachusetts,  which  in  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  was 
estimated  to  contain  somewhat  more  than  seventy  thousand  persons,  in  the 
year  1731,  contained  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  freemen,  and  two 
thousand  six  hundred  negro  slaves.  The  trade  of  this  province  was  com- 
puted to  employ  six  hundred  ships  and  sloops,  amounting  to  at  least  thirty- 
eight  thousand  tons,  one  half  of  which  traded  to  Europe.  About  six  thou- 
sand persons  were  employed  in  its  fisheries.  Connecticut  appears,  from 
numerous  indications,  to  have  attained  a  very  improved  and  happy  state  ;  but 
no  account  of  its  population  at  this  epoch  has  been  preserved.  Rhode 
Island,  which,  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  century,  contained  about  ten 
thousand  inhabitants,  in  the  year  1730  possessed  a  population  of  17,935 
persons,  of  whom  985  were  Indians,  and  1,648  negro  slaves.  The  town 
of  Newport,  the  metropolis  of  this  province,  contained  a  population  of  4,640 
persons,  including  Indians  and  negroes.  The  date  of  the  introduction 
of  printing  into  Rhode  Island  has  not  been  recorded ;  but  the  first  publica- 
tion of  a  newspaper  in  this  province  occurred  in  the  year  1732.  Not- 
withstanding its  thriving  estate,  at  the  present  time,  its  history  is  involved  in 
greater  obscurity  than  that  of  any  other  of  the  British  colonies.  Whether 
from  the  influence  of  Bishop  Berkeley's  exertions,  or  from  other  causes,  its 
aspect  in  an  ecclesiastical  view  manifested  soon  after  his  visit  a  considerable 
improvement.  In  the  year  1738,  the  town  of  Newport  contained  seven 
worshipping  assemblies  ;  at  Portsmouth,  there  was  a  large  society  of  Qua- 
kers ;  and  twenty-five  assemblages  for  Christian  worship  had  arisen  within 
the  other  eleven  insular  townships  of  this  colony.  In  the  nine  town- 
ships on  the  main  land  there  were  eight  Baptist  and  three  Congregational 
churches.  Of  the  population  of  New  Hampshire,  at  the  present  period, 
there  is  no  account.     The  militia  of  all  the  States  of  New  England  amounted 

^  Oldmixon.  Burk.  Keith's  History  of  Virginia.  Anderson.  Universal  History.  Wynne. 
Campbell.  "  The  greatest  of  their  discouragements  is  the  high  duty  on  their  commodities,  the 
custom  being  often  ten  times  as  much  as  the  prime  cost ;  and  if  the  tobacco  happen  to  be  of 
inferior  quality,  there  is  no  abatement  made  on  that  account ;  and  no  consideration  for  de- 
fective crops,  losses,  or  accidents.  When  the  goods  come  to  market,  after  custom  and  the 
factor's  bill  for  commission  is  paid,  the  net  proceeds  prove  but  little.  The  poor  planter  is 
forced  to  pay  exorbitant  interest  or  grant  a  mortgage  to  tne  English  merchant,  who,  having  got 
the  least  hold  of  his  estate,  feeds  him  insensibly  with  money,  till  the  whole  follows  at  a  mean 
rate"     Oldmixon. 


APP  II.]  STATE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  93 

to  "fifty  thousand  men.^  Iron  was  the  only  metallic  ore  which  the  colonists 
had  undertaken  to  improve  ;  and  there  were  now  six  furnaces  for  hollow 
ware,  and  nineteen  forges,  in  New  England.  In  the  year  1730,  fifty  hun- 
dred-weight of  hemp,  produced  in  New  England  and  Carolina,  were  export- 
ed to  Britain.^  In  the  year  1712,  certain  adventurers  in  Connecticut  con- 
ceived hopes  of  great  enrichment  from  the  discovery  of  two  copper-mines, 
which  were  erroneously  supposed  to  contain  also  some  veins  of  more  pre- 
cious metal.  One  of  these  mines,  at  Simsbury,  was  worked  to  a  great 
extent,  but  with  little  benefit  to  the  undertakers.  The  excavation  pro- 
duced by  their  labors  was  afterwards  ■  converted  into  a  prison  ;  whereby 
(says  Trumbull)  it  yielded  more  advantage  to  the  province  than  by  all 
the  copper  that  had  been  extracted  from  it.'"* 

There  commenced  about  this  time  a  series  of  disputes  that  for  several 
years  interrupted  the  harmony  that  had  long  subsisted  between  Massachu- 
setts and  New  Hampshire.  The  arrangement,  by  which  these  provinces, 
though  possessing  separate  assemblies,  were  subjected  to  the  same  governor, 
produced  inconvenience  to  both.  The  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  com- 
plained of  their  occasional  destitution  of  a  chief  magistrate,  during  the  gov- 
ernor's visits  to  New  Hampshire  ;  and  the  people  of  New  Hampshire  were 
perplexed  by  the  disagreements  between  their  governor  and  the  deputy, 
who  in  his  absence  conducted  the  executive  administration.  One  party, 
existing  both  in  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire,  proposed  to  remedy 
this  inconvenience  by  a  union  of  the  tw^o  provinces  ;  but  the  great  body  of 
the  people  in  New  Hampshire  were  desirous  of  the  opposite  remedy,  of  a 
distinct  executive  government  for  themselves.  They  were  sensible,  how- 
ever, that  as  yet  their  country  could  hardly  support  the  increased  expense 
consequent  upon  such  a  change  ;  and  to  remove  this  obstacle,  they  endeav- 
oured to  enlarge  their  resources  by  territorial  claims,  opposed  to  the  pre- 
tensions of  Massachusetts,  which  produced  a  great  deal  of  litigation  between 
the  two  provinces.  The  trade  of  New  Hampshire,  at  this  time,  consisted 
chiefly  in  the  exportation  of  lumber  and  fish  to  Spain,  Portugal,  and  the 
Caribbee  Islands.  In  winter,  small  vessels  were  despatched  to  the  southern 
colonies  with  English  and  West  India  goods,  and  returned  with  cargoes 
of  corn  and  pork.  The  manufacture  of  linen  derived  a  considerable  in- 
crease from  the  resort  of  Irish  emigrants  to  New  Hampshire.  Though 
this  province  has  always  been  considered  a  remarkably  healthy  region,"*  it 
was  about  this  time  visited  with  a  fatal  epidemical  malady,  called  the 
throat  distemper,  which  afterwards  recurred  in  the  years  1754  and  1784, 
and  on  all  these  occasions  was  productive  of  great  mortahty.  The  symp- 
toms w^ere  a  swelled  throat,  with  white  or  ash-colored  specks-,  an  efflores- 
cence on  the  skin,  extreme  debility  of  the  w^hole  frame,  and  a  strong  ten- 
dency to  putridity.  Its  remote  or  predisposing  cause,  says  the  historian 
of  New  Hampshire,  is  one  of  those  mysteries  in  nature  which  baffle  hu- 
man inquiry.^ 

The  invention  of  inoculation  for  the  small-pox,  which  Lady  Mary  Wort- 
ley  Montague  first  imported  from  Turkey  into  Great  Britain,  was  introduced 

'  Anderson.     Holmes.     Warden. 

2  Douglass.     Anderson.     Holmes.  ^  Trumbull. 

*  "A  profusion  of  effluvia  from  the  resinous  trees  imparts  to  the  air  a  balsamic  quality, 
which  is  extremely  favorable  to  health  ;  and  the  numerous  streams  of  limpid  water,  some 
of  which  fall  with  great  rapidity  from  the  mountains,  produce  currents  of  fresh  air  highly 
salubrious  to  those  who  reside  on  their  banks."     Belknap. 

'  Belknap. 


94  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  U. 

into  New  England  in  the  year  1721.  Cotton  Mather,  of  Boston,  whose 
literary  and  ministerial  merit  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  commemo- 
rate, having  observed  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  of  London  an  ac- 
count of  this  operation,  and  of  its  successful  issue,  communicated  by  a 
Turkish  physician,  and  by  the  Venetian  consul  at  Smyrna,  recommended 
a  trial  of  it  to  the  physicians  of  Boston.  The  experiment  was  declined 
by  them  all,  except  Dr.  Zabdiel  Boyls^on,  who  adventured  to  begin  with 
his  own  family,  and  afterwards  continued  the  practice,  notwithstanding  the 
most  violent  opposition.  Many  pious  people  were  struck  with  horror  at  the 
idea  of  an  intentional  communication  of  disease,  which  seemed  an  inversion 
of  the  purposes  of  medicine,  and  a  wanton  provocation  of  those  sufferings 
which  were  ascribed  to  the  unerring  though  mysterious  exercise  of  divine 
wisdom  and  justice  ;  and  they  protested  that  Dr.  Boylston  ought  to  be 
made  criminally  responsible  for  the  death  of  any  of  his  infant  patients, 
and  that  all  persons  of  mature  years,  dying  in  consequence  of  voluntary 
submission  to  the  operation,  ought  to  be  accounted  suicides.  The  more 
moderate  opponents  of  the  practice  condemned  it  as  indicating  a  greater 
reliance  on  the  arrangements  of  human  prudence  than  on  the  all-wise  provi- 
dence of  God  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature.  The  physicians  of  the 
province  pubhshed  a  decree  reprobating  inoculation  ;  and  Dr.  Douglass, 
one  of  their  number,  a  credulous  and  intemperate  man,  distinguished  himself 
by  the  warmth  of  his  opposition  to  the  new  practice.^  The  people,  in  gen- 
eral, regarded  the  practice  with  abhorrence,  and  were  incensed  at  the  perti- 
nacity with  w^hich  its  promoters  continued  to  uphold  it.  Cotton  Mather  was 
reproached  and  vilified  in  newspapers  and  pamphlets  ;  and  Boylston  was 
insulted  in  the  streets,  and  his  dwelling  and  family  threatened  with  destruc- 
tion. The  house  of  representatives  passed  a  bill  for  suppressing  inocu- 
lation ;  but  the  doubts  of  the  council  happily  arrested  the  completion  of  this 
measure,  till  the  public  were  undeceived,  and  the  manifest  advantage  of 
inoculation  obtained  for  it  a  general  and  undisputed  prevalence.^ 

On  the  29th  of  October,  1727,  while  the  sky  was  clear  and  serene,  and  a 
deep  stillness  and  tranquillity  pervaded  the  air.  New  England  was  suddenly 
shaken  by  a  tremendous  earthquake,  which  overthrew  a  considerable  number 
of  buildings,  and  prostrated  many  persons  to  the  ground.  On  the  same  day, 
the  island  of  Martinico  was  threatened  with  entire  destruction,  from  a  similar 
convulsion  of  nature.^ 

New  England  still  continued  to  be  highly  distinguished  by  the  religious 
zeal  of  the  great  majority  of  its  inhabitants  ;  and  a  zeal  which  was  now  en- 

^  Douglass  subsequently  retracted  his  opinion ;  and,  in  his  Historical  and  Political  Summary 
of  the  AmeHcan  Settlements,  invented  the  original  resistance,  that  the  practice  of  inoculation 
encountered  at  Boston,  to  the  immoderate  eagerness  with  which  its  promoters  endeavoured 
to  overleap,  instead  of  undermining,  the  public  prejudice. 

Among  other  literary  champions  of  the  erroneous  sentiments  entertained  by  Douglass  and 
by  the  majority  of  the  people,  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  apprentice  to  a  printer  in  Bos- 
ton. Miller's  Retrospect  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Some  pious  Quakers  in  America  ap- 
f>ear  to  have  denied,  or  at  least  strongly  doubted,  the  legitimacy  of  the  practice  of  inocu- 
ation.     Journal  of  John  Woolman. 

2  Hutchinson.  Inoculation  encountered  a  much  stronger  and  more  protracted  resistance 
in  Great  Britain,  where,  so  late  as  the  year  1768,  two  surgeons,  having  attempted  to  introduce 
the  practice  into  the  town  of  Peterborough,  saw  their  houses  destroyed  by  popular  rage,  and 
only  by  flight  from  the  place  saved  their  own  lives.  Annual  Register  for  1768.  The  practice 
was  prohibited  by  the  authority  of  government,  both  in  France  and  Holland,  in  the  year  1765. 
A  Roman  Catholic  archbishop,  in  France,  pronounced,  ex  cafAerfra,  that  the  disease  of  Job 
was  the  fruit  of  inoculation  performed  on  the  patriarch's  body  by  the  devil.  Eynard's  Life  of 
Tissot. 

*  Universal  History.    Holmes. 


AFP.  11]  STATE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  9^5 

tirely  divested  of  its  primitive  bigotry  and  intolerance.  All  classes  of  the 
people  had  in  this  respect  undergone  a  change.  Some  had  become  luke- 
warm and  indifferent ;  others  had  learned  to  temper  zeal  with  charity  and 
indulgence.  In  the  commencement  of  this  century,  Connecticut  was  dis- 
turbed by  an  outbreak  of  folly  and  frenzy,  from  a  sect  of  wild  enthusiasts 
who  termed  themselves  Rogerenes  (from  a  madrnan  named  Rogers),  or 
Singing  Quakers.  They  professed  much  veneration  for  George  Fox,  but 
dissented  from  certain  of  his  institutions,  in  admitting  vocal  music,  and  rec- 
ognizing the  sacramental  ordinances.  They  resembled  some  of  the  primi- 
tive Quakers  or  Ranters,  in  their  predilection  for  disturbing  public  worship, 
and  for  walking  naked  ;  and  rivalled  the  primitive  Baptists  of  Munster 
in  the  scandalous  immoralities  which  they  openly  committed,  and  w^hich, 
at  the  same  time,  they  associated  with  a  profession  of  sinless  purity  and 
perfection.  Their  outrages  were  treated  as  offences  rather  against  public 
order  and  decency  than  religion,  and  punished  with  a  severity  tempered  by 
prudence  and  mercy.  Happily,  the  frenzy  proved  but  short-lived  ;  and  so 
little  had  it  tended  to  revive  the  ancient  animosity  against  the  Quakers 
in  New  England,  that,  during  the  government  of  Belcher,  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts  passed  a  law  for  making  satisfaction  to  the  posterity  of  those 
Quakers  who  endured  capital  punishment  in  the  years  1658  and  1659,  The 
same  assembly  decreed  a  compensation  to  the  descendants  of  the  unfortu- 
nate victims  of  the  prosecutions  for  witchcraft  in  the  year  1693.  The  leg- 
islature of  Connecticut,  in  1729,  passed  an  act  for  exempting  Quakers  and 
Baptists  from  ecclesiastical  taxes  ;  and  in  1731,  a  similar  law  was  enacted 
by  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts.  In  the  year  1718,  the  churches  of  Boston 
contributed  four  hundred  and  eighty-three  pounds  to  the  funds  in  aid  of  the 
Christian  missions  among  the  Indians.  A  proposition  was  broached,  in 
1725,  to  convoke  a  synod  of  the  New  England  Congregational  churches  ;  but 
it  was  abandoned,  in  consequence  of  a  royal  prohibition,  issued  in  compliance 
with  the  sohcitations  of  the  Episcopal  clergy.^ 

Although  a  great  deal  of  Puritanical  strictness  still  pervaded  the  munici- 
pal policy  of  New  England,  and  much  Puritanical  formality  still  lingered  in 
the  manners  of  a  large  proportion  of  its  inhabitants,  the  social  and  domestic 
intercourse  of  the  people  appears  to  have  been  distinguished  by  cheerful- 
ness, refinement,  and  liberahty.  x\n  Enghsh  gentleman,  visiting  Boston, 
says  Oldmixon,  might  suppose,  from  the  politeness  of  conversation,  and  the 
costliness  and  elegance  of  dress  and  furniture,  that  he  was  in  the  metropolis 
of  England.^  Though  Governor  Burnet  showed  a  dislike  to  Puritanic  prac- 
tices, and  excited  a  strong  opposition  to  his  administration,  yet  the  w^orth 
of  his  character  was  universally  acknowledged,  and  the  graces  of  his  con- 
versation generally  admired.  Belcher,  his  successor,  who  had  a  taste  for 
pomp  and  show,  set  the  example  of  an  expensive  style  of  living,  by  the 
splendor  of  the  equipage  which  he  maintained.  The  celebrated  Charles 
Wesley,  who  paid  a  visit  to  Massachusetts  in  the  year  1736,  highly  extolled 

^Trumbull.  Oldmixon.  Hutchinson.  Holmes.  WiUiam  Allen  s  Summary  of  the  History  y 
^c,  of  the  Society  of  Friends. 

2  It  is  probable,  I  think,  that  the  colonists  were  as  refined,  but,  perhaps,  less  polished  than 
the  inhabitants  of  the  parent  state.  Human  nature  and  manners,  receiving  a  polished  ele- 
gance from  habit,  derive  the  higher  grace  of  refinement  from  character  and  sentiment.  A 
strong  sense  of  religion,  —  a  reverential  remembrance  of  their  fathers,  —  a  constant  and  gen- 
erous struggle  to  preserve  their  national  independence  against  the  French,  and  their  muni- 
cipal liberties  against  their  own  parent  state,  —  were  circumstances  that  tended  to  elevate  and 
refine  the  sentiments,  and  proportionally  to  ennoble  the  manners,  of  the  citizens  of  New 
England. 


96  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  H. 

the  salubrity  of  its  climate,  and  declared  that  he  was  even  oppressed  by 
the  hospitality  and  civilities  of  the  inhabitants.  Yet,  both  Wesley  and 
his  illustrious  brother  at  this  time  were  members  and  ministers  of  the  church 
of  England.  In  a  letter  to  one  of  his  friends,  Charles  Wesley  declared 
that  he  found  "this  New  England  more  pleasant  even  than  the  Old,"  and 
could  not  help  exclaiming,  "  O  happy  country  !  "  Tea  began  to  be  used 
in  New  England  in  the  year  1721.  Boston  was  long  deprived  of  the  benefit 
of  a  market  for  rural  produce,  in  consequence  of  an  obstinate  prejudice  of 
the  country  people,  who,  believing  that  they  themselves  must  infallibly 
be  losers  by  an  arrangement  which  would  supply  the  townsfolk  with  a  great 
quantity  of  their  wares  at  once,  squandered  a  great  deal  of  time  in  separate- 
ly and  irregularly  perambulating  the  town  in  quest  of  advantageous  bargains 
and  high  prices.^ 

Hutchinson  describes  the  inhabitants  of  New  England  as  more  con- 
cerned to  procure  the  enjoyments  of  the  table,  than  to  exhibit  richness  or 
refinement  of  apparel ;  willing  rather  to  simplify  their  attire  than  to  exten- 
uate their  diet.  The  diiFerence,  in  this  and  in  other  respects,  between 
them  and  the  French  colonists  of  Canada  is  thus  described  by  a  distin- 
guished French  writer  who  travelled  in  America  in  the  years  1720  and 
1721.  "Every  body  in  New  France,"  says  Charlevoix,^  "endeavours  to 
put  as  good  a  face  as  possible  on  poverty,  and  scarcely  any  one  thinks 
of  laying  up  wealth.  They  indulge  in  good  cheer,  provided  they  can  also 
afford  the  expense  of  fine  clothes  ;  if  not,  they  retrench  in  the  article  of 
the  table,  for  the  sake  of  appearing  well  dressed.  A  gay  and  sprightly  be- 
haviour, with  great  sweetness  and  politeness  of  manners,  prevail  universally 
among  them  ;  and  the  slightest  rusticity  either  of  language  or  behaviour 
is  utterly  unknown,  even  in  the  remotest  settlements.  The  case  is  very 
different  with  respect  to  our  English  neighbours  ;  and,  judging  of  the  two 
colonies  from  the  way  of  fife,  behaviour,  and  speech  of  the  inhabitants, 
nobody  would  hesitate  to  say  that  ours  were  the  most  flourishing.  In  New 
England,  and  the  other  provinces  of  America,  subject  to  the  British  empire, 
there  prevails  an  opulence  which  they  are  utterly  at  a  loss  how  to  use  ; 
while  in  New  France  there  prevails  a  poverty  disguised  by  an  air  of  easy 
circumstances,  which  yet  seems  quite  unstudied.  The  English  planter 
amasses  wealth,  and  never  incurs  superfluous  expense  ;  the  French  inhab- 
itant enjoys  what  he  has  acquired,  and  often  makes  a  parading  pretension 
to  much  more  than  he  really  possesses.  The  Englishman  labors  for  his 
posterity  ;  the  Frenchman  bequeaths  to  his  offspring  the  same  difficulties 
that  attended  his  own  outset,  and  leaves  them  to  extricate  themselves  as 
they  can.  The  Enghsh  Americans  are  averse  to  war,  because  they  have 
a  great  deal  to  lose  ;  and  yet  take  no  care  to  manage  the  Indians,  because 
they  consider  that  they  stand  in  no  need  of  them.  The  French  youth,  for 
opposite  reasons,  abominate  the  thoughts  of  peace,  and  contrive  so  to  live 
with  the  natives,  that  they  obtain  their  assistance  in  war  and  their  friendship 
at  all  times. "^ 

These  differences  illustrate  the  distinctions  of  national  character  that  have 

*  Oldmixon.     Hutchinson.     Holmes.     Whitehead's  Life  of  the  Wesleys. 

^  The  letters  of  Charlevoix  contain  much  curious  detail  and  sagacious  remark,  —  especially 
with  regard  to  the  manners,  habits,  and  pursuits  of  the  Indians.  He  sometimes  relates 
very  incredible  stories ;  and  too  frequently  commits  offences  against  delicacy,  and  even  de- 
cency, —  the  less  pardonable,  when  it  is  recollected  that  he  was  a  priest,  and  that  his  letters 
were  addressed  to  a  lady. 

^  Charlevoix's  Travels.     See  Note  III.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume 


APP.  II.]    COMPARISON  OF  NEW  ENGLAND  AND  CANADA.        97 

ever  prevailed  between  France  and  England  ;  but  they  are  also  referable  in 
a  considerable  degree  to  the  different  systems  of  colonial  policy  pursued  by 
the  two  parent  states.  France  planted  the  institution  of  titular  nobility  in 
her  colonies  ;  and  for  the  special  benefit  of  Canada,  Louis  the  Fourteenth, 
by  an  arret  in  the  year  1685,  permitted  all  noblemen  and  gentlemen  settled 
in  this  province  to  exercise  commerce  without  derogation  from  their  social 
quality  and  privileges.^  This  proved  a  most  impolitic  measure,  except  in 
so  far  as  it  contributed  to  produce  or  multiply  an  order  of  persons  in  the 
colony  attached  by  the  vanity  of  titular  distinctions  to  the  fountain  of  honor 
in  the  parent  state.  Many  Englishmen  of  patrician  birth,  but  slender  es- 
tate, resorted  to  the  British  colonies,  where,  glad  to  be  disencumbered  of 
the  trammels  of  rank,  and  wisely  preferring  plain  but  substantial  comfort 
to  meretricious  airs  of  polished  elegance,  they  associated  with  their  unpre- 
tending fellow-colonists  on  a  footing  of  equahty,  and  sought  to  regain 
distinction  by  useful  industry,  patient  self-denial,  and  vigorous  enterprise. 
With  the  French  colonists,  aristocratic  pride  and  vanity  predominated  over 
mercantile  character  and  habits  ;  and  as,  by  the  ancient  usages  of  France, 
the  title  and  privileges  of  nobility,  instead  of  descending,  as  in  England, 
to  the  eldest  son  alone,  were  equally  shared  by  all  the  children  of  the  family, 
Canada  was  soon  peopled  by  a  numerous  race  of  colonists  whose  eagerness 
to  gain  wealth  was  mixed  with  and  controlled  by  a  strong  desire  to  make 
immediate  proof  of  their  noble  condition,  by  the  costliness  of  their  accom- 
modations, the  polish  of  their  manners,  and  the  laborless  liberty  and  self- 
indulgence  of  their  lives.  In  the  year  1721,  there  were  ^  a  greater  num- 
ber of  persons  bearing  titles  of  nobility  in  Canada  than  in  all  the  other 
colonies  of  France  throughout  the  world. 

A  severer  and  doubtless  a  juster  picture  of  the  manners  of  the  Canadian 
colonists,  than  the  accomplished  Jesuit,  Charlevoix,  dehneated,  has  been 
transmitted  by  the  philosophic  Raynal.  According  to  this  writer,  the 
French  colonists  who  lived  in  the  country  passed  their  winters  in  idleness, 
sitting  by  their  firesides  in  grave  and  slothful  contemplation  of  their  own 
dignity  ;  while  those  who  lived  at  Quebec  or  Montreal  aped  the  gay  dissi- 
pation of  the  nobility  of  the  parent  state.  The  men  plumed  themselves 
more  on  honor  than  honesty  ;  the  women  were  coquettish,  addicted  to 
gallantry,  and  more  gratified  by  attracting  admiration  than  by  either  inspiring 
or  experiencing  the  sentiment  of  love.  Superficial  attention  and  negligent 
exertion  characterized  both  the  agricultural  and  the  commercial  transac- 
tions of  the  Canadian  colonists.  Raynal  ascribes  their  habits  of  indolence 
partly  to  the  benumbing  efl^ects  of  the  excessive  cold  of  the  Canadian  win- 
ter, and  partly  to  the  numerous  festivals  of  the  Catholic  church  ;  and  their 
especial  aversion  to  the  labors  that  would  have  been  most  conducive  to 
their  own  private  advantage  he  traces  to  the  ambitious  policy  of  the  French 
court,  which,  with  the  view  of  excluding  the  English  from  the  fur  trade, 
erected  no  fewer  than  thirty-three  forts,  at  great  distances  from  each  other, 
and,  employing  the  Canadians  in  building  and  victualling  these  forts,  diverted 
theni  from  the  labors  that  ought  preferably  to  have  engaged  their  atten- 
tion.^ But  the  grand  source  of  the  evils  peculiar  to  Canadian  society  was 
the^  institution,  so  pernicious  to  a  young  country,  of  an  order  of  nobility, 
which  inspired  the  Canadians  with  a  contempt   for  rough  labor  and  homely 

»  Charlevoix.  ~  2  Charlevoix's  Travels. 

^  Raynal's  Political  and  Philosophical  History  of  the  British  Trade  and  Settlements. 
VOL.    11.  13  I 


98  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  II. 

virtue,  and  a  taste  for  strutting  pomp,  empty  show,  and  idle  gayety.  To 
gratify  this  taste,  the  profits,  which  the  steady  New  Englanders  devoted  to 
the  improvement  of  their  property  or  the  enlargement  of  their  commerce, 
were  squandered  by  the  Canadians  on  the  vanity  of  ornamental  decoration  ; 
and  the  poverty,  which  the  English  surmounted  by  patient  and  vigorous  vir- 
tue, was  concealed  by  the  French  under  the  gaudy  trappings  of  a  pernicious 
luxury. 

We  may  better  conceive  than  commend  that  superior  polish  of  manner 
which  Charlevoix  ascribes  to  the  Canadians,  and  which  appears  to  have 
coexisted  with  indolence,  consequent  poverty,  vanity,  arbitrary  government, 
depravation  of  morals,  and  destitution  of  literature.  At  the  period  at  which 
we  have  now  arrived,  printing  was  established  in  every  one  of  the  British 
colonies  except  North  Carolina,  and  had  existed  for  nearly  a  century  in  New 
England.  Y.et  in  the  older  setdement  of  Canada  there  was  no  printing- 
press,  even  at  the  subsequent  period  of  1749.  One,  indeed,  had  been  for- 
merly imported  into  the  province  ;  but  it  did  not  afford  its  owner  the  means 
of  subsistence.  The  French  colonists,  more  ashamed  of  the  reproach  of 
poverty  or  intellectual  inferiority  than  of  destitution  of  liberty,  asserted  that 
the  Canadian  press  was  interdicted  lest  it  should  produce  hbels  against  the 
government.^ 

Not  the  least  remarkable  circumstance  in  the  position  of  New  England, 
at  this  time,  was  the  discussion  carried  on  in  Britain  as  to  whether  the 
colonists  were  or  were  not  aiming  at  the  establishment  of  national  inde- 
pendence.^ Some  of  the  members  of  the  Board  of  Trade  at  London  had 
long  entertained  this  apprehension,  and  openly  professed  it  ;  and  in  one  of 
the  reports  from  this  board  to  the  British  .cabinet,  on  the  recent  contro- 
versies between  Massachusetts  and  the  crown,  after  a  forcible  exposition 
of  the  strength  and  resources  of  this  people,  and  their  systematic  and  deter- 
mined-hostility to  royal  prerogative,  it  was  affirmed  that  nothing  but  an  im- 
mediate interposition  of  parliamentary  power  could  arrest  the  manifest  ten- 
dency tp  independence,  The  colonists  and  their  agents  and  partisans  in 
England  maintained,  on  the  contrary,  that  these  views  and  imputations  were 
chimerical,  and  unfounded  ;  and,  in  support  of  their  plea,  they  repeated 
the  arguments  adduced  in  Dummer's  Defence  of  the  J^ew  England  Char- 
ters^  and  protested  that  no  New  England  man  ever  mentioned  Britain  but 
under  the  affectionate  denomination  of  home^  or  our  mother  country.^  To 
provoke  such  discussions,  to  invite  the  Americans  to  canvass  the  advantages 
and  probabilities  of  independence,  was  the  height  of  absurdity  and  impolicy 
in  the  well-wishers  to  the  ascendency  of  Britain  over  her  colonies.  Besides 
alarming  some  of  the  colonists  with  apprehensions  of  precautionary  tyranny 
on  the  part  of  the  parent  state,  it  promoted  more  generally,  and  by  di- 
recter  suggestion  among  them,  a  cast  of  thought  and  temper  entirely  at  va- 
riance with  that  principle  of  superstitious,  prudential,  or  mechanical  adherence 
to  usage,  and  acquiescence  in  a  seemingly  permanent  system,  which  is  so 
congenial  to  the  human  mind,  and  so  important  an  element  in  the  force  of 
established  authority. 

'  Kalm's  Travels. 

*  "  In  the  state  of  society  which  had  taken  place  in  America,"  says  a  sensible  American 
writer,  "  the  foundations  of  her  freedom  were  laid  long  before  the  nations  of  Europe  had  any 
suspicion  of  what  was  taking  place  in  the  minds  of  men."  Williams's  History  of  Vermont. 
This  is  a  frequent,  but  erroneous,  assertion  of  American  writers.  The  nations  and  especially 
the  governments  of  Europe  rather  undervalued  the  strength  and  the  determination  than 
mistook  the  sentiments  and  inclinations  of  the  Americans, 

'  Hutchinson. 


ATP.  II.]  STATE  OF  MARYLAND.  99 

At  the  close  of  the  preceding  century,  we  have  seen  that  Maryland 
possessed  thirty  thousand  inhabitants.  Of  its  gross  population  at  the  present 
period  no  report  has  been  preserved  ;  but,  from  an  accurate  scrutiny  in  the 
year  1734,  this  province  appears  to  have  contained  thirty-six  thousand  tax- 
able colonists,  —  a  denomination  including  white  men  above  sixteen  years 
of  age,  and  negroes,  male  and  female,  from  sixteen  to  sixty.  The  state 
of  society  in  Maryland  is  said  to  have  borne  a  considerable  resemblance  to 
that  in  Virginia  ;  but  less  gayety  of  manners,  and  a  less  expensive  style  of 
living,  prevailed  in  the  younger  than  in  the  older  province.  A  printing- 
press  was  established  in  Maryland  in  1726  ;  but  it  was  three  years  later 
before  Virginia  obtained  this  advantage,  though  she  possessed  a  college 
since  the  commencement  of  the  present  century.  The  immediate  suc- 
cessors in  office  of  Seymour,  the  last  governor  whom  we  have  had  occasion 
to  notice,  were  Corbet  and  Hunt  ;  the  latter  of  whom  assumed  the  gov- 
ernment in  1714.  Two  years  after,  on  the  death  of  Charles,  Lord  Bal- 
timore, who  had  been  deprived  of  his  political  functions  on  account  of  his 
adherence  to  the  church  of  Rome,  the  title  devolved  to  Charles,  Lord 
Baltimore,  member  of  parliament  for  the  county  of  Surrey,  who,  being  a 
Protestant,  was  reinstated  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  proprietary  power.  Ben- 
edict Leonard  Calvert,  a  relative  of  the  proprietary,  was  appointed  some 
time  after  governor  of  the  province,  and  was  succeeded,  in  1732,  by 
Samuel  Ogle.  Lord  Baltimore  now  made  an  effort  to  regain  the  Delaware 
territory,  of  which  his  ancestor  had  been  divested  when  it  was  annexed  to 
Pennsylvania  ;  but,  faihng  in  his  purpose,  concluded  an  agreement,  defining 
their  respective  territorial  limits,  with  the  heirs  of  William  Penn.  The 
agreement,  however,  was  not  carried  into  effect  ;  and  renewed  disputes  be- 
tween these  parties  gave  rise  to  a  suit  in  chancery,  which  was  terminated 
by  a  decree  of  Lord  Hardwicke  in  1750.  Among  other  advantages  which 
the  people  of  Maryland  derived  from  their  uninterrupted  peace  and  friend- 
ship with  the  Indians,  they  gained  a  cheap  and  important  accession  to  their 
medical  resources  from  the  communication  of  the  knowledge  which  the 
Indians  had  acquired  of  the  medicinal  properties  of  certain  vegetable  de- 
coctions. The  salaries  of  public  officers  in  this  province  were  remarkably 
low.  In  the  year  1732,  the  assembly  declared  tobacco  a  legal  tender  for 
payment  of  all  debts,  at  a  penny  per  pound,  and  Indian  corn  at  twenty 
pence  per  bushel.  Though  the  Catholics  still  continued  to  be  the  most 
numerous  class  in  Maryland,  the  province  now  began  to  receive  large  ac- 
cessions of  Presbyterian  settlers.  These  were  emigrants  from  the  North  of 
Ireland,  the  descendants  of  Scotchmen,  who,  removing  first  to  Pennsylvania, 
purchased  there  and  cleared  uncultivated  lands ';  and  then,  selling  their  plan- 
tations to  German  emigrants,  fixed  their  own  final  settlement  in  the  frontier 
counties  of  Virginia  and  Maryland.^ 

Both  of  the  provinces  of  Carolina  had  made  considerable  advances  in 
population  since  the  commencement  of  the  century  ;  but  we  hear  of  no 
attempt  to  ascertain  the  number  of  inhabitants  in  the  northern  province  at 
the  present  period  ;  nor  is  there  any  other  known  and  notable  circumstance 
of  its  condition  that  has  not  been  already  recorded  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
Its  population,  as  we  have  already  seen,  amounted  in  the  year  1710  to  six 
thousand  persons  ;  some  increase  had  doubtless  occurred  since  that  time  ; 
and  a  few  years  after  the  present  epoch,  a  vigorous  growth  attested  the  im- 
'  Oldmixon.     Douglass.     Holmes. 


100  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  II. 

provement  which  the  provincial  institutions  and  the  condition  of  the  people 
had  undergone.  As  yet,  and  for  a  considerable  time  after,  they  formed 
the  most  turbulent,  irreligious,  and  illiterate  community  in  North  America. 
In  the  year  1700,  the  population  of  South  Carolina  is  said  to  have  amounted 
to  no  more  than  five  thousand  five  hundred  and  six  persons.  In  1723,  it 
amounted  to  thirty-two  thousand,  of  whom  eighteen  thousand  were  negro 
slaves,  and  only  fourteen  thousand  white  persons  in  a  state  of  freedom  or 
of  temporary  servitude.  Four  hundred  and  thirty-nine  slaves,  together  with 
goods  and  manufactures  to  the  valu^  of  about  sixty  thousand  pounds  ster- 
hng,  were  imported  into  this  province  in  the  year  1724;  and  in  exchange 
for  these  commodities  there  were  exported  to  England  eighteen  thousand  bar- 
rels of  rice,  fifty-two  thousand  barrels  of  pitch,  tar,  and  turpentine,  together 
with  a  quantity  of  deer-skins,  furs,  and  raw  silk.  In  addition  to  this  trade, 
which  was  carried  on  almost  entirely  in  British  ships,  the  province  maintained 
an  extensive  commercial  intercourse  with  the  West  Indies,  New  England, 
Pennsylvania,  and  New  York  ;  to  the  latter  of  which  it  appears  to  have  sent 
frequent  cargoes  of  slaves.  In  1730,  it  was  ascertained  that  the  exports 
of  rice  from  South  Carolina,  during  the  ten  preceding  years,  were  264,488 
barrels,  containing  44,081  tons.  In  this  year,  the  negroes  amounted  in  num- 
ber to  twenty-eight  thousand  ;  and,  emboldened  by  their  numerical  superiori- 
ty, they  laid  a  plot  for  a  general  massacre  of  the  white  people,  which, 
however,  was  seasonably  discovered  and  defeated. 

Undeterred  by  this  intimation  of  danger,  the  colonists  continued  to  re- 
ceive the  copious  supplies  of  additional  negroes  tendered  to  them  by  the 
slave-merchants  of  Britain,  and  demanded  by  the  increasing  cultivation  of 
rice  ;  and  in  the  year  1731,  no  fewer  than  fifteen  hundred  negroes  were 
imported  into  South  Carolina.^  In  the  same  year,  upwards  of  two  hundred 
merchant-vessels  sailed  from  Charleston  ;  and  there  were  shipped  from  this 
port  above  forty  thousand  barrels  of  rice,  besides  deer-skins,  furs,  naval 
stores,  and  provisions.  Happily  for  South  Carolina,  its  population  was  not 
reinforced  from  without  by  negroes  alone.  We  have  remarked  the  arrival  of 
a  body  of  Swiss  emigrants  on  its  shores  in  1733  ;  and  about  four  years  after, 
vast  multitudes  of  Irish  husbandmen  began  to  flock  to  it  as  a  happy  refuge 
from  the  oppressive  exactions  of  landlords  and  bishops  in  their  native  land. 
Yet,  from  the  year  1720  till  the  year  1765,  the  slaves  in  South  Carolina 
continued  greatly  and  increasingly  to  outnumber  the  white  inhabitants.  To 
the  lamentable  consequences  of  this  state  of  society  we  have  already  had 
occasion  to  advert ;  ^  and  farther  occasion  will  be  supplied  in  the  progress 
of  Carohnian  history.  In  the  year  1734,  the  assembly  of  South  CaroHna, 
in  an  address  to  the  king  on  the  state  of  the  province,  declared  that  they 
were  "  subject  to  many  intestine  dangers  from  the  great  number  of  negroes 
that  are  now  among  us."  The  continual  suspicion  and  insecurity  to  which 
the  colonists  were  exposed  was  strongly  indicated  by  an  ordinance  of  the 
legislature,  commanding  all  the  inhabitants  to  carry  arms  with  them  to  their 
assemblies  for  divine  worship.  By  another  law,  which  was  passed  a  few 
years  afterwards,  the  importation  of  additional  negroes  into  the  province 
was  taxed  so  heavily  as  to  be  virtually  prohibited  ;  but  this  law  was  very 
soon  abolished.     In  addition  to  the  danger  which  they  incurred  from  the 

'  In  1728,  the  British  parliament  instituted  an  inquiry  into  the  state  of  the  African  trade, 
from  which  it  appeared  that  in  three  years  only  the  number  of  negroes  imported  into  Barba- 
does,  Jamaica,  and  Antigua  amounted  to  forty-two  thousand.     Universal  History. 

»  Book  IV.,  Chap.  II.,  ante. 


'APP.  II.]  STATE  OF  SOUTH  CAROLINA.       *        ]01 

vindictive  hatred  of  their  slaves,  the  security  of  the  inhabitants  had  long 
been  menaced  by  the  vicinity  of  the  Spaniards  ;  and  a  new  source  of  alarm 
was  latterly  created  by  the  progressive  advances  of  the  French  settlements 
in  Louisiana,  and  the  alhance  which  this  people  succeeded  in  forming  with  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  Indian  tribe  called  the  Creeks. 

Frugal  habits  prevailed  generally  among  the  planters  of  South  Car- 
olina at  this  period,  and  doubtless  contributed  to  the  rapid  advancement  of 
the  provincial  prosperity.  Luxury  had  not  yet  gained  admission  among 
them.  Except  rum,  sugar,  tea,  and  coffee,  their  diet  was  derived  entirely 
from  their  own  plantations.  Printing  was  introduced  into  this  province  in 
the  year  1730,  and  a  newspaper  estabhshed  in  1734.  A  great  majority 
of  the  inhabitants,  including  the  posterity  of  the  Dissenters,  who  repaired 
to  the  colony  soon  after  its  foundation,  were  now  attached  to  the  established 
Episcopal  church.  Presbyterianism,  however,  enjoyed  a  tolerated  exist- 
ence, and  was  maintained  by  fresh  emigrations  from  Ireland  and  Scotland.^ 

In  the  year  1724,  a  vehement  eruption  of  immoral  and  impious  frenzy  oc- 
curred among  some  families  of  French  refugees,  who  had  emigrated  to 
South  Carolina  in  consequence  of  the  revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes  ; 
and  was  supposed  to  have  been  occasioned  by  the  ill-advised  study  of  the 
writings  of  the  German  mystic,  Jacob  Behmen.  The  unhappy  victims 
of  this  delusion  professed  to  be  guided  in  every  action  of  their  lives  by  the 
immediate  and  sensible  impulse  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  disregarded  all 
the  recorded  precepts  and  doctrines  of  religion  that  withstood  any  im- 
agined suggestion  derived  from  that  peculiar  source.  They  renounced  social 
intercourse  with  all  the  rest  of  mankind,  whom  they  believed  to  be  devoted 
to  a  speedy  and  inevitable  destruction  ;  and,  in  the  commission  of  incest 
and  adultery,  plumed  themselves  on  their  faithful  obedience  to  the  inspira- 
tions of  infallible  wisdom.  At  first,  they  declared  that  the  unlawfulness 
of  carrying  arms  was  plainly  revealed  to  them  ;  but  finding  that  the  civil 
power  was  preparing  to  punish  them  for  the  scandalous  immorality  of  their 
lives,  they  asserted  that  a  posterior  and  counter  revelation  authorized 
them  to  defend  their  persons  against  the  violence  of  persecutors,  and  their 
substance  against  the  robberies  of  ungodly  men.  Armed  with  muskets,  they 
fired  upon  a  company  of  militia  who  were  sent  to  apprehend  them,  and 
killed  the  captain,  besides  wounding  several  of  the  men  ;  but  they  were 
soon  overpowered  and  brought  to  trial.  Four  of  them  were  condemned 
to  die  for  murder  ;  but  still  continued  for  a  while  to  boast  of  their  wick- 
edness as  the  perfection  of  piety  and  virtue.  However,  their  frenzied  vis- 
ions gradually  faded  away  ;  compunctious  horror  and  remorse  succeeded  ; 
and  at  the  place  of  execution  they  implored  divine  pardon  of  the  mon- 
strous crimes  and  blasphemies  into  which  lawless  thought  and  spiritual  pride 
had  betrayed  them.     The  delusion  was  not  propagated  any  fartncsf. 

During  the  summer  of  1728,  the  weather  in  South  Carolina  pioved  un- 
commonly hot ;  the  surface  of  the  earth  was  parched,  the  pools  of  water  were 
dried  up,  and  the  beasts  of  the  field  reduced  to  the  greatest  distniS3.  This 
affliction  was  followed  in  the  autumn  by  a  furious  hurricane,  which  occa- 
sloned  a  great  destruction  of  property.     In  the  same  year,   that  dreadful 

'  John  Wesley  paid  a  visit  to  Charleston  in  the  year  1737.  "It  being  the  time  of  their 
•n.iual  visitation,"  he  relates,  "  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  vv^ith  the  clergy  of  South  Car- 
olina ;  among  whom,  in  the  afternoon,  there  was  such  a  conversation  for  several  hours,  on 
Christ  our  Righteousness^  as  I  had  not  heard  at  any  visitation  in  England,  or  hardiy  on  any 
Vther  occasion."    John  Wesley's  Journal. 

I* 


102  '  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.H. 

pestilence,  the  yellow  fever,  broke  forth  to  an  extent  and  with  a  malignity 
that  swept  multitudes  of  the  planters  and  their  negroes  to  an  untimely  grave, ^ 
—  the  impartial  refuge  of  the  oppressed  and  their  oppressors. 

Within  a  very  few  years  after  the  present  epoch,  a  great  and  sudden 
change  was  produced  in  the  condition  of  South  Carolina  and  the  manners 
of  its  inhabitants  by  that  influx  of  wealth  which  resulted  from  the  fostering 
care  of  the  parent  state  and  the  plantation  of  the  neighbouring  colony  of  Geor- 
gia. A  general  competition  then  arose  among  the  Carolinian  planters  to  en- 
large their  estates  ;  many  of  them  rapidly  accumulated  large  fortunes,  and  a 
luxurious  and  expensive  style  of  hving  began  to  prevail  in  the  province. 

The  population  of  New  York,  which  in  the  year  1701  amounted  to 
thirty  thousand  persons,  had  advanced  in  the  year  1732  to  upwards  of  sixty 
thousand,  of  whom  about  seven  thousand  were  slaves.^  The  value  of  goods 
annually  imported  by  this  colony  from  Great  Britain  was  computed  to  be  not 
less  than  one  hundred  thousand  pounds.  In  the  year  1736,  the  custom-house 
books  contained  entries  of  two  hundred  and  eleven  vessels  arriving  with  car- 
goes at  the  port  of  New  York,  and  two  hundred  and  twenty-two  departing 
with  cargoes  from  it.  A  large  contraband  trade  was  pursued  with  Holland 
and  Hamburg,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  British  government  to  suppress 
it  by  the  multiplication  of  custom-house  officers.  The  inhabitants  of  late 
had  generally  contracted  a  taste  for  tea  ;  and  it  was  found  quite  impractica- 
ble to  enforce  the  exclusive  right  of  the  EngHsh  East  India  Company  to 
import  this  article,  while  the  colonists  could  procure  it  at  a  price  thirty  per 
cent,  lower  from  foreigners.  A  continual  struggle  was  maintained  between 
the  provincial  merchants  and  the  British  custom-house  officers,  who,  un- 
able to  check  the  really  contraband  trade,  frequently  arrested  vessels  plying 
between  the  port  of  New  York  and  other  places  within  the  limits  of  the  col- 
ony, under  pretence  that  they  were  conducting  or  aiding  foreign  smuggling. 
An  act  of  the  provincial  assembly,  in  1724,  imposed  severe  penalties  on 
custom-house  officers  committing  such  molestation.  The  metropolis  of  this 
province  had  not  increased  in  proportion  to  the  general  population,  and 
seems  to  have  contained  little  more  than  eight  thousand  inhabitants.  New 
York  is  the  first  of  the  North  American  States  in  which  we  find  Jews  par- 
ticularized as  a  part  of  the  population.  Of  the  first  resort  of  this  widely 
wandering  race  to  the  New  World  no  memorial  has  been  preserved  ;  but 
before  the  middle  of  the  present  century,  they  had  increased  to  a  numerous 
and  thriving  society  In  this  province,  and  possessed  a  synagogue  in  the  town 
of  New  York.^     They  enjoyed  equal  rights  and  privileges  with  the  rest  of 

'  He  wit.  Universal  History.  D  wight's  Travels.  Description  of  South  Carolina  (1761). 
Drayton.  Oldmixon  gives  the  following  table  of  the  wages  of  labor  about  this  period  in  Car- 
olina :  — 

A  tailor,    .     .    5s.  Od.  a  day. 

A  shoemaker,    2s.  6d.  almost  as  cheap  as  in  England. 
A  smith,    .     .     7s.  6d.  three  times  as  dear  as  in  England. 
A  weaver,     .     Ss.  Od. 
A  bricklayer,.    65.  Od. 
A  cooper,      .    4s.  Od. 
*  Holmes. 

'  The  number  of  Jews  in  America  excited  some  foolish  alarm  in  England  in  the  year  1735, 
when  the  parliament  repealed  a  law  which  had  been  made  not  long  before  for  naturalizing 
Jews,  resident  in  Britain.  Another  act  still  subsisted,  by  which  Jews  resident  for  seven 
years  in  any  of  the  American  colonies  were  entitled  to  become  naturalized  subjects  of  Brit- 
ain ;  and  fears  arose  that  England  would  be  inundated  with  naturalized  Jews  from  America. 
J  Jut  an  attempt  to  procure  the  repeal  of  this  last-mentioned  statute  proved  ineffectual.  Smollett. 
I  do  not  recollect,  in  all  my  reading,  a  single  notice  or  memorial  of  the  preseu^e  of 
^vpsies  in  North  AuiPrir.a 


APP.  II.]  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK.  |03 

the  free  inhabitants  ;  and,  among  others,  the  privilege  of  holding  negroes  in 
a  state  of  slavery.  A  statute  of  the  New  York  assembly,  passed  in  the  year 
1730,  commences  with  the  legislative  axiom,  that  "  slaves  are  the  property 
of  Christians  or  Jews."  A  tax  was  imposed  on  the  importation  of 
slaves  ;  of  whom  a  considerable  supply  was  annually  derived  from  the 
province  of  South  Carohna.  Slaves,  attempting  to  set  fire  to  the  dwellings 
of  free  men,  were  burned  alive.  In  the  year  1741,  thirteen  slaves  were 
burned,  eighteen  were  hanged,  and  many  more  transported  from  New  Y  ork 
to  the  West  Indies  for  this  offence.  Numerous  ordinances  occur  in  the 
statute-book  of  New  York,  for  preventing  the  desertion  of  slaves  from  Al- 
bany to  the  French  settlements  in  Canada. 

An  act  of  the  New  York  assembly,  in  1721,  declared  that  the  province 
was  much  infested  by  the  resort  of  idle  and  necessitous  persons,  chiefly  fu- 
gitive debtors  and  criminals,  from  the  other  British  plantations  ;  and  author- 
ized justices  of  the  peace  to  require  surety  from  all  new  settlers  that  they 
would  not  become  chargeable  to  the  community,  and  to  banish  all  dissolute 
vagabonds,  and  all  persons  whom  they  might  suspect  of  inability  to  sup- 
port themselves.  All  lotteries  were  prohibited  by  an  act  passed  in  the 
same  year  ;  and  which  declared,  with  soHd  wisdom,  that  it  was  of  perni- 
cious consequence,  that  property,  instead  of  being  acquired  by  industry  and 
exchanged  by  barter,  should  be  distributed  by  chance.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  remote  districts  of  the  province  were  supplied  with  wares  by  hawk- 
ers and  pedlers  ;  and  from  various  legislative  acts,  it  appears  that  a  part 
of  the  public  revenue  was  derived  from  duties  on  the  licenses  v;hich  these 
itinerant  chapmen  were  required  to  obtain  from  the  government.  In  the 
year  1732,  there  was  founded,  by  an  act  of  the  provincial  legislature,  a 
public  school  in  the  city  of  New  York  for  teaching  Latin,  Greek,  and  math- 
ematics. A  number  of  Quakers  resorted  to  this  province  soon  after  its  an- 
nexation to  the  British  empire  ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  year  1734,  that 
Quakers  in  New  York  were  placed  on  the  same  footing  with  Quakers  in 
England,  by  an  act  of  assembly  which  recited  and  adopted  all  the  statutes 
of  the  British  parliament  in  favor  of  these  sectaries.  Among  other  reasons 
for  this  measure,  the  preamble  of  the  act  declares,  "  that  it  is  most  agree- 
able to  his  Majesty's  royal  intentions,  that  the  legislature  of  this  colony 
should,  in  all  their  laws  and  proceedings,  conform  themselves,  as  near  as 
may  be,  to  the  constitutions  of  England  ;  and  that,  therefore,  they  cannot 
more  effectually  recommend  themselves  to  his  Majesty's  grace  and  favor 
than  by  imitating  the  example  of  the  parliament  of  Great  Britain." 

While  a  strong  tincture  of  Dutch  manners  continued  to  pervade  all  the 
various  races  of  people  of  whom  the  population  of  this  province  was  com- 
posed, and  to  be  visible  especially  in  the  neatness  and  cleanliness  of  do- 
mestic accommodations,  the  prevalence  of  English  tastes  was  attested  by 
some  of  the  pubhc  amusements,  and  particularly  by  the  practice  of  horse- 
racing,  which  became  a  frequent  and  favorite  pastime  in  Long  Island.  The 
citizens  of  New  York  were  distinguished  by  their  sprightly  tempers  and 
sociable  manpers.  The  men  assembled  in  weekly  evening  clubs  ;  and 
during  the  winter,  the  united  entertainment  of  both  sexes  was  supplied  by 
assemblies  for  dancing  and  concerts  of  music.  The  style  of  living  was, 
however,  less  gay  and  expensive,  and  there  was  less  inequality  of  fortune 
at  New  York  than  at  Boston.  Sobriety  of  deportment  and  a  close  atten 
tion  to  pecuniary  gain  prevailed  almost  universally.     Many  of  the  French 


104  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  II. 

Protestant  emigrants  to  this  province  were  persons  of  considerable  attain- 
ments in  literature.  They  enlivened  the  colonial  society  by  the  gayety 
of  their  manners,  and  improved  it  by  the  useful  arts  which  they  imported 
from  their  native  land.  They  have  been  described  as  a  remarkably  frugal, 
cheerful,  patient,  and  contented  race  of  people.  The  colonists,  in  general, 
were  healthy  and  robust,  taller,  but  shorter-lived,  than  the  inhabitants  of 
Europe.  They  appear,  says  Smith,  to  arrive  sooner  than  Europeans  at 
maturity  both  of  mind  and  body,  and  to  incur  in  both  these  respects  a  pro- 
portionally earlier  decay.  The  medical  profession  was  totally  unregulated, 
and  open  to  every  pretender  ;  the  province  abounded  with  empirical  prac- 
titioners of  physic  ;  and  yet  the  assembly  granted  certain  privileges  to  every 
person  who  thought  fit  to  assume  this  profession,  and,  in  particular,  an 
exemption  from  the  general  liability  to  discharge  the  office  of  constable. 
A  newspaper  was  first  published  at  New  York  in  the  year  1725  ;  and  there 
was  now  one  bookseller's  shop  in  the  city. 

The  government  of  this  province,  observing  the  influence  which  the 
French  exercised  over  the  Indians  by  the  instrumentality  of  the  Jesuit 
missionaries,  made  some  ineffectual  attempts  to  procure  a  similar  advan- 
tage from  the  ministry  of  Protestant  preachers  among  the  Six  Nations. 
Governor  Hunter,  at  a  conference  with  the  sachems  of  this  confederacy, 
after  presenting  them  with  a  quantity  of  clothes,  informed  them  that  the  Brit- 
ish queen  desired  to  clothe  their  souls  as  well  as  their  bodies,  and  proposed 
for  this  purpose  to  send  a  number  of  Protestant  missionaries  into  their  ter- 
ritories. The  Indians  pohtely,  but  resolutely,  dechned  the  proposition  ; 
adding,  that  it  would  be  a  demonstration  of  greater  kindness  to  send  a  few 
blacksmiths  to  reside  among  them,  and  that  several  of  the  ministers  who 
had  already  come  to  them  from  New  York  had  encouraged  them  in  the  evil 
practice  of  drinking  brandy.  Oldmixon,  who  relates  this  conference,  and 
whose  partialities  are  all  opposed  to  the  Puritans,  observes,  nevertheless, 
that  the  Indians  were  generally  struck  with  the  difference  between  mission- 
aries who  were  hired  to  visit  them  and  the  earnest  and  self-denying 
missionaries  of  New  England.  The  Indians  always  inquired,  with  anxious 
desire  and  acute  penetration,  what  it  was  that  really  prompted  their  teachers 
to  address  them  ;  i  they  were  awed  and  affected  by  the  demonstration  of 
sincere  and  disinterested  concern  for  their  welfare  ;  and  never  failed  to 
manifest  contempt  or  indifference  for  ministers  in  whom  they  detected 
the  motive  of  pecuniary  gain,  or  concern  for  temporal  advantage.^ 

Nothing  could  be  more  tranquil  and  prosperous  than  the  condition 
which  New  Jersey  had  now  for  many  years  enjoyed.  But  if  we  would 
ascertain  the  fruits  and  particulars  of  this  silent  prosperity,  we  must  look 
forward  to  the  year  1738.  At  the  close  of  the  preceding  century.  New 
Jersey  possessed  about  15,000  inhabitants  ;  in  the  year  1738,  it  con- 
tained 47,367,  of  whom  3,981  were  slaves.  The  manufactures  established 
in  the  province  remained  nearly  stationary  ;  but  its  trade  had  considerably 
increased.  With  the  view  of  still  farther  improving  their  social  condition, 
as  well  as  from  a  sense  of  their  increasing  political  importance,  the  people 
were  generally  desirous  of  an  alteration  of  the  practice  according  to  which 
the  administration  of  their  executive  government  was  included  in  the  com- 

'  "  I  love  to  feel  where  words  come  from,"  said  an  Indian  to  Woolman,  the  Quaker. 
2  Oldmixon.     Ka\ms  Travels.     W.Smith.     Laws  of  JVew  York  from  1691  to  1751.    Grant's 
Memoirs  of  an  Jlmerican  Lady.     Holmes. 


APP.  II.]    STATE  OF  NEW  JERSEY,  PENNSYLVANIA,  AND  DELAWARE.     J  05 

mission  of  the  governor  of  New  York,  and,  in  the  year  1728,  the  assembly 
petitioned  the  king  that  a  separate  governor  might  be  appointed  for  New 
Jersey.  They  complained  of  the  hardship  of  being  obliged  to  contribute 
a  salary  to  a  governor  who  spent  it  in  New  York  ;  and  undertook  to  make 
a  liberal  provision  for  any  governor  whom  his  Majesty  would  appoint 
exclusively  for  themselves.  Their  petition  met  with  little  attention  till  the 
year  1736,  when  the  Lords  of  Trade  presented  a  report  in  its  favor  to 
the  privy  council  ;  and  two  years  after,  Lewis  Morris,  who  had  been  for- 
merly chief  justice  of  New  York,  an  eccentric,  but  able  and  active  man, 
extremely  disputatious,  yet  honorable  and  upright,  was  appointed  the  first 
royal  governor  who  presided  in  New  Jersey  separately  from  New  York. 
The  governor's  salary,  which  had  been  hitherto  six  hundred  pounds,  was 
now  raised  to  Sne  thousand  pounds  per  annum,  besides  perquisites  and  oc- 
casional presents  to  defray  extraordinary  expenses.  In  the  same  year,  a 
college  was  founded  at  Princeton,  and  named  Nassau  Hall.  Among  other 
funds  by  which  the  expense  of  this  scholastic  establishment  was  defrayed, 
a  liberal  contribution  for  the  purpose  was  made  by  the  general  assembly  of 
the  church  of  Scotland.  The  mild  treatment  of  slaves  in  this  province, 
which  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  notice, ^  may  perhaps  be  inferred 
from  a  circumstance  which  occurred  about  this  time,  when  the  slaves, 
forming  nearly  a  tenth  part  of  the  inhabitants,  constituted  a  larger  propor- 
tion of  the  total  population  of  the  province  than  at  any  other  period  of 
its  history.  It  was  then  that  there  occurred  the  only  instance,  recorded  in 
the  annals  of  New  Jersey,  of  a  conspiracy  (real  or  supposed)  of  the  enslaved 
negroes  against  the  white  freemen.  Notwithstanding  the  rage  and  fear 
which  such  an  emergency  is  apt  to  provoke,  only  one  of  the  supposed  con- 
spirators was  hanged,  —  "  probably,"  says  Oldmixon,  "  because  they  could 
not  well  spare  any  more."  It  is  happy  for  slaves,  when  their  masters  feel 
themselves  unable  to  spare  them  even  to  the  cravings  of  fear  and  vengeance.^ 
The  inhabitants  of  New  Jersey  were  occasionally  more  alarmed  than  injured 
by  slight  shocks  of  earthquake,  of  which  instances  have  been  recorded  in 
the  years  1726,  1732,  and  1737.  Like  their  neighbours  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  people  of  Connecticut,  they  prudently  restrained  their  paper  cur- 
rency within  safe  and  narrow  limits.  They  long  continued  a  quiet,  virtu- 
ous, and  happy  people.^ 

Pennsylvania  and  Delaware  had,  beyond  doubt,  increased  more  rapidly 
since  the  commencement  of  the  century  than  any  of  the  other  colonies  ; 
but  of  their  actual  population  at  this  period  no  credible  account  has  been 
transmitted.  While  one  author,"*  with  manifest  inaccuracy,  reports  the 
number  of  inhabitants  in  1732  to  have  been  thirty  thousand,  —  that  is, 
about  five  thousand  fewer  than  in  the  year  1708  ;  another,  the  Quaker  his- 
torian. Proud,  has,  with  blind  exultation,  adopted  from  an  anonymous 
pamphlet,  pubhshed  at  London  in  1731,  an  exaggerated  statement,  wiuch, 
without  particularizing  the  number  of  the  people,  represents  it  as  greatly 
exceeding  the  population  of  Virginia,  Maryland,  and   both  the  Carolinas.^ 

'  Book  VI.,  ante. 

'  Nearly  coincident  with  the  New  Jersey  negro  plot  was  a  conspiracy  of  the  negro  slaves 
of  the  British  colony  of  Antigua,  which  was  punished  with  a  barbarity  more  characteristic  of 
slave-owners.  Three  of  the  ringleaders  were  hroken  on  the  wheel ;  seventy-nine  were  burned 
alive  ;   and  nine  were  suspended  in  chains  and  starved  to  death.     Universal  History. 

'  S.  Smith.     Oldmixon.     Gillies'  Life  of  MLaurin.     Warden.     Holmes. 

*  Holmes. 

'  Proud  is  not  ashamed  to  support  the  statement  which  he  has  adopted,  by  copying  its  au- 
VOL.    II.  14 


106  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  II. 

Both  reports  are  equally  unworthy  of  credit.  It  was  not  till  some  years 
after  the  present  period,  that  the  population  of  Pennsylvania  attained  the 
utmost  vigor  of  its  principle  of  increase  ;  and  probably,  as  yet,  it  was  in- 
ferior to  the  population  of  Virginia.  The  colonists  of  Pennsylvania  and 
Delaware,  at  this  period,  built  annually  about  two  thousand  tons  of  shipping 
for  sale,  besides  the  vessels  employed  in  their  own  trade,  which  were 
reckoned  at  six  thousand  tons.  They  traded  with  England,  Portugal,  and 
Spain  ;  with  the  Canaries,  Madeira,  and  the  Azores  ;  with  the  West 
India  Islands  ;  with  New  England,  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Carolina.  In 
1731,  Philadelphia  is  said  to  have  contained  two  thousand  four  hundred 
houses,  and  twelve  thousand  souls,  —  a  computation  probably  somewhat 
below  the  truth.  In  1736,  the  custom-house  books  contained  entries  of  two 
hundred  and  eleven  vessels  arriving  with  cargoes  at  the  port  of  Philadel- 
phia, and  of  two  hundred  and  fifteen  departing  with  cargoes  from  it,  —  a 
share  of  commerce  rather  smaller  than  New  York  possessed  in  the  same 
year.  Yet  the  commerce  of  Pennsylvania  seems  to  have  been  productive 
of  more  benefit  than  that  of  New  York  to  the  manufacturers  of  Britain,  from 
which  the  Pennsylvanians  are  said  to  have  imported  goods  to  the  annual 
value  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds.  Similar  to  the  observa- 
tion of  Smith  respecting  New  York  is  the  remark  of  Proud  with  regard 
to  Pennsylvania,  — that  "  the  lives  of  both  animals  and  vegetables,  as  they 
mostly  arrive  sooner  at  maturity,  are  generally  of  shorter  duration,  than 
in  some  of  the  more  northern  or  temperate  climates."  He  adds,  that 
"  strangers  who  remove  hither  from  colder  or  more  northern  latitudes  are 
observed  generally  to  bear  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Pennsylvanian  climate 
better,  at  first,  than  the  natives  of  the  country,  or  such  as  have  lived 
long  in  it."i 

Pennsylvania,  if  not  the  only  province  in  w^hich  religious  toleration 
prevailed,  was  at  least  the  one  in  which  the  prevalence  of  this  principle 
was  attested  by  the  greatest  variety  of  religious  sects  and  sentiments.  In 
the  year  1724,  there  was  founded  by  some  German  emigrants  in  this  prov- 
ince the  sect  which  has  been  described  by  different  writers  under  the  dif- 
ferently sounding  names  of  Tunkers^  Dunkers,  Tumblers,  and  Dumplers. 
The  votaries  of  this  persuasion  adopted  the  dress  of  the  monks  and  nuns 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  order  of  White  Friars,  and  a  system  of  doctrine 
derived  partly  from  the  Anabaptists  and  partly  from  the  Quakers.  In 
imitation  of  the  Jews,  they  solemnized  the  sixth  day  of  the  week  as  a 
Sabbath,  and  commonly,  but  not  universally,  refrained  from  shaving  their 
beards.  They  established  within  their  sectarian  society  a  community  of 
goods,  and  a  strict  separation  of  the  sexes  ;  allowing,  nevertheless,  the 
lawfulness  of  marriage,  but  inflicting  a  friendly  exile  from  the  bosom  of  the 
society  as  the  conditional  consequence  of  it.  They  carried  the  doctrine 
of  non-resistance,  professed  by  the  Quakers  and  some  other  sectaries,  to 
the  farthest  practical  extremity  ;  utterly  forbearing  htigation,  enduring  in- 
sult and  injury  without  resentment  or  complaint,  and  realizing  the  visions 
of  the  Stoics  on  the  principles  of  Christianity.  Their  church  government 
was  administered  by  deacons  and  deaconesses,  and  in  their  religious  as- 
semblies the  members  of  either  sex  were  expected  and  permitted  freely  to 

thor's  erroneous  exposition  of  the  reasons  of  it,  —  namely,  that  Pennsylvania  was  the  only 
colony  where  religious  toleration  was  enjoyed,  and  where  the  Indians  were  not  treated  with 
injustice  and  inhumanity  ! 

'  Proud      Anderson.     Holmes. 


APP.  U.]  GENERAL  STATE  OF  THE  COLONIES.  1Q7 

exercise  and  display  their  spiritual  gifts.  With  purposed  or  accidental 
imitation  of  the  policy  of  Lycurgus  regarding  the  laws  of  Sparta,  they  com- 
mitted none  of  their  peculiar  dogmas  or  precepts  to  writing,  from  the  appre- 
hension of  exposing  themselves  either  to  the  danger  of  professing  tenets  after 
they  might  cease  to  beheve  them,  or  to  the  shame  of  abandoning  what 
they  or  their  fathers  had  publicly  sanctioned  and  embraced.  They  speedily 
made  numerous  converts  among  the  other  German  emigrants,  and  estab- 
lished their  principal  settlement  at  a  place  which  they  named  Ephrata, — 
whence  various  derivative  communities  were  afterwards  extended  to  other 
parts  of  Pennsylvania.  At  first,  they  practised  numerous  austerities,  which 
were  relaxed  in  process  of  time  ;  but  they  were  always  distinguished  by  a 
diligent  and  yet  unselfish  industry,  and  a  gentleness  and  simplicity  of  de- 
portment, which  gained  for  them  in  Pennsylvania  the  title  of  the  harmless 
Tunkers.^ 

In  every  one  of  the  North  American  provinces,  at  this  period,  there 
were  exhibited,  on  a  larger  or  smaller  scale,  the  grand  and  pleasing  features 
of  national  happiness,  hberty,  piety,  and  virtue.  But  Pennsylvania,  Con- 
necticut, and  New  Jersey  were  distinguished  above  all  the  rest  by  the 
scenes  of  tranquillity  and  contentment  they  presented.  Virginia  and  Mary- 
land had,  indeed,  enjoyed  a  long  exemption  from  foreign  war  and  the  ac- 
tual infliction  of  domestic  tyranny  ;  but  in  both  of  these  States  a  theoret- 
ical intolerance  and  consequent  insecurity  prevailed.  In  Virginia,  a  numer- 
ous body  of  Protestant  Dissenters  were  nominally  exposed  to  the  penalties 
of  an  intolerant  ecclesiastical  constitution ;  and  in  Maryland,  the  great 
majority  of  the  people  enjoyed  their  estates  and  franchises  only  by  a  con- 
nivance which  restrained  the  practical  execution  of  the  existing  laws  against 
the  professors  of  the  Catholic  faith.  In  Virginia  and  Maryland,  too,  negro 
slavery  prevailed  far  more  extensively  and  was  productive  of  much  greater 
evils  than  in  Pennsylvania,  Connecticut,  or  N^w  Jersey. 

It  was  noted  from  an  early  period,  as  a  peculiarity  in  the  manners  of 
the  North  American  colonists,  that  their  funerals  were  conducted  with  a 
degree  of  pomp  and  expense  unknown  to  the  contemporary  practice  of 
Europe.  The  costliness  of  funerals  in  New  England,  New  Jersey,  and 
Pennsylvania,  in  particular,  has  been  remarked  by  various  writers.  The 
legislature  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  year  1724,  enacted  a  law  for  restraining 
this  vain  and  unseasonable  prodigality  ;  and  especially  prohibiting,  under  a 
penalty  of  twenty  pounds,  the  common  practice  of  presenting  a  scarf  to 
every  guest  who  attended  a  funeral.  Philosophic  men,  in  others  of  the 
provinces,  labored  with  more  zeal  than  success  to  recommend  a  similar 
reformation  to  their  fellow-citizens.^     In  none  of  the  colonies  was  greater 

^  Rajnal.  Winterbotham.  Holmes.  "When  we  were  first  drawn  together  as  a  society," 
said  Michael  WefFare,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  sect  of  Tunkers,  to  Dr.  Franklin,  "it  had 
pleased  God  to  enlighten  our  minds  so  far  as  to  see  that  some  doctrines  which  were  esteemed 
truths  were  errors,  and  that  others  which  we  had  esteemed  errors  were  real  truths.  From 
time  to  time,  he  has  been  pleased  to  afford  us  farther  light,  and  our  principles  have  been 
improving  and  our  errors  diminishing :  now  we  are  not  sure  that  we  have  arrived  at  the  end 
of  this  progression,  and  at  the  perfection  of  spiritual  or  theological  knowledge  ;  and  we  fear, 
that,  if  we  should  once  print  our  confession  of  faith,  we  should  feel  ourselves  as  if  bound  and 
confined  by  it,  and  perhaps  be  unwilling  to  receive  farther  improvement ;  and  our  successors 
still  more  so,  as  conceiving  what  their  elders  and  founders  had  done  to  be  something  sacred 
and  never  to  be  departed  from."     Franklin's  Memoirs. 

'  Raynal.  Haviksley's  Memoirs  of  President  Edwards.  Holmes.  "  It  is  a  general  observa- 
tion," says  Raynal,  "that  plain  and  virtuous  nations,  even  savage  and  poor  ones,  are  remark- 
ably attached  to  the  care  of  their  burials.  The  Pennsylvanians,  who  are  the  greatest  enemies 
to  parade  during  their  lives,  seem  to  forget  this  character  of  modesty  at  their  deaths.    They 


IQS  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.  H. 

expense  incurred  or  magnificence  displayed  at  funerals  than  in  South 
Carolina,  where  the  interment  of  the  dead  was  generally  combined  with  a 
sumptuous  banquet  and  a  profusion  of  good  cheer  for  the  living. ^ 

British  oppression  and  intolerance,  which  had  founded  most  of  the  North 
American  colonies,  still  continued  to  augment  the  numbers  and  influence 
the  sentiments  of  their  inhabitants.  During  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
emigration  from  Ireland,  where  the  bulk  of  the  people  were  exposed  to 
great  injustice  and  contumely,  was  much  more  copious  than  from  any  other 
part  of  the  British  empire.  The  contest  that  prevailed  between  the  Whigs 
and  Tories  in  the  parent  state  extended  its  influence  beyond  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  A  periodical  work,  pubHshed  about  this  time  in  England,  under 
the  title  of  The  Independent  Whig^  contained  abundance  of  satire  against 
the  High  Church,  or  Tory  party,  and  the  ministers  of  the  established  ec- 
clesiastical constitution  of  England.  It  was  widely  circulated  in  America, 
and  contributed  not  a  little  to  promote  a  spirit  of  independence  and  republi- 
canism among  the  colonists.^ 

all  are  desirous  that  the  poor  remains  of  their  short  lives  should  be  attended  with  a  funeral 
pomp  suited  to  their  rank  and  fortune.  Every  family  who  hears  of  the  death  sends  at  least 
one  person  to  attend  the  funeral ;  all  that  come  are  treated  with  punch  and  cake  ;  and  there 
is  generally  a  train  of  four  or  five  hundred  persons  on  horseback,  who  follow  the  body  to 
the  grave  in  profound  silence."  Like  the  American  colonists,  the  ancient  grandees  of  Scot- 
land were  so  much  infected  with  the  rage  for  funeral  ceremonial,  that  a  sumptuary  law  was 
passed  by  the  Scottish  parliament  for  the  purpose  of  restraining  it. 

^  "  In  short,  the  Scripture  observation.  It  is  better  to  go  to  the  house  of  mourning  than  to  the 
house  of  feasting,  is  unintelligible  and  wholly  inapplicable  in  South  Carolina,  as  it  is  difficult 
to  distinguish  the  one  from  the  other."     Winterbotnam. 

*  Lambert's  Travels  in  Canada  and  the  United  States. 


BOOK    IX. 

GEORGIA. 

Unpeopled  and  defenceless  State  of  the  southern  Frontier  of  Carolina.  —  Situation  of  impris- 
oned Debtors  in  England  —  Colonization  of  Georgia  suggested  for  their  Relief — by  Ogle- 
thorpe. —  The  Moravian  Brethren —  agree  to  send  a  Detachment  of  their  Society  to  Geor- 
gia. —  Royal  Charter  of  Georgia.  —  First  Resort  of  Emigrants  to  the  Province.  —  Oglethorpe's 
Treaty  with  the  Indians.  —  Legislative  Constitutions  enacted  by  the  Trustees  of  Georgia. — 
Negro  Slavery  prohibited.  —  John  and  Charles  Wesley  —  accompanjr  Moravian  Emigrants 
to  the  Province.  —  Emigration  of  Scotch  Highlanders.  —  Discontents  in  the  Colony.  —  The 
Scotch  Colonists  remonstrate  against  Negro  Slavery. —  Negro  Insurrection  in  South  Caro- 
lina.—  Spanish  War.  —  The  Moravians  forsake  Georgia.  —  Oglethorpe's  Invasion  of  Flori- 
da.—  The  Spaniards  invade  Georgia  —  and  are  foiled  by  Oglethorpe  —  w^ho  returns  to  Eng- 
land. —  Change  in  the  civil  and  political  Constitution  of  Georgia.  —  Flourishing  State  of 
South  Carolina.  —  Surrender  of  the  Charter  of  Georgia  to  the  Crown  —  and  Introduction  of 
Negro  Slavery.  —  Condition  of  Georgia  —  Trade,  Manners,  &c. 

Georgia  owed  its  colonization  partly  to  national  rivalship  and  ambition, 
and  partly  to  individual  patriotism  and  philanthropy.  The  province  of  South 
Carolina,  since  the  year  1719,  when  it  revolted  from  the  proprietary  gov- 
ernment to  the  crown,  engrossed  in  a  peculiar  degree  the  care  and  attention 
of  the  parent  state.  We  have  remarked  the  legislative  indulgence  by  which 
its  sphere  of  commerce  was  extended  ;  the  royal  bounty  by  which  its  inhab- 
itants were  furnished  with  military  stores,  and  gratified  by  the  remission  of 
arrears  of  quitrents  ;  and  the  liberal  rewards  by  which  foreigners  were  en- 
couraged to  recruit  its  population.  But  a  great  part  of  the  chartered  domains 
of  the  province  still  remained  unoccupied  ;  and,  in  particular,  the  extensive 
region  lying  between  the  rivers  Alatamaha  and  Savannah,  forming  the  south- 
ern frontier,  adjacent  to  Florida,  and  which  had  been  the  scene  of  so  many 
Indian  wars,  was  entirely  vacant  of  white  inhabitants.  In  one  quarter  of  it, 
called  Yamacraw,  there  dwelt  a  small  tribe  of  Indians  who  were  transported 
thither  by  Governor  Moore  in  the  year  1703,^  and  were  regarded  as  own- 
ers of  the  soil,  though  they  acknowledged  a  precarious  dependence  on  the 
English  provincial  government.  It  was  manifestly  requisite,  both  for  the 
interest  of  Great  Britain  and  the  security  of  Carolina,  that  a  plantation 
should  be  established  in  this  territory,  before  the  Spaniards,  in  the  indulgence 
of  their  boundless  pretensions,  should  attempt  a  practical  annexation  of  it  to 
Florida,  or  the  French  should  include  it  in  the  progressive  occupations  by 
which  they  were  advancing  the  settlements  they  had  formed  on  the  Missis- 
sippi. There  was  the  more  reason  to  apprehend  such  an  enterprise  from 
the  French,  because  they  possessed  no  settlement  on  the  eastern  shores  of 
North  America,  from  which  they  might  communicate  with  their  sugar  islands 
more  conveniently  than  from  the  Mississippi  plantations  ;  in  consequence  of 
which,  those  islands  were  still  obhged  to  depend  for  supplies  of  food  and 
other  provisions  on  the  British  continental  colonies.  But  it  was  easier  for 
British  politicians  to  conceive  than  to  execute  the  project  of  colonizing  the 
country  between  the  Alatamaha  and  the  Savannah.  There  were  other  un- 
occupied parts  of  Carolina,  which  emigrants  naturally  accounted  more  eligi- 
ble  resorts  than  this  dangerous  frontier,  surrounded  by  Indian  tribes,  and 
»  Book  IV.,  Chap.  II.,  ante. 


IIQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

exposed  to  the  brunt  of  Spanish  and  French  hostility  ;  and  little  likelihood 
appeared  of  seasonably  planting  a  stable  population  within  its  limits,  except 
by  some  extraordinary  effort,  and  the  operation  of  motives  as  powerful  and 
elevated  as  those  by  which  the  most  distinguished  of  the  social  establish- 
ments already  existing  in  North  America  had  been  engendered.  At  this 
critical  period,  a  number  of  Enghshmen,  some  prompted  by  patriotism, 
some  by  Christian  zeal,  and  some  by  warm  benevolence  and  philanthropy, 
projected  the  formation  of  a  new  and  distinct  colonial  community  in  the 
vacant  region.  The  various  purposes  by  which  their  combined  exertions 
were  centred  in  this  measure  were,  to  secure  the  British  dominion  over  a 
large  and  important  territory  ;  to  strengthen  the  province  of  Carolina  ;  to 
rescue  a  numerous  class  of  persons  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  from  the 
misery  of  hopeless  indigence  ;  to  open  an  asylum  for  Protestants  oppressed 
or  persecuted  in  any  part  of  Europe  ;  and  to  attempt  the  conversion  and  civ- 
ilization of  the  Indians.  These  were  noble  views,  and  worthy  to  be  the 
sources  of  an  American  commonwealth. 

No  modern  nation  has  ever  inflicted  or  sanctioned  greater  legal  severities 
upon  insolvent  debtors  than  England.  That  jealous  regard  for  liberty  and 
national  honor,  and  that  generous  and  extended  concern  for  the  rights  of 
human  nature,  which  the  English  have  always  claimed  as  distinguishing  fea- 
tures of  their  character,  proved  unable  to  withstand  the  most  sordid  and 
inhuman  suggestions  of  commercial  ambition.  For  the  enlargement  of  their 
commerce,  they  permitted  the  atrocities  of  the  slave-trade  ;  and  for  the  en- 
couragement of  that  ready  credit  by  which  commercial  enterprise  is  promot- 
ed, they  armed  the  creditors  of  insolvent  debtors  with  vindictive  powers,  by 
the  exercise  of  which  freeborn  Enghshmen,  unconvicted  of  crime,  were 
frequently  subjected,  in  the  metropohs  of  Britain,  to  a  thraldom  as  vile  and 
afflicting  as  the  bondage  of  negro  slaves  in  the  West  Indies.  So  long  w^as 
it  before  English  sense  and  humanity  were  fully  awakened  to  the  guilt  and 
mischief  of  this  barbarous  legal  system,  and  its  still  more  barbarous  admin- 
istration, that,  till  a  late  period  of  the  eighteenth  century,  misfortunes  in 
trade  exposed  an  Englishman  to  a  punishment  more  dreadful  than  the  pubhc 
feeling  of  England  in  the  nineteenth  century  would  suffer  to  be  inflicted  on 
the  most  odious  and  atrocious  criminal.  The  writings  of  the  illustrious  How- 
ard, in  describing  the  interior  economy  of  the  old  prisons  of  England, —  and 
the  English  state  trials,  in  recording  the  prosecutions  of  some  London  jailers 
for  enormous  excesses  of  cruelty  to  their  prisoners,  —  have  preserved  pic- 
tures ^  of  squalid  horror  and  ignominious  wretchedness,  of  which  we  may 
indulge  the  hope  that  the  originals  will  never  again  reappear  in  a  civilized  or 
Christian  community.  A  dissolute  abandonment  of  manners,  no  less  than  a 
merciless  rigor  of  bondage,  prevailed  in  the  English  prisons,  which  are  said 
to  have  accumulated  within  their  walls  every  loathsome  and  horrid  disease, 
and  every  shameless  and  profligate  enormity,  that  misery  and  vice  could 
generate  between  them.  This  dreadful  engine  of  oppression  exercised  a 
malignant  reaction  on  the  society  by  which  its  employment  was  authorized  ; 
and  debtors,  emancipated  by  mercy  or  good  fortune,  too  often  diffused  the 
contagion  of  their  jail-bred  vices  and  maladies,^  and  became  the  burden  and 

^  An  actual  pictorial  representation  of  the  torture  which  inhuman  jailers  sometimes  inflict- 
ed on  their  prisoners  in  London  has  been  preserved  by  the  pencil  of  Hogarth. 

^  A  malignant  and  contagious  malady,  called  the  jail  fever,  used  to  make  frightful  havoc 
among  the  imprisoned  debtors  and  felons  in  England.  In  the  year  1750,  it  raged  with  extreme 
virulence  in  tine  prison  of  Newgate  in  London ;  and  was  communicated  in  a  remarkable  man- 


BOOK  IX.]  COLONIZATION  OF  GEORGIA  PROJECTED.  m 

reproach  of  their  country.  The  reverses  of  fortune  consequent  on  the  mer- 
cantile gambling  which  prevailed  in  England  in  the  year  1720  crowded  the 
jails  of  this  kingdom  with  prisoners,  to  many  of  whom  the  bitterness  of  their 
actual  condition  was  aggravated  by  a  dire,  abrupt,  and  affecting  vicissitude, 
—  by  blighted  hope,  ruined  pride,  and  a  total  ignorance  and  incapacity  of 
the  expedients  by  which  persons  more  familiar  with  indigence  contrive  to 
alleviate  its  severity. 

The  multiplication  of  prisoners  necessarily  produced  an  increase  of  the 
horrors  of  imprisonment,  which  at  last  succeeded  in  awakening  a  sentiment 
of  indignant  compassion  in  the  pubHc  mind.  A  rich  and  humane  citizen  of 
London  having  bequeathed  his  fortune  to  the  government,  for  the  purpose 
of  liberating  insolvent  debtors  from  prison,  some  members  of  parliament 
undertook  to  visit  the  jails  of  London,  in  order  to  ascertain  and  select  the 
properest  objects  of  the  testator's  bounty.  In  the  course  of  their  inquiries, 
they  detected  numerous  abuses  of  prison  discipline  ;  but  what  struck  them 
most  forcibly  was  the  corrupting  influence  of  imprisonment  on  its  wretched 
victims,  and  the  perplexing  difficulty  of  altering  the  evil  bias  which  prison 
habits  had  impressed  on  these  miserable  men.  The  notion  was  conceived, 
that  an  object  so  desirable  might  be  accomplished  by  some  great  change  of 
scene,  —  by  transporting  these  persons  to  North  America  for  the  purpose  of 
founding  a  new  colony  in  that  region.^  This  proposition,  which  savors  more 
of  eager  benevolence  than  of  solid  wisdom,  is  generally  supposed  to  have 
originated  with  the  most  distinguished  of  the  individuals  by  whom  the  survey 
of  the  metropolitan  prisons  was  performed.  James  Edward  Oglethorpe, 
son  of  Sir  Theophilus  Oglethorpe,  was  born  at  London,  and  completed  his 
education  at  the  University  of  Oxford.  He  served  with  distinction  under 
Prince  Eugene  in  Germany,  and  at  an  early  age  was  advanced  to  the  rank 
of  colonel  in  the  British  army.  Gaining  a  seat  in  parliament,  he  distinguish- 
ed himself  by  an  ardent  patriotism,  an  expansive  benevolence,  and  a  thirst 
for  the  glory  of  conducting  or  promoting  great  and  generous  designs.  In 
the  year  1728,  he  engaged  the  House  of  Commons  to  appoint  a  committee 
of  inquiry  into  the  state  of  the  jails  of  Great  Britain  ;  and,  as  chairman  of 
this  committee,  he  presented,  in  the  following  year,  a  report,  which  induced 
the  House  to  attempt  the  redress  of  some  of  the  most  flagrant  of  the  existing 
abuses.  He  easily  prevailed  with  the  associates  of  his  labors  to  embrace 
the  project  of  transporting  to  America  the  unfortunate  objects  of  their  be- 
nevolence ;  and  proposing  to  the  government  to  found  a  new  colony  in  the 
frontier  territory  intervening  between  Carolina  and  Florida,  obtained  a  ready 
patronage  of  this  design  from  the  British  monarch  and  his  ministers.  It  was 
resolved  that  the  territory  selected  for  colonial  occupation  should  be  created 
a  separate  province,  and  receive  the  denomination  of  Georgia,  in  honor  of 
the  king. 

Oglethorpe's  interest,  thus  powerfully  reinforced,  procured  from  the  House 

ner  by  the  victims  to  the  dispensers  of  legal  severity.  At  an  Old  Bailey  session  in  that  year, 
some  of  the  prisoners  who  were  tried  being  affected  with  the  distemper,  two  of  the  judges, 
together  with  the  lord  mayor,  one  of  the  aldermen  of  London,  several  lawyers,  and  many  of 
the  jurymen  and  spectators,  were  smitten  with  the  contagion,  and  lost  their  lives.  Smollett. 
A  similar  disaster  occurred  during  the  same  century  at  an  assize  at  Oxford. 
^  "And  here  can  I  forget  the  generous  band, 

Who,  touched  with  human  woe,  redressive  searched 
Into  the  horrors  of  the  gloomy  jail  ?  "  —  Thomson. 
The  poet,  after  a  lively  picture  of  the  misery  which  had  been  brought  to  light,  seems  to  a.lude 
to  the  scheme  of  expatriation  in  this  warning  line  :  — 

"  O  great  design  !  if  executed  well,'' 


112  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

of  Commons  a  grant  of  ten  thousand  pounds,  to  be  added  to  the  private 
estate  that  was  bequeathed  for  the  hberation  of  debtors  ;  and  from  the  min- 
isterial cabinet  a  pledge  (of  more  than  dubious  honesty)  to  appropriate  to 
the  use  of  the  new  colony  the  funds  that  had  been  devoted  to  the  college 
projected  by  Bishop  Berkeley. ^  This  injustice  was  palliated  and  disguised 
by  the  purpose  of  uniting  with  the  colonial  project  the  pursuit  of  Berkeley's 
pious  views  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians,  —  a  purpose  which  Oglethorpe 
willingly  embraced,^  and  which  was  forcibly  recommended  by  the  obvious 
expediency  of  leavening,  by  a  copious  infusion  of  religious  zeal  and  virtuous 
example,  a  society  to  be  composed  of  persons  liberated  from  prison,  and  of 
uniting  as  far  as  possible,  by  community  of  sentiment,  the  European  settlers 
and  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the  region.  It  was  publicly  announced  that 
the  right  of  citizenship  in  the  new  province,  together  with  the  benefit  of  all 
the  patronage  and  assistance  by  which  the  first  efforts  of  the  colonists  were 
to  be  aided,  would  be  extended  to  all  Protestant  emigrants  from  any  nation 
of  Europe,  desirous  of  a  refuge  from  persecution,  or  willing  to  undertake 
the  religious  instruction  of  the  Indians.  The  invitation  thus  presented  not 
only  multiplied  the  friends  of  the  colonial  project  in  England,  but  occasioned 
an  overture  to  its  patrons  from  the  most  remarkable  Christian  society  that 
has  arisen  on  the  continent  of  Europe  since  the  era  of  the  Protestant  Ref- 
ormation.^ 

This  society,  which  has  since  extended  its  branches  to  so  many  nations, 
and  suppHed  at  once  the  most  industrious  citizens  to  civihzed  communities, 
and  the  most  diligent  and  successful  missionaries  to  heathen  and  savage 
hordes,  has  been  described  by  different  writers  under  the  various  denomina- 
tions of  Moravians,  from  the  district  of  Moravia,  in  Germany,  which  they 
once  .inhabited,  —  o(  Herrnhutters,  from  Herrnhuth,  in  Saxony,  where,  in 
1722,  they  found  a  refuge  from  persecution  within  the  domains  of  the  cele- 
brated Count  Zinzendorf,  who  became  their  bishop, — and  of  The  United 
Brethren  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  which  is  the  title  recognized 
by  themselves.  They  adhered  to  the  Augsburg  confession  of  faith,  com- 
posed by  the  German  Reformers  in  the  year  1530,  and  they  professed  a 
strictly  literal  obedience  to  the  primitive  ordinances  of  Christianity.  Find- 
ing no  warrant  in  Scripture  for  the  common  practice  of  transferring  to  the 
first  day  of  the  week  the  Sabbatical  honors  divinely  appropriated  to  the  sev- 
enth, they  dedicated  Saturday  to  contemplative  quiet,  and  entire  cessation 
from  bodily  labor  ;  and  yet  assembled  on  Sunday  to  commemorate  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Christ.  Like  the  Quakers,  they  renounced  all  war  and 
violence  ;  like  the  Tunkers,  they  estabhshed  a  community  of  goods  ;  they 
taught  industry  as  a  branch  of  religion,  —  regarding  its  offices  and  its  fruits, 
ahke,  as  occasions  or  instruments  of  fulfilling  the  will  of  God  ;  and  they  re- 
tained the  primitive  practices  of  washing  feet,  saluting  with  the  kiss  of  holy 
love,  and  solving  doubts  by  appeal  to  Heaven  through  the  intervention  of  lots. 

1  ^nte,  Book  VllL,  Chap.  II.,  ad~f^.  ~ 

^  Bishop  Wilson,  in  the  Preface  to  his  Essay  towards  an  Instruction  for  the  Indians,  which 
was  first  printed  in  1740,  states  that  Oglethorpe's  solicitations  had  induced  him  to  compose  it. 
Oglethorpe's  ardent  mind  prompted  some  literary  effusions  from  his  own  pen,  with  respect 
to  his  colonial  project.  He  was  the  author  of  a  most  ingenious  and  interesting,  though  some- 
what fancifully  colored,  .Account  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  published  at  London  in  1733, 
and  reprinted  in  the  Collections  of  the  Georgia  Historical  Society.  A  little  poem  which  he 
wrote,  on  the  same  subject,  is  alluded  to  in  the  unpublished  journal  of  Charles  Wesley. 

^  This  society  appears  to  be  derived,  by  authentic  deduction,  from  the  primitive  apostolic 
church,  through  successive  generations  of  men  who  never  acknowledged  the  supremacy  nor 
partook  the  corruptions  of  the  church  of  Rome.     Bost's  History  of  the  Moravian  Church. 


BOOK  IX.]  ROYAL  CHARTER  OF  GEORGIA.  1|3 

This  last  practice  was  employed,  in  particular,  as  a  test  of  the  propriety  of 
contracting  intended  marriages.  The  men  and  women,  before  marriage, 
lived  separately  from  each  other,  in  assemblies  where  the  most  perfect  equal- 
ity prevailed  ;  and  in  each  of  the&e  assemblies,  one  of  the  members,  in 
rotation,  was  appointed  to  pass  the  night  in  watching  and  prayer.  Silent 
assiduity  in  business,  gentleness  of  manner,  plainness  of  apparel,  and  the  ut- 
most personal  and  domestic  neatness  were  universally  cultivated  by  the  mem- 
bers of  this  society.  It  was  a  fundamental  principle  of  their  faith,  that  the 
true  dignity  and  highest  worth  of  a  human  being  consist,  not  in  requiring 
and  receiving  service  from  his  fellows,  but  in  rendering  it  to  them.  The 
Moravians  have  been  termed  the  monks  of  Protestantism  ;  ^  for,  though  they 
rejected  vows,  their  society  was  entirely  ecclesiastical,  every  thing  being 
accomplished  by  religious  influence,  and  all  afiairs  subjected  to  the  superin- 
tendence and  direction  of  the  elders  of  the  church.  In  the  year  1727, 
this  society  proclaimed  the  purpose  of  undertaking  missionary  labor  on  a 
very  extensive  scale  ;  and  in  the  year  in  which  the  charter  of  Georgia  was 
granted  [1732],  Count  Zinzendorf,  having  opened  a  correspondence  with 
Oglethorpe  and  his  associates,  announced  the  intention  of  a  party  of  the  Mo- 
ravian brethren  to  unite  themselves  with  the  other  colonists  of  this  American 
territory. 

Animated  by  benevolent  hope  and  general  approbation,  the  promoters  of 
the  colonial  project  had  now  so  far  matured  their  design,  that  they  appHed 
for  a  royal  charter,  which  was  straightway  granted  to  them  by  King  George 
the  Second.  By  this  charter  the  territory  between  the  Alatamaha  and  the 
Savannah  Rivers  was  erected  into  a  separate  and  independent  province, 
under  the  name  of  Georgia,  and  vested  in  twenty-one  noblemen  and  gentle- 
men, of  whom  the  most  distinguished  were  Anthony,  Earl  of  Shaftesbury 
(the  author  of  The  Characteristics) ,  John,  Lord  Percival,  John,  Lord  Tyr- 
connel,  James,  Lord  Limerick,  George,  Lord  Carpenter,  James  Edward 
Oglethorpe,  and  Stephen  Hales,  an  English  clergyman,  and  one  of  the  most 
eminent  naturalists  of  the  age.  A  corporation,  consisting  of  the  twenty-one 
persons  named  in  the  charter,  was  constituted,  by  the  title  of  Trustees  for 
settling  and  establishing  the  Colony  of  Georgia,  and  vested  with  the  pow- 
ers of  legislation  for  twenty-one  years  ;  at  the  expiration  of  which  time,  a 
permanent  form  of  government,  corresponding  with  British  law  and  usage, 
was  to  be  established  by  the  king  or  his  successors.  The  trustees,  being 
empowered  to  collect  benefactions  for  defraying  the  expense  of  providing 
suitable  equipment  to  the  colonists,  and  maintaining  them  till  their  houses 
should  be  built  and  their  lands  cleared,  themselves  set  an  example  to  the 
public  liberality  by  the  most  generous  contributions,  and  by  a  gratuitous 
dedication  of  their  labor  and  time  to  the  discharge  of  the  important  trust 
which  they  had  sohcited.  Oglethorpe,  moreover,  undertook  to  accompany 
the  emigrants,^  to  assist  in  forming  and  rearing  the  settlement,  and  gratui- 
tously to  execute  the  functions  of  provincial  governor.  TJais  example  of 
public  spirit  and  philanthropy  was   propagated  throughout  the  whole  king- 

'  This  title,  which  was  bestowed  on  the  Moravians  by  Madame  de  Staei,  might  have  been 
applied  more  justly  to  the  Tunkers  ;  and  still  more  so  to  those  later  sectaries  of  German  origin 
(the  followers  of  Rapp),  who  founded  the  settlement  of  Harmony,  in  America,  —  and,  pro- 
hibiting both  individual  property  and  marriage,  endeavoured  to  abolish  at  once  inequality  of 
condition  and  the  continuance  of  human  nature. 

'  "  Or,  urged  by  strong  benevolence  of  soul, 

Shall  fly,  like  Oglethorpe,  from  pole  to  pole."  —  Pope. 
VOL.    II.  15  J  *  .. 


114  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

dpm,  and  elicited  numerous  donations  from  all  ranks  and  classes  of  people. 
The  directors '  of  the  Bank  of  England  volunteered  a  liberal  contribution  ; 
and  the  House  of  Commons  successively  voted  sums  of  money,  which,  in 
the  course  of  two  years,  amounted  to  thirty-six  thousand  pounds.  At  the 
first  general  meeting  of  the  trustees  [July,  1732],  Lord  Percival  was  chosen 
president  of  the  corporation,  and  a  common  seal  for  the  authentication  of 
its  acts  was  appointed.  The  device  of  this  corporate  seal  was,  on  one 
side,  two  figures  resting  upon  urns,  representing  the  rivers  Alatamaha  and 
Savannah,  the  boundaries  of  the  province  ;  between  them,  the  genius  of  the 
colony  seated,  with  a  cap  of  liberty  on  his  head,  a  spear  in  one  hand,  and 
a  horn  of  plenty  in  the  other,  with  the  inscription,  Colonia  Georgia  Aug.  : 
on  the  other  side  was  a  representation  of  silkworms,  some  beginning  and 
others  completing  their  labors,  which  were  characterized  by  the  motto,  JVon 
sibi,  sed  aliis.  If  this  latter  emblem  were  intended  to  proclaim  the  disin- 
terested benevolence  of  the  trustees,  it  contained  also  an  allusion  to  the 
cultivation  of  silk,  to  which  they  had  destined  the  territory,  and  from  which 
the  people  of  England  were  encouraged  to  form  a  strong  expectation  of 
national  advantage,  by  the  assurances  of  Sir  Gilbert  Heathcote  and  other 
commercial  politicians,  who  hesitated  not  to  predict  that  the  large  sum  of 
five  hundred  thousand  pounds,  which  was  annually  remitted  from  England  to 
Piedmont  for  the  purchase  of  the  raw  silk  of  Italy,  would  speedily  be  made 
to  flow  into  the  bosom  of  a  society  composed  of  British  subjects,  who  would 
encourage  the  manufactures  of  Britain  by  accepting  them  as  an  equivalent 
for  the  silk  produce  of  Georgia. ^  A  few  Piedmontese  silk-workers,  who 
brought  wath  them  a  quantity  of  silkworms'  eggs  hatched  in  Italy,  were 
engaged,  by  the  liberal  offers  of  the  trustees,  to  accompany  the  first  detach- 
ment of  emigrants,  w^hich,  consisting  of  one  hundred  and  sixteen  persons, 
under  the  command  of  Colonel  Oglethorpe  [Nov.  6,  1732],  sailed  from 
Gravesend  to  found  the  last  colony  which  England  was  to  acquire,  save  by 
the  sword,  in  North  America.  Unfortunately  for  this  infant  settlement,  the 
Moravian  emigrants  who  had  proposed  to  unite  themselves  to  it  were  not 
ready  to  embark  at  the  time,  when  the  trustees,  unwilling  to  defer  the  public 
hope,  or  prolong  the  idle  stay  of  their  colonists  in  England,  judged  it  neces- 
sary that  a  commencement  of  the  enterprise  should  be  made.  On  their  ar- 
rival, some  time  after,  in  Holland,  whither  they  repaired  for  the  purpose  of 
transporting  themselves  to  America,  the  congregation  of  Moravians  that  was 
designed  for  Georgia  altered  their  purpose,  and  directed  their  course  to 
Pennsylvania.^ 

Oglethorpe,  and  the  first  crew  of  emigrants  to  Georgia,  having  arrived  in 
safety  at  the  metropolis  of  South  Carolina,  were  received  by  the  municipal 
oflicers  of  this  province,  and  the  inhabitants  of  Charleston,  with  extraordi- 
nary marks  of  kindness  and  satisfaction.  [January  15,  1733.]  The  as- 
sembly of  South  Carolina,  sensible  of  the  advantage  of  the  projected  settle- 
ment, readily  complied  wiih  the  recommendation  of  Governor  Johnson,  in 
voting  that  a  large  supply  of  cattle  and  other  provisions  should  be  furnished, 
at  the  public  expense,  to  Oglethorpe  and  his  followers  ;  who,  resuming  their 
expedition,  and  attended  by  rangers  and  scout-boats,  suppHed  by  the  Caro- 

'  "The  government  also  had  in  view  to  raise  wine,  oil,  and  silk  ;  and  to  turn  the  indus- 
try of  these  new  colonists  from  the  timber  and  provision  trade,  which  the  other  colonies  had 
gone  into  too  largely,  to  channels  more  advantageous  for  the  public."     Wynne. 

'  Oldmixon.  Loskiel's  History  of  the  Missions  of  the  United  Brethren  in  Korth  America. 
Anderson.  Universal  History.  Wynne.  Ilcwit.  Raynal.  Winterbotham.  Watkins's  Hw- 
torical  Dictionary. 


BOOK  IX.]  TREATY  WITH  THE  CREEKS.  ]  ^g 

linians,  proceeded  to  occupy  a  convenient  station  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Yamacravv  [February  1,  1733],  on  which,  from  the  name  of  the  adjacent 
river,  they  bestowed  the  appellation  of  Savannah.  Here  a  fort  was  erect- 
ed, and  a  few  guns  mounted  on  it,  for  the  defence  of  the  infant  colony. 
The  people  were  set  to  work  in  felling  trees  and  building  huts,  and  were 
encouraged  in  their  labors  by  the  animating  example  of  Oglethorpe,  who 
cheerfully  incurred  a  share  of  every  hardship.  Previous  to  their  departure 
from  England,  the  colonists  had  received  some  mihtary  training  from  the 
sergeants  of  the  guards  in  London.  They  were  now  formed  into  a  com- 
pany of  militia,  which  Oglethorpe  exercised  with  a  frequency  calculated 
to  cherish  habits  of  subordination  among  them,  to  preserve  their  martial 
acquirements,  and  to  make  a  politic  demonstration  of  military  capacity  to 
the  Indians,  The  Carolinians  continued  to  aid  the  progress  of  the  colony, 
by  sending  frequent  supplies  of  provisions  for  the  support  of  the  settlers, 
and  a  number  of  skilful  workmen  to  direct  and  partake  their  labors. 

Having  thus  completed  the  first  necessary  arrangements  for  the  safety 
of  his  people,  the  next  object  of  Oglethorpe's  attention  was  to  establish  a 
friendly  relation  with  the  Indians,  and  to  gain  their  sanction  and  favor  to  the 
colonial  establishment.  The  territory  in  which  he  and  his  people  were 
planted  was  chiefly  claimed  and  partly  occupied  by  the  tribes  of  the  Upper 
and  Lower  Creeks,  whose  formidable  power,  no  less  than  their  distinct  pre- 
tensions, rendered  it  desirable  that  the  projected  treaty  should  include  them, 
as  well  as  the  comparatively  feeble  tribe  that  was  settled  at  Yamacraw.  By 
the  assistance  of  an  Indian  woman  married  to  a  Carolinian  trader,  and  who 
could  speak  both  the  English  and  the  Creek  languages,  Oglethorpe  invited  all 
the  chiefs  of  the  Creeks  to  hold  a  conference  with  him  at  Savannah,  where 
he  designed  to  solicit  their  consent  to  the  establishment  of  his  colony.  His 
invitation  was  accepted,  and  the  conference  that  ensued  was  attended  by 
fifty  Indian  chiefs  or  kings.  To  this  assembly  of  the  savage  aristocracy  of 
America  Oglethorpe  represented  the  great  power,  wisdom,  and  wealth  of  the 
English  nation,  and  the  many  advantages  that  the  Indians  might  expect  to 
derive  from  a  connection  of  friendship  with  that  people  ;  and  he  expressed 
his  hope,  that,  as  the  Indians  had  a  plentiful  superfluity  of  land,  they  would 
freely  resign  a  share  of  it  to  his  followers,  who  had  come  to  settle  among  them 
for  their  benefit  and  instruction.  He  concluded  his  address  by  distributing 
presents  among  his  auditors  ;  a  ceremonial  not  only  accordant  with  the  re- 
quest he  had  made,  but  indispensably  requisite  to  the  formality  of  an  Indian 
treaty.  Then  Tomochichi,  the  aged  chief  of  the  tribe  that  dwelt  at  Yama- 
craw, replied  in  the  name  of  all  the  Creek  warriors  to  the  speech  of  Og- 
lethorpe, whose  request  was  granted  with  unanimous  approbation.  "  Here 
is  a  httle  present,"  said  the  Indian  ;  and  therewith  he  presented  to  Ogle- 
thorpe a  buftalo's  skin,  on  the  inside  of  which  were  dehneated  the  head  and 
feathers  of  an  eagle  ;  remarking  that  the  eagle  signified  speed,  and  the  buffa- 
lo strength.  "  The  English,"  he  continued,  "  are  as  swift  as  the  bird,  and 
as  strong  as  the  beast  ;  since,  like  the  first,  they  fly  from  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth,  over  the  vast  seas  ;  and,  like  the  second,  they  are  so 
strong  that  nothing  can  withstand  them."  He  said,  the  feathers  of  the 
eagle  were  soft,  and  figured  love  ;  the  buffalo's  skin  was  warm,  and  denoted 
protection  ;  and  the  English,  he  hoped,  would  exemplify  those  attributes, 
in  loving  and  protecting  the  families  of  the  Indians.  He  acknowledged  that 
the  Great  Power  which  dwelt  in  heaven  and  all  around  had  endowed  the 


IIQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

English  with  wisdom  and  riches,  insomuch  that  they  wanted  nothing  ;  while 
the  same  Power  had  lavished  great  territories  on  the  Indians,  who  yet  were 
in  want  of  every  thing  :  and  he  declared  that  the  Creeks  were  willing 
freely  to  resign  to  the  English  the  lands  that  were  useless  to  themselves, 
and  to  permit  the  English  to  settle  among  them,  to  the  end  that  they  might 
be  instructed  in  useful  knowledge,  and  supplied  with  improved  accommoda- 
tions of  life.  A  friendly  treaty  was  contracted  between  the  two  races  of 
people  ;  rules  of  mutual  commerce,  and  for  the  adjustment  of  mutual  dis- 
putes in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  England,  were  established  ;  all  lands 
unoccupied  by  the  Indians  were  assigned  to  the  English,  under  the  con- 
dition that  the  Indian  chiefs  should  be  previously  apprized  of  the  intended 
formation  of  every  new  township  ;  and  the  Indians  promised,  with  straight 
hearts  and  love  to  their  English  brethren,  that  they  would  permit  no 
other  race  of  white  men  to  settle  in  the  country.  Oglethorpe,  having 
concluded  this  treaty,  resumed  his  active  superintendence  of  the  labors 
and  progress  of  the  colonists,  who  were  soon  after  joined  by  two  successive 
reinforcements  of  emigrants,  of  whom  the  greater  number  were  equipped 
and  despatched  by  the  trustees,  though  upwards  of  a  hundred  defrayed  the 
expenses  of  their  own  transportation.  He  made  repeated  journeys  to 
Charleston  in  quest  of  assistance  and  advice  ;  and  resolving,  for  the  ad- 
vantage of  his  people,  to  undertake  a  voyage  to  England,  he  put  the  col- 
ony in  the  best  posture  of  defence  that  its  circumstances  admitted,  and  in- 
trusted the  administration  of  its  government  during  his  absence  to  two  indi- 
viduals named  Scott  and  St.  Julian. i 

Oglethorpe  was  accompanied  to  England  by  Tomochichi  and  his  queen, 
and  several  other  Indians  of  distinction,  who  were  entertained  in  London 
with  magnificent  hospitality,  loaded  with  presents  and  attentions  from  all 
classes  of  people,  and  introduced  to  the  royal  court,  which  was  then  held  at 
Kensington.  Tomochichi,  on  this  occasion,  presenting  several  eagle's 
feathers,  addressed  the  British  monarch  in  the  following  speech:  —  "  This 
day  I  see  the  majesty  of  your  face,  and  the  greatness  of  your  house,  and  the 
number  of  your  people.  I  am  come  over  in  my  old  days  for  the  good 
of  the  whole  nation  called  the  Creeks,  to  renew  the  peace  they  made  long 
ago  with  the  English.  Though  I  cannot  live  to  see  any  advantage  to  my- 
self, I  am  come  for  the  good  of  the  children  of  all  the  nations  of  the  Upper 
and  Lower  Creeks,  that  they  may  be  instructed  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
English.  These  are  the  feathers  of  the  eagle,  which  is  the  swiftest  of  birds, 
and  flieth  all  round  our  nations.  These  feathers  are  a  sign  of  peace  in  our 
land,  and  have  been  carried  from  town  to  town  there.  We  have  brought 
them  over,  to  leave  them  with  you,  O  great  King,  as  a  token  of  everlasting 
peace.  O  great  King,  whatever  words  you  shall  say  unto  me,  I  will  faith- 
fully tell  them  to  all  the  kings  of  the  Creek  nations."  To  this  address  the 
king  returned  a  gracious  answer,  assuring  the  Creeks  of  his  regard  and 
protection.  After  a  stay  of  four  months,  a  vessel  being  ready  to  sail 
with  an  additional  crew  of  emigrants  for  Georgia,  the  Indians  also  embarked 
in  it,  declaring  themselves  highly  gratified  with  the  generosity  of  the  Brit- 
ish nation,   and  promising  eternal   fidelity   to  its    interest.^     A  treaty  of 

*  Oldrnixon.     Hewit. 

*  Tomocliichi  pondered  attentively  and  made  pertinent  remarks  on  all  he  saw  and  heard 
in  England.  He  displayed  much  good  sense  and  sagacity  in  his  intercourse  with  the  Geor- 
gian trustees,  especially  in  suggesting  precautionary  regulations  for  preventing  the  commercial 
inWircourse  between  the  colonists  and  the  Indians  from   producing  quarrels.    Wynne.     He 


BOOK  IX.]  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  GEORGIA.  ]17 

peace  and  commerce  was  contracted,  meanwhile,  by  the  Georgian  colo- 
nists with  another  Indian  tribe  called  the  Choctaws,  to  whom  Oglethorpe, 
before  his  departure,  had  commissioned  one  Jones  to  repair  for  this  purpose. ^ 

The  incorporated  trustees,  having  thus  established  a  colony  in  Georgia, 
now  proceeded  to  exercise  their  legislatorial  powers  by  enacting  a  code  of 
fundamental  laws  and  constitutions  for  the  infant  society.  By  this  code 
it  was  provided  that  each  tract  of  land  granted  by  the  trustees  should  be 
accepted  as  a  military  fief,  for  which  the  possessor  was  bound  to  appear  in 
arms  and  take  the  field,  when  summoned  for  the  public  defence  ;  that, 
to  prevent  accumulation  of  property,  which  was  deemed  inconsistent  with 
a  mihtary  spirit,  the  tract  of  land  assigned  to  each  planter  should  not  ex- 
ceed twenty-five  acres,  and  no  one  should  be  suffered  to  possess  more  than 
five  hundred  acres  ;  that,  to  hinder  a  plurality  of  allotments  from  falling  in 
process  of  time  into  the  possession  of  any  single  individual,  the  lands  should 
be  granted  in  tail  male,  instead  of  tail  general,  — that  is,  that  women  should 
be  rendered  incapable  of  succeeding  to  landed  property ;  that,  in  default  of 
heirs  male  to  any  proprietor,  his  estate  was  to  revert  as  a  lapsed  fief  to  the 
trustees,  in  order  to  be  again  granted  to  another  colonist  on  the  same  terms 
as  before, —  some  compensation,  however,  being  recommended  in  that  case 
to  the  daughters  (especially  if  not  provided  for  by  marriage)  of  such  de- 
ceased proprietors  as  should  have  improved  their  lands  ;  that  widows  should 
be  entitled,  during  their  hves,  to  the  mansion-house  and  one  half  of  the  land 
improved  by  their  husbands  ;  and  that,  if  any  portion  of  land  granted  should 
not  be  cleared,  fenced,  and  cultivated  within  eighteen  years  from  the  date 
of  the  relative  grant,  such  portion  was  to  relapse,  as  a  forfeiture,  to  the 
trustees.  No  inhabitant  was  to  be  permitted  to  depart  from  the  province 
without  a  license  ;  which  was  declared  requisite  also  to  legitimate  trade  with 
the  Indians.  The  importation  of  rum  was  disallowed  ;  trade  with  the 
West  Indies  was  declared  unlawful  ;  and  negro  slavery  was  absolutely 
prohibited.  Except  in  the  last  article,  and  the  purposed  regulation  of  In- 
dian trade,  this  code  exhibits  hardly  a  trace  either  of  common  sense,  or  of 
that  liberality  which  the  trustees   had  already  so  signally  displayed. 

The  imagination  of  man  could  scarcely  have  framed  a  system  of  rules 
worse  adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  the  colonists,  more  pernicious  to  the 
prosperity  of  an  infant  province,  or  more  hostile  to  that  contentment  which 
the  trustees  desired  to  produce,  and  that  harvest  of  lasting  praise  and  honor 
which  they  might  have  reaped,  if  their  wisdom  had  been  proportioned  to 
their  benevolence.  They  seem  to  have  consulted  rather  the  defence  of 
Carolina  than  the  interest  of  Georgia,  in  granting  their  lands  as  military  fiefs 
in  tail  male  ;  —  a  provision  calculated  to  limit  the  power  of  parents  to  pro- 
vide for  their  oflispring,  and  to  afflict  and  discourage  every  planter  who 
might  chance  to  have  only  female  children  ;  and  which,  in  effect,  induced 
numerous  valuable  colonists  to  depart  from  Georgia  to  other  provinces, 
where  they  knew  that  they  could  obtain  abundance  of  land  in  less  stinted 
allotments  and  upon  more  eligible  terms.  By  disallowing  trade  with  the 
West  Indies,  they  deprived  the  colonists  of  an  ample  and  convenient 
market  for  the  lumber  of  which  their  lands  afforded  a  plentiful  supply. 
The  object  of  this  restraint  seems  to  have  been  to  add  efficacy  to  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  importation  of  rum,  which  was  itself  a  vain  mandate,  espe- 

was  struck  with  the  solidity  of  the  English  houses,  and  expressed  surprise  that  short-lived 
men  should  build  such  long-lived  habitations.     John  Wesley  s  JourncU. 
'  Oldmixon.     Wynne.     Hewit.  ..        - 


113  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

Cially  while  the  colonists  were  exposed  to  severe  toil  in  a  foggy  and  sultry- 
climate,  and  was  unlikely  to  produce  any  other  results  than  smuggling  and 
discontent.  But  the  trustees  were  greatly,  and  it  must  be  allowed  not  un- 
reasonably, apprehensive  both  of  the  additional  depravation  of  manners 
which  many  of  their  colonists  might  incur,  and  of  the  fatal  quarrels  that  might 
arise  with  the  Indians  from  the  introduction  of  ardent  spirits  into  the  set- 
tlement. The  Carolinians  were  struck  with  disgust  and  astonishment,  when 
they  heard  of  these  impolitic  and  oppressive  restrictions  ;  and  plainly  per- 
ceiving that  the  enforcement  of  them  would  oppose  an  insurmountable 
barrier  to  the  progress  of  the  new  colony,  began  to  invite  the  Georgian 
settlers  to  cross  the  Savannah  River,  and  take  refuge  within  the  confines 
of  Carolina.  None  of  the  regulations  of  the  code  excited  greater  discon- 
tent among  the  Georgian  colonists  than  the  wise  and  humane  prohibition 
of  negro  slavery,  —  a  regulation  which  was  probably  suggested  by  Ogle- 
thorpe's acquaintance  with  the  state  of  society  in  South  Carolina,  and  of 
which  the  professed  object  w^as  to  prevent  a  frontier  province,  intended 
to  serve  as  a  barrier  or  rampart  to  the  other  southern  colonies,  from  being 
weakened  by  the  introduction  into  its  bosom  of  a  race  of  domestic  enemies. ^ 

The  colonists,  envying  the  privilege  enjoyed  by  their  neighbours  in  Car- 
olina, of  delegating  rough  toil  to  slaves,  complained  that  the  strength 
of  European  constitutions,  unaided  by  negro  labor,  could  make  no  im- 
pression on  the  vast  and  stubborn  forests  by  which  they  were  surrounded. 
Europeans  had  now  become  so  habituated  to  regard  negroes  as  slaves, 
and  to  despise  them  as  a  servile  and  degraded  race,  that  it  never  occur- 
red, either  to  the  trustees  or  the  colonists,  that,  by  an  equitable  intercourse 
and  association  between  white  men  and  negroes,  the  advantage  of  negro 
labor  might  be  obtained,  without  the  concomitant  injustice  of  negro  slavery. 
The  trustees  likewise  acted  with  great  inconsistency  in  the  policy  which 
they  blended  with  their  humane  prohibition  of  slavery.  While  they  alleged, 
in  vindication  of  this  prohibition,  that  the  cultivation  of  silk,  to  which  the 
province  was  specially  destined,  was  more  suitable  to  Europeans  than  to 
negroes,  they  held  forth  to  the  colonists  encouragements  to  a  culture  that 
presented  the  strongest  temptations  to  the  employment  of  negro  labor.  We 
have  already  noticed  ^  the  act  of  parliament  that  was  passed  a  few  years 
before  this  period  for  encouraging  the  trade  of  Carolina  by  permitting  the 
merchants  and  planters  of  this  province  to  export  rice  directly  to  any  part 
of  Europe  southward  of  Cape  Finisterre.  This  statute  (which  might  rea- 
sonably be  supposed  to  have  been  suggested  by  the  British  merchants  en- 
gaged in  the  slave-trade)  occasioned  a  great  additional  importation  of  negroes 
into  South  Carolina  ;  and  yet  the  trustees  of  Georgia  prevailed  with  the 
British  government  to  obtain  from  the  parliament  an  extension  to  the  new 
province  of  the  statutory  privilege  which  produced  that  effect.^   [1735.] 

But  the  efficacy  of  the  design  for  preventing  the  introduction  of  negro 
slavery,  and  indeed  of  every  design  that  required  patient  and  vigorous  virtue 


^  It  is  remarkable  that  the  two  worst  political  constitutions  enacted  by  the  founders  of  North 

merican   States  —  the   code  composed  by  Locke,  and  the  code  composed  by  the  Georgian 

trustees  —  diiFered  from  all  the  rest  in  expressly  adverting  to  negro  slavery,  and  so  far  diifered 


from  each  other,  that,  while  the  one  solemnly  sanctioned,  the  other  as  solemnly  disallowed, 
this  injustice.  In  addition  to  the  reasons  assigned  in  the  text  for  the  prohibition  of  negro 
slavery  in  Georgia,  Judge  Law  suggests,  that,  "  because  a  large  portion  of  the  settlers  were 
poor  and  unable  to  procure  slaves,  it  was  thought  that  the  influence  of  the  example  of  slavery 
would  be  unfavorable  upon  the  industry  of  that  portion  of  the  whites  who  were  thus  con- 
gtrained  to  personal  labor."     CnUections  of  the  Ge.orsia  Historical  Society. 

«  Book  VIII.,  Chap.  II.,  ante.  ^  Wynne.     Hewit.     Stat.  8  George  II.,  Cap.  19. 


BOOK  IX.]  JOHN  WESLEY.  Ug 

from  the  inhabitants  of  Georgia,  was  more  seriously  obstructed  by  the 
character  and  habits  of  the  persons  of  whom  the  first  emigrations  to  this 
province  chiefly  consisted.  The  trustees,  as  we  have  seen,  had  not  been 
neghgent  of  eftbrts  to  counteract  the  evil  qualities  which  these  men  naturally 
derived  from  their  pecuhar  misfortunes,  by  the  infusion  of  better  character 
and  example  among  them.  Disappointed  in  their  first  hope  of  an  emi- 
gration of  Moravian  brethren,  they  renewed  their  correspondence  with  Count 
Zinzendorf,  and  strongly  pressed  him  to  accept  of  a  large  tract  of  land  in 
Georgia,  to  be  cultivated  by  a  Moravian  society.  A  party  of  the  count's 
associates  readily  complied  with  his  recommendation  that  they  should  em- 
brace this  offer,  and  received  from  him  a  valedictory  charge,  which  enjoined 
them  to  submit  themselves,  in  every  variety  of  situation,  to  the  all-wise  di- 
rection and  ever  ready  guidance  of  God  ;  to  cherish  and  preserve  liberty  of 
conscience  ;  to  avoid  religious  disputes  ;  to  keep  continually  in  view  the 
divine  command  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  heathen  ;  and  to  endeavour, 
as  far  as  possible,  to  earn  their  own  subsistence.  A  few  of  them  embarked 
with  other  emigrants  in  the  vessel  which  reconveyed  Tomochichi  and  his 
Indian  companions  to  Georgia  ;  ^  and  a  larger  number  had  since  arrived 
in  England,  and  were  prepared  to  accompany  the  next  embarkation,  with 
which  Oglethorpe  also  was  to  return  to  the  province.  They  all  intimated 
to  the  trustees  their  determination  not  to  engage  in  war,  and  consented  to 
embark  on  the  faith  of  a  positive  promise  of  being  exempted  from  military 
service. 

Nor  were  these  the  only  persons  distinguished  for  Christian  sentiment  and 
practice,  by  whose  accompaniment  the  next  projected  voyage  from  England 
to  Georgia  was  to  be  signahzed.  John  Wesley,  the  founder  of  Methodism, 
had  now  commenced  in  England  that  long  and  memorable  career  which  has 
contributed  so  notably  to  the  revival  and  diflusion  of  piety  and  virtue 
throughout  Protestant  Christendom,  and  has  gained  him  a  name  as  lasting 
as  the  reign  of  religion  and  civility  in  the  world.  This  remarkable  person 
was  distinguished  in  an  eminent  degree  by  the  strength  of  his  understanding, 
the  ardor  of  his  devotion,  the  warmth  of  his  benevolence,  the  cheerful  se- 
renity of  his  manners,  and  the  nicely  exact  and  yet  perfectly  unaffected 
sanctity  of  his  fife.  Education  had  enriched  him  with  a  large  variety  of 
knowledge  and  accomplishments,  and  aided  taste  and  nature  in  developing 
in  him  an  eloquence  at  once  graceful,  perspicuous,  impressive,  and  inter- 
esting. To  the  most  earnest  and  indefatigable  zeal,  as  a  minister  of  the 
gospel  and  champion  of  his  own  ecclesiastical  opinions,  he  united  a  dis- 
position singularly  charitable,  tender,  and  forgiving  ;  and  with  a  wonderful 
clearness  and  subtlety  of  apprehension,  he  possessed  the  most  stainless  sin- 
cerity, an  admirable  candor,  and  a  quaint  yet  genuine  simplicity.  The  de- 
fects of  his  character  were,  in  youth,  a  zeal,  generously  benevolent,  in- 
deed, but  unguarded  and  unforbearing,  and  throughout  life  a  strong  credulity 
in  behalf  of  professed  piety  and  avouched  miraculous  occurrences  ; — the 
one,  a  natural  consequence  of  youthful  ardor,  —  the  other,  an  enthusiastic 
effusion  of  that  charity  which  in  him  never  failed,  but  to  the  last  kept  more 
than  even  pace  with  the  enlarging  horizon  of  his  knowledge.  It  was  a  re- 
mark of  that  great  British  statesman.  Lord  Chatham,  that  the  ritual  of  the 
church  of  England  is  Catholic,  its  articles  of  faith  Calvinistic,  and  its  min- 
isters in  general  Arminian.     Even  those  who  may  dispute  the  accuracy  of 

'  Oldmixon.  "  Loskiel.     Wynne. 


120  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

the  statesman's  observation  will  hardly  refuse  to  acknowledge  the  disagree- 
ments between  original  theory  and  existing  practice,  which  the  history  of 
this  church  has  occasionally  presented,  in  common  with  every  long-estab- 
lished human  institution. 

The  perception  of  such  discrepancies  between  the  theory  and  the  practi- 
cal state  of  their  own  church  has  repeatedly  prompted  devout  Catholics 
to  found  those  strict  religious  orders,  which,  dissenting  from  the  practice, 
'  but  retaining  the  general  doctrine,  of  the  church  of  Rome,  are  acknowledged 
as  kindred  branches  of  its  ecclesiastical  establishment.  But  the  church 
of  England  is  a  total  stranger  to  this  policy  ;  and  at  no  period  ^  have  its 
rulers  ever  been  willing  to  permit  those  ministers  to  remain  within  its  pale, 
who,  thoroughly  and  cordially  acquiescing  in  its  canons  of  doctrine,  hav>e 
innovated  or  dissented  from  any  part  of  its  existing  ritual  system.  Hence 
it  was  that  the  exertions  by  which  John  Wesley  originally  purposed  to  ren- 
ovate the  strength  and  authority  of  the  church  of  England,  by  reviving 
among  a  class  of  its  votaries  the  strictness  of  its  primitive  ordinances,  and 
the  profession  of  doctrines  contained  in  its  canons,  but  unacceptable  to  the 
generality  of  its  ministers,  eventually  led  to  the  sectarian  establishment  of 
Methodism, — the  most  extensive  and  important  schism  that  occurred  in 
England  since  the  expulsion  of  the  Puritans  from  the  national  church.  Un- 
like the  prior  schism,  however,  the  progress  of  Methodism  proved  eventu- 
ally beneficial  to  the  established  church,  and  inspired  in  its  ministers  a  great 
increase  of  zeal  and  dihgence  by  the  influence  of  example,  the  spirit  of  ri- 
valry, and  the  interest  of  self-preservation.^  But  at  the  present  period, 
Wesley  was  known  to  the  world  only  as  a  young  clergyman  of  the  church 
of  England,  distinguished  by  the  purity  of  his  life  and  the  ardor  of  his 
zeal  ;  willing,  and  even  desirous,  to  endure  hardship  for  the  promotion  of  re- 
ligion ;  and  who  had  formed  at  Oxford  a  society  of  young  men  who  em^ 
braced  his  views,  adopted  his  orderly  habits  and  rigid  temperance,  visited 
the  prisons  along  with  him,  and  were  derisively  styled  by  the  wits  and  mock- 
ers of  the  University,  the  Godly  Cluh^  or  Methodists.  Next  to  John  Wes- 
ley, the  most  remarkable  members  of  this  small  society  were  his  brother 
Charles,  a  man  of  fine  talents,  an  elegant  scholar  and  poet,  pious,  friendly, 
kind,  liberal,  and  unassuming  ;  and  George  Whitefield,  a  man  of  devout 
and  enthusiastic  spirit,  and  one  of  the  greatest  orators,  or  (according  to  the 
judgment  of  David  Hume)  by  far  the  greatest,  that  the  world  has  ever  pro- 
duced. 

The  trustees  of  Georgia,  acquainted  with  the  reputation  of  this  society, 
conceived  the  hope  of  inducing  some  of  its  members  to  join  their  Ameri- 
can colony.  By  the  intervention  of  Dr.  Burton,  a  learned  and  pious  di- 
vine, who  warmly  supported  the  colonial  project,  Oglethorpe  was  introduced 
to  the  two  Wesleys,  and  so  much  charmed  with  their  characters  and  man- 
ners, that  he  joined  with  Burton  in  using  the  most  pressing  instances  to  in- 
cline them  to  comply  with  the  wishes  of  the  trustees  and  accept  ecclesiastical 
appointments  in  Georgia.  The  Wesleys  consented,  —  chiefly  induced  by 
the  hope  of  evangelizing  the  Indians,  —  and  prevailed  with  a  few  of  their 
associates  of  lesser  note  to  accompany  them  in  their  emigration.     Burton 

^  Except,  perhaps,  in  the  commencement  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  when  the  English 
bishops  were  prevented  by  this  princess  from  carrying  into  effect  the  compromise  they  had 
arranged  with  the  Puritan  clergy.     See  Book  II ,  Chap.  I.,  ante. 

*  It  has  been  the  fashion  in  England  to  represent  tne  Dissenters  as  greatly  indebted  to  the 
learning  and  labors  of  the  clergy  of  the  established  church.  Every  impartial  student  of  ec- 
clesiastical history  must  be  aware  that  the  very  reverse  of  this  representation  is  the  truth. 


BOOK  IX.]     EMIGRATION  OF  SCOTCH  HIGHLANDERS.  121 

was  a  sagacious  and  experienced  man  ;  and  while  he  gently,  but  earnestly, 
recommended  to  John  Wesley  the  virtue  of  Christian  prudence,  the  wisdom 
and  duty  of  accommodating  himself  as  far  as  possible  to  all  men,  of  forbear- 
ing to  press  upon  a  society  chiefly  composed  of  ignorant  and  dissolute  per- 
sons any  observance  repugnant  to  their  tastes  and  habits,  and  not  in  itself  a 
vital  and  essential  part  of  the  system  of  Christianity,  — he  disclosed  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  only  defective  trait  in  the  character  of  his  young  and 
illustrious  friend,  and  endeavoured  to  communicate  to  him  that  moderation 
of  mind,  that  practical  discrimination  and  sense  of  moral  perspective,  w^hich, 
as  he  himself  had  derived  it  from  experience,  so  experience  alone,  without 
miraculous  inspiration,  can  convey  to  any  individual.  Some  new  process  . 
of  educating  the  human  mind  must  be  discovered,  before  experience,  or 
any  of  the  virtues  which  are  more  peculiarly  its  progeny,  can  be  effectually 
imparted  in  early  hfe.  The  ardor  and  confidence,  the  prompt,  open  thought 
and  purpose,  characteristic  of  young  persons,  may  be  taught  to  give  place 
to  mean  suspicion,  or  premature  timidity  ;  but  the  matured  wisdom  of  a  pure 
and  enlightened  mind  is  the  fruit  of  extended  personal  observation,  —  the 
result  and  test  of  well-spent  time.  All  things  having  been  prepared  for  the 
appointed  emigration,  Oglethorpe  again  embarked  for  Georgia,  with  a  great 
quantity  of  military  stores,  and  three  hundred  passengers  [October,  1735]  j 
among  whom  were  the  Wesleys,  three  or  four  of  their  associates,  and  a 
hundred  and  seventy  Germans  of  the  Society  of  Moravian  Brethren. 
After  a  long  and  stormy  voyage,  which  was  distinguished  by  exercises  of 
piety  1  that  remind  us  of  the  primitive  expeditions  of  the  Puritans  to  New 
England,  these  emigrants  reached  the  colony  of  Georgia  [February,  1736], 
a  few  days  after  the  arrival  of  another  vessel  which  had  been  despatched 
with  a  crew  of  settlers  from  Scotland. 

The  trustees  had  learned  that  the  majority  of  the  unfortunate  persons,  of 
whom  the  first  embarkations  consisted,  were  likely  to  prove  useless  and  even 
burdensome  members  of  society  ;  and  though  they  were  willing  to  make  an 
attempt  to  improve  the  character  and  habits  of  these  men,  they  perceived 
the  necessity  of  confiding,  in  the  mean  time,  the  defence  of  the  colony,  and« 
the  performance  of  the  rude  toils  which  were  yet  necessary  to  lay  the  foun- 
dations of  its  prosperity,  to  settlers  of  a  different  description.  Sensible  that 
a  bold  and  hardy  race  of  men,  inured  to  rural  labor  and  to  coarse  and  sim- 
ple habits  of  living,  would  be  best  adapted  to  the  immediate  exigencies  of 
cultivation  and  defence,  they  turned  their  eyes  to  the  Highlands  of  Scot- 
knd,  and  resolved  to  send  a  number  of  Scottish  laborers  to  their  infant  prov- 
ince. When  their  propositions  were  published  at  Inverness,  a  hundred  and 
fifty  Highlanders  immediately  closed  with  them,  and  were  now  transported 
to  Georgia.  A  district  on  the  river  Alatamaha,  which  was  considered  the 
boundary  between  the  British  and  Spanish  territories,  was  forthwith  allotted 
to  these  emigrants  ;  and  settling  in  this  dangerous  situation,  they  built  a  town 
which  received  the  name  of  New  Inverness,  and  a  fort,  which,  in  allusion 
to  the  long-remembered  disappointment  of  Scotland,  they  denominated  Da- 
rien.  Here  they  preserved  the  Highland  garb,^  cherished  their  national 
manners,  and  lived  m  a  state  of  laborious,  but  contented  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence. They  were  soon  after  joined  by  accessions  of  adventurers  from 
tlieir  native  country,  who  added  farther  strength  and  security  to  the  prov- 

*  See  Note  IV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  When  Oglethorpe  visited  them  at  Darien,  he  courteously  appeared  before  them  in  the 
Highland  garb,  —  a  compliment  with  which  they  were  highly  pleased.    Oldmixon. 
VOL.    II.  16  K 


;|g2  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX 

ince.  In  compliance  with  a  request  from  the  trustees,  a  minister  named 
M'Leod  was  despatched  to  Georgia  by  a  society  estabhshed  in  Scotland  for 
the  propagation  of  the  gospel,  who  preached  to  his  expatriated  countrymen 
in  Gaelic,  instructed  their  children  in  English,  and  made  some  attempts  to 
communicate  knowledge  and  religion  to  the  Indians.  John  and  Charles 
Wesley,  meanwhile,  were  stationed,  as  ministers,  the  one  at  Savannah,  and 
the  other  at  a  new  plantation  called  Frederica,  on  an  island  nigh  the  mouth 
of  the  river  Alatamaha ;  and  the  Germans,  who  had  been  their  fellow-voya- 
gers, uniting  themselves  with  their  brethren  who  .preceded  them  (and  joined 
soon  after  by  a  band  of  pious  exiles  from  Salzburg,  in  Bavaria) ,  built  a 
town  on  Savannah  River,  to  which  they  gave  the  name  of  Ebenezer.  Be- 
sides his  ministerial  labor  among  the  colonists,  John  Wesley  made  various 
attempts  to  instruct  the  Indians  ;  but  was  soon  obliged  to  suspend  the  pur- 
suit of  this,  his  main  and  favorite  object,  by  their  refusal  to  listen  to  him, 
till  the  conclusion  of  the  wars  in  which  they  were  engaged.^ 

It  was  now  that  Oglethorpe  began  to  experience  the  most  arduous  trials 
and  troubles  incident  to  his  situation,  and  to  find  that  in  his  preconception 
they  had  not  been  fully  weighed.  It  has  been  deemed  by  some  philosophers 
a  wise  principle  of  colonial  policy  to  stock  an  infant  settlement  with  the 
greatest  possible  variety  of  races  and  ranks  of  men,  and,  after  observing  at- 
tentively their  relative  thrift,  to  seek  new  recruits  chiefly  in  those  races  and 
ranks  which  have  attained  the  most  thriving  estate.  But  to  whatever  extent 
the  soundness  of  this  very  questionable  maxim  may  be  admitted,  it  can  never 
sanction  or  excuse  the  hopeless  adventure  and  egregious  temerity  of  laying 
the  foundations  of  a  new  commonwealth  with  spirit-broken,  jail-tainted  bank- 
rupts, —  a  race,  that,  next  to  felons,  forms  at  once  the  worst  and  the  most 
expensive  raw  material  of  colonization.  Many  of  the  original  colonists  prov- 
ed dissolute,  idle,  and  mutinous  ;  some  of  the  magistrates  whom  Oglethorpe 
appointed  administered  the  laws  with  immoderate  rigor  against  other  persons, 
that  they  might  engross  to  themselves  a  monopoly  of  the  profits  arising  from 
their  violation  ;  and  rumors  were  circulated  of  hostilities  from  the  Spaniards. 
Oglethorpe,  though  well  fitted  by  the  ardor  and  generosity  of  his  disposi- 
tion to  commence  and  impel  the  progress  of  a  great  undertaking,  was  less 
qualified  to  exert  the  wisdom,  prudence,  and  address  requisite  to  conduct  it 
to  a  happy  consummation.  His  judgment  was  perhaps  somewhat  vitiated 
by  an  unrestrained  indulgence  of  sanguine  and  romantic  speculation,  as  his 
natural  impetuosity  was  certainly  inflamed  by  the  possession  of  supreme  and 
arbitrary  power.  In  the  internal  government  of  the  colony,  he  displayed 
more  spirit  and  zeal  for  the  general  happiness  and  welfare,  than  temper  and 
constancy  in  pursuing  a  consistent  line  of  policy.  He  seems  to  have  fluc- 
tuated between  a  lingering  indulgence  for  the  original  objects  of  his  benevo- 
lent concern,  and  a  conscientious  desire  to  improve  their  manners  by  a  dis- 
cipline which  they  were  averse  to  undergo  ;  and  between  an  honest  disappro- 
bation of  the  misconduct  of  the  magistrates,  and  a  politic  fear  to  discredit 
authority  and  increase  dissatisfaction  by  publicly  exposing  and  punishing 
their  malversations.  His  open  and  unguarded  temper  caused  him  frequently 
to  create  the  irritation  he  apprehended,  by  expressing  purposes  of  severity 
which  he  had  not  sufiicient  firmness  to  pursue.  John  Wesley  and  his  asso- 
ciates labored  diligently  to  elevate  the  views  and  correct  the  evil  habits  of 
the  people  among  whom  they  ministered  ;    and  their  characters  and  exer- 

^  Journal  of  John  Wesley.  Whitehead's  Life  of  the  Wesleyt.  Loskiel.  Oldmixon.  Hewit. 
Holmes. 


BOOK  IX.]  INTRIGUES  AGAINST  THE  WESLEYS.  123 

tions  were  at  first  the  objects  of  universal  admiration.  Some  improvements 
in  outward  conduct  were  introduced,  and  some  permanent  advantage  com- 
municated to  a  few  of  the  settlers.  But  the  majority  of  the  people  and 
especially  the  wealthier  colonists,  soon  began  to  express  disgust  at  Wesley's 
rigidity,  and  jealously  to  interpret  his  sermons  into  satires  upon  particular  in- 
dividuals. 

While  the  Wesleys  and  their  associates  seemed  to  enjoy  the  favor  and 
countenance  of  the  governor,  some  foolish  and  worthless  persons  hastily  or 
hypocritically  professed  to  embrace  their  doctrines  ;  and  employing  this  pro- 
fession as  a  cloak  for  intrigue,  spleen,  and  slander,  discredited  the  ministry 
of  which  such  evil  qualities  appeared  to  be  the  fruits.  Uninformed  of  all 
the  causes  of  the  opposition  that  began  to  manifest  itself,  the  Wesleys,  and 
especially  John,  continued  zealously  to  preach  the  doctrines  most  offensive 
to  the  pride  of  corrupt  nature,  and  to  insist  on  an  observance  of  ecclesias- 
tical ordinances  with  a  strictness,  which,  however  agreeable  to  the  theoretical 
constitutions  of  the  church  of  England,  had  long  obtained  from  ministerial 
practice  and  popular  acquiescence  a  considerable  relaxation.  Oglethorpe, 
already  harassed  by  the  other  troubles  which  beset  his  difficult  position,  was 
perplexed  and  provoked  by  the  general  complaints  urged  against  men  whom 
he  expected  to  find  his  most  useful  auxiliaries  in  promoting  contentment  and 
subordination  ;  and  while  he  publicly  affected  to  support  the  Wesleys,  he 
privately  entreated  them  to  moderate  the  expression  of  their  zeal,  to  forbear 
from  pressing  instruction  on  persons  averse  to  receive  it,  or  weighty  doctrine 
on  those  to  whom  the  most  diluted  truth  was  unpalatable  ;  and  above  all  to 
beware  of  the  discredit  they  sustained,  and  the  evil  offices  they  might  incur, 
from  hypocritical  pretenders  to  religious  impression.  The  expediency  of 
this  last  counsel  his  own  conduct  soon  after  demonstrated  in  a  remarka- 
ble manner.  While  the  Wesleys  were  preparing  to  leave  England,  two 
women,  whom  vicious  love  had  deprived  of  reputation,  solicited  their  interest 
to  be  admitted  among  the  emigrants,  and  engaged  it  by  their  profession  of 
penitence  and  resumed  virtue.  Oglethorpe  distrusted  this  profession  ;  and 
after  vainly  endeavouring  to  persuade  the  Wesleys  to  regard  it  as  hollow 
and  insincere,  he  yielded  to  their  charitable  urgency,  with  the  prophetic  as- 
surance that  they  w^ould  have  cause  to  repent  it.  Doubtless  neither  he  nor 
they  anticipated  the  manner  in  which  this  prediction  was  to  be  fulfilled. 
One  of  those  women  now  obtained  an  ascendant,  short-lived  indeed,  but 
unlimited,  over  the  mind  of  Oglethorpe,^  whom  she  completely  estranged 
from  the  Wesleys,  and  induced  to  regard  them  as  libellous  censors  of  his 
character,  conspirators  against  his  power,  fomenters  of  mutiny  and  rebellion 
among  the  colonists,  and  even  treacherous  agents  of  the  Spaniards. 

It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  Oglethorpe,  though  he  affected  to  believe  all 
these  charges,  really  credited  more  than  the  first  of  them,  which,  in  truth, 
though  utterly  destitute  of  foundation,  owed  its  credit  with  him  as  much  to 
the  secret  surmises  of  his  own  conscience  as  to  the  arts  and  blandishments 

Cooke  and  Moore,  in  their  interesting  Memoirs  of  John  Wesley^  have  adopted  a  story, — 
sanctioned  (as  far  as  I  am  able  to  discover)  rather  by  strong  probabilities  than  satisfactory 
proof,  —  that  Oglethorpe,  on  yielding  to  the  seductive  advances  of  this  woman,  employed  her 
companion  to  attempt  to  gain  a  similar  triumph  over  John  Wesley  ;  accounting  that  a  person- 
al experience  of  infirmity  would  render  him  a  softer  censor  of  the  frailties  of  others.  The 
menacing  hint  communicated  one  day  by  Oglethorpe,  that  he  could  find  plenty  of  individuals 
in  the  colony,  who  for  a  bottle  of  rum  would  take  Wesley's  life,  has  been  ascribed  to  his  rage 
and  alarm  on  finding  that  his  unsuccessful  confederate  had  been  prompted  by  remorse  to  be- 
tray him.  The  evidence  would  be  complete,  if  more  reliance  could  be  placed  on  the  confes- 
sion of  a  profligate  woman. 


124  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

of  his  unprincipled  paramour.  While  his  delusion  lasted,  he  treated  the 
two  brothers,  who  continued  warmly  attached  to  him,  with  the  most  tyran- 
nical insolence  and  injustice,  and  encouraged  his  people  to  reject  their  coun- 
sels with  scorn,  and  deny  them  even  the  ordinary  offices  of  humanity  and 
good  neighbourhood.  A  severe  illness,  however,  which  endangered  his  hfe, 
opened  his  eyes  to  his  folly  and  showed  him  who  were  truly  his  friends  j  and 
from  this  moment  his  regard  and  esteem  for  the  Wesleys  continued  to  sub- 
sist and  increase  through  a  long  succession  of  years,  till  the  arrival  of  the 
period  decreed  to  all  earthly  friendships  and  connections.  But  the  regret 
which  he  felt  for  his  injurious  conduct  to  them  was  insufficient  to  counteract 
its  pernicious  consequences,  and  the  Wesleys  were  soon  made  sensible  that 
in  Georgia  their  authority  was  broken  and  their  hopes  of  usefulness  com- 
pletely blasted.  Charles  Wesley  quitted  the  province  this  year,  shordy  be- 
fore Oglethorpe  himself  returned  to  England  ;  and  in  the  follow^ing  year 
[1737],^  during  Oglethorpe's  absence,  John  Wesley  —  finding  that  the  peo- 
ple were  determined  to  resist  his  purpose  of  baptizing  healthy  infants  only  by 
immersion,  that  the  grand  jury  had  presented  as  a  public  nuisance  his  re- 
duction of  the  EnghshHturgy  into  three  services,  and  that  he  was  threatened 
with  both  civil  and  criminal  process  for  refusing  to  administer  the  sacrament 
to  a  notorious  adulteress  —  followed  the  example  of  his  brother,  and  bade 
adieu  to  America,  with  the  hope,  which  was  never  reahzed,  of  visiting  it 
again. ^  But  his  influence  in  America,  though  suspended  by  his  departure, 
did  not  expire  with  it.  He  returned  to  England,  to  found  a  sect,  of  which 
the  ramifications  have  extended  to  every  one  of  the  North  American  prov- 
inces. When  we  consider,  that,  if  Wesley  had  succeeded  in  maintaining  his 
position  in  Georgia,  he  would  probably  have  ended  his  life  as  a  missionary 
among  the  Indians,  we  must  regard  his  failure  as  a  happy  circumstance  in 
his  lot,  and  a  providential  interposition  for  the  advantage  both  of  Britain  and 
of  America. 

Oglethorpe,  meanwhile,  with  the  artillery  which  he  had  brought  from. 
England,  began  to  fortify  Georgia,  by  erecting  strongholds  upon  its  frontiers. 
At  one  place,  which  he  named  Augusta,  a  fort  was  constructed  on  the 
banks  of  Savannah  River,  in  a  situation  well  calculated  to  protect  the 
Indian  trade,  and  to  facilitate  conferences  for  cementing  friendship  or  en- 
larging commerce  with  various  Indian  tribes.  At  Frederica,  another  fort, 
with  four  regular  bastions,  was  erected  ;  and  several  pieces  of  cannon  were 
planted  upon  it.  Ten  miles  nearer  the  sea,  a  battery  was  raised  for  the  de- 
fence of  the  entrance  into  the  sound,  through  which  alone  ships  of  force 
could  penetrate  to  Frederica.     To  defray  the  expense  of  these  operations, 

*  The  first  part  of  John  Wesley's  published  Journa/ contains  a  succinct,  and  perspicuous 
sketch  of  the  state  of  the  British  plantations  in  Georgia  at  this  period,  and  of  the  condition 
and  character  of  the  neighbouring  tribes  of  Indians. 

^  Wynne.  Aikin's  Annual  Review^  Vol.  I.  JohnWeslej's  Journal.  MS.  Journal  of  Charles 
Wesley.  This  curious  and  interesting  document,  which  its  author  was  deterred  from  publish- 
ing by  unwillingness  to  hurt  the  feelings  of  Oglethorpe,  was  submitted  to  my  perusal  by  his 
daughter,  my  venerable  and  accomplished  friend,  the  late  Sarah  Wesley.  The  published 
Journal  of  John  Wesley  is  silent  with  regard  to  the  most  remarkable  cause  of  the  dispute  with 
Oglethorpe. 

An  aged  friend  of  mine  informed  me  that  he  was  in  a  company  in  London,  where  John 
Wesley,  for  the  first  time  after  his  return  from  America,  met  with  General  Oglethorpe,  who, 
on  entering  the  room,  advanced  up  to  Wesley,  and,  on  bended  knee,  kissed  his  hand. 

The  children  of  Charles  Weslev  repeatedly  assured  me  that  both  their  father  and  uncle  re- 
tained the  kindest  feelings  towardis  Oglethorpe ;  that  they  rather  lamented  than  condemned 
his  conduct  to  them  in  Georgia,  ascribed  it  to  an  unhappy  delusion,  and  were  averse  to  speak 
About  it.  I  have  alluded  to  it  the  more  particularly  on  account  of  the  ignorant  blame  heaped 
on  the  Wesleys  in  relation  to  this  matter  by  some  modern  writers. 


BOOK  IX]  HOSTILE  PREPARATIONS  OF  THE  FRENCH.  ]25 

and  maintain  garrisons  in  the  forts,  an  additional  sum  of  ten  thousand  pounds 
was  granted  by  the  British  parliament.  While  Oglethorpe  was  thus  employ- 
ed, he  received  intelligence  of  a  considerable  reinforcement  of  the  Spanish 
garrison  at  Augustine  ;  and  shortly  after,  a  message  from  the  governor  of 
this  settlement  acquainted  him  that  a  Spanish  commissioner  had  arrived 
from  Havana,  charged  with  a  communication  which  he  desired  an  early  op- 
portunity of  personally  delivering  to  the  British  commander.  At  a  confer- 
ence which  ensued,  the  commissioner  peremptorily  required  that  Oglethorpe 
and  his  people  should  instantly  evacuate  all  the  territories  lying  southward 
of  St.  Helena  Sound,  which  he  declared  to  be  the  undoubted  property  of 
the  king  of  Spain,  who  was  determined  speedily  and  effectually  to  vindicate 
his  rights.  He  refused  to  listen  to  any  argument  in  support  of  the  English 
claims,  and  departed  with  a  repetition  of  his  demands  and  menaces.  Ogle- 
thorpe, now  perceiving  that  the  most  vigorous  measures,  and  a  stronger 
defensive  force  than  the  province  could  supply,  would  be  necessary  to 
repel  or  overawe  the  hostile  purposes  disclosed  by  Spain,  resolved  to 
represent  the  state  of  affairs  to  the  British  ministers,  and,  straightway 
embarking,  set  sail  for  England.    [November  23,  1736.] 

His  apprehensions  of  danger  to  the  colony  were  increased  by  demon- 
strations of  hostihty  from  another  quarter.  A  war  had  recently  broken 
forth  in  Europe  between  the  king  of  France  and  the  emperor  of  Ger- 
many, which,  it  was  believed,  would  inevitably  spread  to  every  European 
state  ;  and  as  Britain  was  expected  to  espouse  the  quarrel  of  Germany, 
the  court  of  France  despatched  orders  to  the  governors  of  Quebec  and  New 
Orleans  to  prepare,  in  that  event,  to  invade  the  least  defensible  frontiers  of 
the  British  settlements  in  America.  For  this  purpose,  an  army  was  as- 
sembled in  New  France,  and  preparations  were  made  for  uniting  the  force 
of  Canada  and  Louisiana  to  attack  Carolina  and  Georgia.  But  before  the 
hostile  design  was  carried  into  execution,  advice  was  received  that  the 
flames  of  war  had  been  quenched  in  Europe,  and  a  general  peace  restored 
by  the  mediation  of  Britain  and  Holland.  The  French  governors,  however, 
determined  to  strike  a  blow,  with  the  troops  they  had  assembled,  against 
the  enemies  of  France  and  the  allies  of  England.  A  detachment  of  French 
and  Indians  accordingly  proceeded  from  Canada  down  the  Mississippi  to 
attack  the  tribe  of  Chickasaws,  one  of  the  least  numerous,  but  bravest,  of 
the  Indian  nations,  and  firmly  attached  to  the  English  ;  while  another  party 
of  French  advanced  from  Louisiana  to  revenge  a  quarrel  of  their  country- 
men with  the  Creeks.  Both  these  detachments  were  repulsed  and  defeated 
with  considerable  slaughter  by  the  Chickasaws  and  Creeks.  The  colo- 
nists of  Carolina  and  Georgia  rejoiced  not  a  little  at  this  result,  and  began 
now  more  diligently  than  ever  to  court  the  friendship  and  interest  of  those 
Indian  tribes  who  had  shown  themselves  so  capable  of  interposing  an  ef- 
fectual barrier  against  the  power  of  France. 

During  Oglethorpe's  absence  [1737],  the  regulations  of  the  trustees  re- 
specting the  rum  trade  nearly  created  a  rupture  between  the  provincial 
governments  of  Georgia  and  Carolina.  The  fortification  at  Augusta  induced 
some  traders  of  Carolina  to  establish  stores  at  that  place,  which  was  con- 
veniently situated  for  commerce  with  the  Indian  nations.  For  this  purpose, 
and  to  avoid  the  expense  of  land  carriage,  they  freighted  boats  with  their 
goods,  to  ascend  the  Savannah  River  to  Augusta.  But,  as  the  boats  were 
attempting  to  pass  the  town  of  Savannah,  they  were  stopped  by  the  magis- 


]26  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

Irates  of  this  place,  who  ordered  the  packages  to  be  opened,  the  casks  of 
rum,  of  which  they  partly  consisted,  to  be  staved,  and  the  crews  of  the 
boats  to  be  put  in  prison.  The  Carolinians,  incensed  at  this  outrage, 
promptly  deputed  two  members  of  their  council  and  assembly  to  demand 
of  the  Georgians  by  what  authority  they  presumed  to  seize  and  confiscate 
the  effects  of  Carolinian  traders,  or  to  compel  them  to  submit  to  the 
Georgian  laws.  These  deputies  were  received  with  respect  and  civility 
by  the  magistrates  of  Savannah,  who  had  become  sensible  of  their  error, 
and,  acknowledging  it,  gave  the  amplest  redress  and  satisfaction  to  the  in- 
jured traders.  Strict  orders  were  communicated  to  the  agents  of  Georgia 
among  the  Indians  not  to  molest  the  traders  from  Carolina,  but  to  render 
them  all  friendly  assistance  and  protection.  The  Carolinians,  on  the  other 
hand,  engaged  not  to  smuggle  any  strong  liquors  among  the  settlers  of 
Georgia  ;  and  the  navigation  of  the  river  Savannah  was  declared  open 
alike  to  the  inhabitants  of  both  provinces.  Some  of  the  Georgian  planters 
now  began  to  make  considerable  advances  in  clearing  and  cultivating  their 
lands.  The  Moravian  emigrants,  in  particular,  set  a  rare  example  of  dili- 
gence and  virtue.  Their  plantation  was  already  a  model  of  neatness,  com- 
fort, and  successful  husbandry.^  They  had  assisted  their  poorer  and  less 
industrious  neighbours,  and  established  a  school  and  mission  among  the  Creek 
Indians,  with  the  most  promising  appearance  of  success.  With  indefatigable 
industry  and  charity  they  combined  the  most  rigid  sense  of  justice  ;  and 
before  another  year  elapsed,  repaid  to  the  Georgian  trustees  the  money 
that  had  been  advanced  in  London  to  enable  them  to  emigrate  to  Ameri- 
ca. Their  numbers  were  now  enlarged  by  an  additional  emigration  of  their 
countrymen  and  fellow-sectaries,  who  imitated  and  extended  the  same  ad- 
mirable and  happy  example.^ 

But  this  example  was  insufficient  to  reconcile  the  majority  of  the  Geor- 
gian colonists  to  their  situation,  or  to  counteract  the  discontent  with  which 
the  regulations  promulgated  by  the  trustees  were  regarded,  especially  by 
those  settlers  who  had  first  resorted  to  the  province.  In  the  adjacent 
territory  of  Carolina  they  found  that  they  could  obtain  land  on  a  tenure 
more  liberal  than  was  prescribed  by  the  Georgian  constitutions,  and  enjoy 
the  privilege  of  purchasing  negroes  to  assist  in  clearing  and  cultivating  it  ; 
and,  in  contempt  of  the  ordinance  against  quitting  the  province  without 
a  license,  such  numbers  now  began  to  retire  to  Carolina  that  apprehensions 
were  entertained  of  the  total  desertion  of  Georgia.  The  freeholders  of 
Savannah  and  its  neighbourhood  assembled  together,  and  prepared  a  remon- 
strance, which  they  transmitted  to  the  trustees,  and  in  which  they  protested 
that  the  Successful  cultivation  of  Georgia  was  impossible,  unless  its  inhab- 
itants were  indulged  with  the  same  privileges  that  were  enjoyed  by  their 
neighbours  in  Carolina.  In  two  points,  especially,  they  implored  rehef 
from  their  rulers  ;  they  desired  a  fee-simple  or  free  title  of  absolute  prop- 
erty to  their  lands,  and  permission  to  import  negroes  under  certain  Hmi- 
tations  ;  without  which,  they  affirmed,  they  had  neither  encouragement  to  la- 

'  "One  would  scarcely  think  it  possible,"  said  John  Wesley,  himself  distinguished  for 
his  economy  and  diligent  improvement  of  time,  "  for  a  handful  of  men  to  have  done  all  this 
in  one  year." 

2  Count  Zinzendorf  paid  a  visit  to  England  this  year,  and  proposed  to  the  Georgian  trustees 
that  a  uniop  should  take  place  betvv^een  the  Moravian  church  and  the  church  of  England  in 
Georgia,  and  that  Great  Britain  should  acknowledge  the  united  body  as  one  church.  The 
proposition  was  submitted  to  some  of  the  English  bishops,  who  expressed  less  disinclination 
than  inability  to  comply  with  it.     MS.  Journal  of  Charles  Wesley. 


BOOK  IX.]  .  DIFFICULTIES  WITH  SPAIN.  127 

l^or,  nor  means  of  providing  for  their  posterity.  While  the  Moravians, 
who  never  interfered  with  political  affairs,  silently  demonstrated  by  their 
successful  industry  that  the  introduction  of  negro  slaves  into  the  province 
was  quite  unsupported  even  by  the  tyrannical  plea  of  necessity,  the  colony 
of  Scotch  Highlanders  loudly  and  unanimously  protested  against  it  as  a 
monstrous  outrage  upon  human  nature.  They  declared  that  the  institution 
of  slavery  would  be  the  most  formidable  grievance  that  could  befall 
Georgia  ;  that,  intermingling  a  race  of  barbarous  and  desperate  servants  with 
the  provincial  families,  and  rendering  one  class  of  the  inhabitants  always 
ready  to  aid  the  hostihties  of  the  Spaniards  against  the  others,  it  might  at 
some  future  day  prove  a  dreadful  scourge,  and  cause  the  people  of  Savan- 
nah themselves  to  feel  the  smart  of  that  oppression  which  they  so  earnestly 
desired  to  introduce  and  exercise.  The  just,  as  well  as  the  unjust,  com- 
plaints of  the  Georgians  were  equally  disregarded  by  the  trustees.^ 

Arriving  in  England  [1738],  Oglethorpe  found  the  nation  more  disposed 
than  the  ministers  to  second  his  wish  for  the  effectual  vindication  of  the 
rights  of  Britain  against  the  pretensions  of  Spain.  For  several  years,  the 
cabinets  of  London  and  Madrid  had  been  involved  in  a  series  of  disputes 
arising  out  of  their  respective  commercial  interests  and  territorial  claims  in 
America.  The  colonies  of  England,  and  especially  Jamaica,  had  long 
carried  on  a  contraband  trade  with  the  American  settlements  of  the  Span- 
iards ;  for  the  prevention  of  which,  the  court  of  Spain  issued  orders  to  its 
naval  commanders  to  board  and  search  every  Enghsh  vessel  navigating  the 
Mexican  seas  ;  and,  in  the  execution  of  this  mandate,  the  Spanish  ships 
of  war  detained  and  confiscated  so  many  vessels  whose  cargoes  and  desti- 
nation were  perfectly  legitimate,  that  English  commerce  in  that  quarter 
of  the  world  was  almost  entirely  suspended.  The  merchants  of  Britain 
warmly  complained  of  these  outrages  ;  and  the  nation,  fired  with  resent- 
ment, cried  aloud  for  vengeance  and  war.  But,  amidst  the  general  ardor 
and  indignation.  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  the  prime  minister,  appeared  unmoved 
and  inactive.  Afraid  of  endangering  his  power  by  the  increased  taxation 
which  a  war  would  require,  and  unwiUing  to  divert  to  the  equipment  of 
military  armaments  the  existing  revenues,  which  he  expended  in  maintaining, 
by  an  amazing  extent  of  bribery,  an  odious  and  unpopular  administration,  he 
industriously  labored  to  avoid  a  rupture  with  Spain,  and  defended  the  violat- 
ed rights  and  honor  of  his  country  only  by  languid  negotiations  and  fruitless 
remonstrances. 

The  outrages  of  which  the  English  merchants  complained  were  so  fla- 
granfand  undeniable,  that  the  court  of  Spain,  unable  to  withstand  their  claims 
of  compensation,  agreed  to  recognize  them  ;  but  deferred  the  liquidation  of 
the  debt,  and  absolutely  refused  to  abandon  the  pretension  to  board  and 
search  the  vessels  of  England.  Nay,  the  slender  concession  which  it  was 
impossible  to  withhold  was  clogged  with  the  condition,  that  Britain  should 
abandon  her  occupation  of  Georgia  and  of  a  considerable  part  of  Carolina  ; 
and  so  unreservedly  did  Walpolb  postpone  regard  for  consistent  policy  and 
national  honor  and  interest  to  the  preservation  of  the  forms  of  peace,  that 
he  hearkened  even  to  these  insolent  and  injurious  demands,  and,  by  a  con- 
vention concluded  in  the  commencement  of  the  present  year,  pactioned  with 
the  court  of  Spain  to  refer  all  disputes  between  the  two  kingdoms  to 
plenipotentiaries  mutually  appointed,  and  engaged,  in  the  mean  while,  to 
'  John  Wesley's  Journal.    Loskiel.     Hewit.     Anderson. 


128  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

arrest  the  progress  of  all  fortifications  in  Carolina  and  Georgia.  In  return, 
the  court  of  Spain  undertook  to  advance  immediately  a  sum  of  money  for 
satisfying  a  part  of  the  claims  of  those  English  merchants  who  had  been  pil- 
laged of  their  property  by  the  Spanish  cruisers.  The  merchants  of  Eng- 
land and  the  people  in  general  were  roused  to  the  highest  pitch  of  indigna- 
tion by  the  tidings  of  this  ignominious  convention.^  It  was  in  vain  that  the 
minister  and  his  adherents  opposed  to  the  public  spirit  the  timorous  plea,  that 
England  had  no  continental  allies  to  aid  her  in  a  war  which  would  infallibly 
promote  the  views  of  a  Popish  pretender  to  the  crown.  The  Georgian 
trustees  united  with  the  merchants  of  London,  Liverpool,  and  Bristol,  in 
complaining  to  the  House  of  Commons,  which  had  pledged  the  national  faith 
for  the  support  and  protection  of  the  new  province ;  and  their  application 
was  seasonably  enforced  by  the  infatuated  insolence  with  which  the  court  of 
Spain,  relying  on  the  tameness  of  Walpole,  withheld  even  the  small  pecunia- 
ry restitution  which  he  had  so  dearly  bought  from  it.  A  war  with  this  impe- 
rious people  was  thus  rendered  inevitable  ;  and  though  Walpole  still  contin- 
ued to  fill  up  the  measure  of  his  unpopularity  by  laboring  to  elude  or  post- 
pone that  extremity,  he  found  it  impossible  to  withstand  the  general  desire 
that  Georgia  should  be  protected  from  the  grasp  of  Spain.  The  national 
feeling  on  this  point  was  partaken  by  the  king,  to  whom  the  Georgian  trus- 
tees presented  an  earnest  petition  for  assistance,  and  who  signified  his  com- 
mands that  prompt  and  effectual  measures  should  be  adopted  for  the  security 
of  the  province.^ 

Oglethorpe  was  now  promoted  to  the  rank  of  major-general ;  and  with  a 
regiment  of  six  hundred  men,  and  the  appointment  of  commander-in-chief 
of  all  the  forces  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  once  more  set  sail  from 
England,  to  undertake  the  defence  of  the  southern  frontiers  of  the  British  do- 
minions in  America.  The  parliament,  at  the  same  time,  aided  the  new  col- 
ony with  an  additional  grant  of  twenty  thousand  pounds  ;  and  for  the  encour- 
agement of  the  soldiers,  the  trustees  assured  to  each  of  them  twenty-five 
acres  of  land  as  the  premium  of  seven  years'  service  in  Georgia.  The  arrival 
of  this  force  excited  the  liveliest  hope  and  joy  in  the  two  provinces  for  whose 
benefit  it  was  more  peculiarly  destined.  The  general,  establishing  his  head- 
quarters at  Frederica,  hastened  to  erect  forts  on  the  islands  of  Jekyl  and 
Cumberland,  situated  nearer  to  the  Spanish  territories.  But  the  object  which 
he  felt  it  most  pressingly  requisite  to  secure  was  the  friendship  of  the  Creek 

^  In  Dr.  Johnson's  London^  which  was  published  this  year,  the  national  feeling  is  expressed 
in  these  lines  :  — 

"  In  pleasing  dreams,  the  happy  age  renew, 
And  call  Britannia's  glories  back  to  view  ;  "     ^ 

Behold  her  cross  triumphant  on  the  main, 
The  guard  of  commerce  and  the  dread  of  Spaiv  ; 
Ere  masquerades  debauched,  excise  oppressed. 
Or  British  honor  grew  a  standing  jest. 
The  attempt  of  the  Spaniards  to  dispossess  destitute  men  of  the  refuge  they  had  found  in 
Georgia  seems  to  be  alluded  to  in  the  following  lines  of  the  same  poem : 
"  Has  Heaven  reserved,  in  pity  to  the  poor. 
No  pathless  waste,  or  undiscovered  shore. 
No  secret  island  in  the  boundless  main,  — 
JVo  peaceful  desert  yet  unclaimed  by  Spain  ? 
Quick  let  us  rise,  tne  happy  seats  explore. 
And  bear  oppression's  insolence  no  more." 
Oglethorpe  was  in  London  when  this  poem  was  published  ;  and,  though  not  till  a  later  pe- 
riod of  his  life  personally  acquainted  with  Johnson,  he  exerted  much  diligeuce  to  introduce 
»t  to  the  notice  of  the  public.    Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson. 
«  Smollett.    Hewit. 


BOOK  IX.]  INTRIGUES  OF  THE  SPANIARDS.  ]29 

Indians,  who  had  conceived  a  warm  regard  for  him,  and  whom  the  Span- 
iards during  his  absence  had  industriously  courted  and  studied  to  estrange 
from  their  adherence  to  the  Enghsh.  The  Spanish  governor  had  succeeded 
in  enticing  some  of  their  chiefs  to  Augustine,  by  the  pretence  that  they 
would  meet  their  friend  Oglethorpe  there  ;  but  the  efficacy  of  his  offers 
and  caresses  was  defeated  by  the  anger  and  suspicion  that  the  savages  con- 
ceived, on  detecting  the  deceit.  Oglethorpe,  •  returning  seasonably  at  this 
juncture,  invited  them  to  meet  him  at  Frederica,  where  he  acknowledged  and 
extolled  their  fidelity,  distributed  many  valuable  presents  among  them,  and 
united  with  them  in  a  solemn  renewal  of  their  former  treaty  of  friendship  and 
alliance.  But  the  intrigues  of  the  Spaniards  were  neither  checked  by  this 
disappointment,  nor  restricted  to  the  Indians.  Learning  that  murmurs  had 
arisen  among  the  soldiers  of  the  regiment  which  Oglethorpe  brought  from 
England,  on  account  of  the  hardships  of  a  situation  foreign  to  their  previous 
habits,  and  that  two  companies  of  this  regiment  had  served  at  Gibraltar 
and  gained  there  some  acquaintance  with  the  Spanish  language,  the  gov- 
ernor of  Augustine  found  means  to  corrupt  one  of  these  men,  and  by  his 
agency  to  excite  a  conspiracy  in  Oglethorpe's  camp.  A  daring  attempt  was 
made  to  assassinate  the  general  ;  but  his  courage  and  resolution  happily  ex- 
tricated-him  from  the  danger;  and  the  mutineers  being  suppressed,  their 
ringleaders  were  shot  by  the  sentence  of  a  court-martial. 

Another  and  more  successful  effort  of  Spanish  pohcy  was  directed  to 
the  seduction  of  the  negro  slaves  in  South  Carolina,  who  now  amounted  to 
the  number  of  forty  thousand.  Liberty  and  protection  were  tendered  to  all 
fugitive  negroes  from  the  English  by  the  governor  of  Florida,  and  emissa- 
ries were  despatched  to  Carolina  to  acquaint  the  slaves  with  the  offer  and 
invite  them  to  embrace  it.  This  invitation,  sufficiently  tempting  to  men  in 
a  state  of  bondage,  however  mitigated,  was  promoted  by  the  cruelty  with 
which  despotic  power  and  selfish  fear  induced  many  of  the  planters  of 
Carolina  to  treat  their  negroes,  and  which  the  provincial  laws  practically 
sanctioned  by  affixing  the  trifling  penalty  of  seven  pounds  of  the  depreciated 
money  of  Carolina  to  the  murder  of  a  slave,  and  remitting  half  of  the  penalty 
to  any  murderer  who  should  think  it  expedient  to  inform  against  himself.^ 
To  negroes  deserting  from  CaroHna  the  Spaniards  allotted  lands  near  Au- 
gustine, where  already  five  hundred  fugitives  had  arrived.  Of  these  negro 
refugees  the  governor  of  Florida  composed  a  regiment  ;  appointing  officers 
from  among  themselves,  allowing  them  the  same  pay  and  clothing  them  in 
the  same  uniform  with  the  regular  troops  of  Spain.  But  in  the  present 
year,  the  severity  of  the  Carolinians  and  the  intrigues  of  the  Spaniards  pro- 
duced the  formidable  mischief  of  an  insurrection  of  the  negroes  in  South 
Carolina.  A  number  of  these  unfortunate  persons,  having  assembled  at 
Stono,  first  surprised  and  killed  the  European  proprietors  of  a  large  ware- 
house or  magazine,  and  then  plundered  it  of  guns  and  ammunition.  Thjus 
provided  with  arms,  they  elected  one  of  their  own  number  to  be  their  cap- 
tain, and  marched  under  his  direction  towards  the  southwest,  with  colors 
flying,  drums  beating,  and  all  the  array  of  an  army  of^hostile  invaders.  With 
Httle  violence,  they  compelled  the  negroes  on  the  plantations  which  they 
approached  to  join  them  ;  and  vented  their  revengeful  rage  on  the  free 
colonists,  of  whom,  nevertheless,  only  twenty  perished  by  negro  hands.  The 
utmost  terror  and  consternation  was  excited  through  the  whole  of  South 

^  See  Note  V.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
VOL.    II.  17 


igO  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

Carolina.  But  Bull,  the  governor,  hastily  assembling  a  force  against  the 
insurgents,  took  advantage  of  the  intoxication  from  which  the  negroes  could 
not  refrain,  and  attacking  them  suddenly,  while  they  were  celebrating  their 
fancied  triumph  with  orgies  which  disabled  them  from  obtaining  it,  easily 
routed  and  dispersed  their  forces.  Many  of  the  fugitives  hastened  back  to 
the  plantations  they  had  quitted,  hoping  to  resume  their  toils  without  de- 
tection ;  but  the  greater  number  were  taken  and  brought  to  judicial  reck- 
oning. All  who  had  been  or  seemed  to  have  been  compelled  to  join  the 
other  insurgents,  contrary  to  their  owri  inclination,  were  pardoned  ;  but  a 
vast  number,  including  the  first  promoters  and  chosen  leaders  of  the  rebel- 
lion, suffered  the  severest  infliction  of  human  power  and  vengeance.^ 

The  following  year  [1739]  was  signalized  by  the  extremity  which  Sir 
Robert  Walpole  had  so  long  resisted  ;  and  with  the  unanimous  voice  of  the 
nation,  war  was  declared  by  England  against  Spain.  An  act  of  parliament 
was  passed  at  the  same  time  for  naturalizing  all  foreign  Protestants  settled  in 
any  of  the  British  colonies  in  America.^  If  this  act  was  meant  to  gratify  or 
retain  the  Moravian  settlers  in  Georgia,  its  efficacy  was  completely  de- 
feated by  the  contemporary  proceedings  of  the  English  inhabitants  of  this 
province.  About  a  year  before,  when  a  provincial  force  was  hastily  as- 
sembled to  encounter  an  apprehended  invasion  of  the  Spaniards,  the  Mora- 
vians were  summoned  to  join  their  fellow-colonists  in  defending  their  adopted 
country.  This  summons  they  mildly,  but  firmly,  refused  to  obey  ;  declaring 
that  no  human  power  or  motive  could  induce  them  to  take  the  sword,  and 
appealing  to  the  pledge  they  had  received  from  the  trustees  of  exemption 
from  mihtary  service.  The  magistrates  w^ere  constrained  to  admit  the  force 
of  the  appeal  ;  but  so  much  jealousy  and  displeasure  were  expressed  on  this 
account  by  the  bulk  of  the  planters  against  the  Moravians,  that  several  of 
these  sectaries,  unwilling  to  remain  among  a  people  in  whom  their  presence 
excited  unfriendly  sentiments,  abandoned  the  province  and  retired  to  the 
peaceful  domain  of  the  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania,  where  already  a  numer- 
ous society  of  the  Moravian  brotherhood  was  collected.  The  rest,  under 
the  direction  of  an  excellent  pastor,  named  Peter  Boehler,  continued  to  re- 
side in  Georgia  ;  some  desirous  of  discharging  the  pecuniary  debt  which 
they  had  contracted  to  the  trustees,  and  all  unwilling  to  forsake  their  mis- 
sionary labors  among  the  neighbouring  Indians,  which  began  to  be  attended 
with  happy  results.  But  in  the  present  year,  they  again  received  a  sum- 
mons to  join  the  provincial  militia  ;  and,  declining  to  resume  the  former  con- 
troversy, they  bade  farewell  to  Georgia,  surrendered  their  flourishing  plan- 
tations without  a  murmur,  and  reunited  themselves  to  their  brethren  who 
were  established  in  Pennsylvania.  One  of  their  number  returned  shortly 
after  to  Georgia,  at  the  request  of  George  Whitefield,  with  the  hope  both  of 
assisting  that  extraordinary  man  to  execute  the  benevolent  project  he  had 
undertaken  in  this  province,  and  of  prosecuting  the  missionary  work  which 
had  been  commenced  among  the  Creeks.  [1740.]  Whitefield,  undeterred 
by  the  disappointment  that  the  Wesleys  sustained  in  Georgia,  tendered 
his  services  in  the  province  to  the  trustees  ;   and  having  obtained  a  tract  of 

^  MS.  Journal  oi'C.  Wesley.    Whitehead's  Life  of  the  Wesleys.     Wynne.    Hewit.    Holmes. 

^  Twelve  years  after,  a  bill  was  brought  into  parliament  for  naturalizing  all  foreign  Protes- 
tants settled  in  Great  Britain.  It  was  supported  by  Pitt,  afterwards  Earl  of  Chatham,  and 
opposed  by  Fox,  afterwards  Lord  Holland,  and  by  the  principal  mercantile  corporations  of 
England  and  the  bulk  of  the  people.  The  Prince  of  Wales,  son  of  George  the  Second, 
was  its  strenuous  patron  ;  and  his  death  was  the  main  cause  of  its  failure.     Smollett. 


BOOK  IX.]  OGLETHORPE'S  INVASION  OF  FLORIDA.  J^Jl 

land  from  them,  he  laid  the  foundation  of  an  orphan-house,  a  few  miles 
from  Savannah,  and  afterwards  completed  it  at  a  great  expense.  It  was 
designed  to  be  an  asylum  for  destitute  children,  of  whom  great  numbers 
were  left  dependent  on  public  compassion  by  the  premature  deaths  of  many 
of  the  first  imported  colonists,  and  who  were  to  be  clothed  and  fed  by 
charitable  contributions,  and  educated  in  the  knowledge  and  practice  of 
Christianity.  1  The  advantages  which  Whitefield  expected  to  deduce  from 
this  humane  and  laudable  institution  were  never  realized  ;  but  his  labors 
and  travels,  to  which  it  first  gave  rise,  in  various  parts  of  America,  were 
subsequently  productive  of  important  results.  One  of  his  earliest  publica- 
tions was  a  letter  he  addressed  about  this  time  to  the  planters  of  Virginia, 
Maryland,  and  the  Carolinas,  on  the  cruelties  inflicted  on  their  negro  slaves, 
which  is  said  to  have  produced  a  considerable  amelioration  in  the  treat- 
ment of  these  victims  of  oppression.  During  his  long  and  frequent  visits  to 
America,  he  continued  steadily  to  advocate  the  interests  of  the  negroes,  and 
so  successfully  as  to  persuade  a  number  of  the  planters  to  emancipate  their 
;5laves.^ 

The  British  government  seemed  now  resolved  to  atone  for  the  timid 
policy  that  retarded  the  declaration  of  war,  by  the  extent  of  its  hostilities 
upon  the  Spanish  dominions.  An  application  was  made  to  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina  for  a  levy  of  troops  to  reinforce  the  English  armament  des- 
patched against  Carthagena  under  Admiral  Vernon,  a  man  whose  personal 
bravery  had  gained  him  credit  for  the  possession  of  qualities  much  more 
essential  to  a  commander  ;  and  as  Colonel  Spottiswoode  received  a  com- 
mission to  raise  and  command  the  provincial  auxiliaries,  the  colonists  both 
of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  eagerly  obeyed  the  summons  to  enrol 
themselves  under  the  banners  of  a  leader  so  highly  respected  and  beloved. 
A  considerable  force  (to  which  North  Carolina  contributed  four  hundred 
men)  was  accordingly  embodied,  and,  on  the  death  of  Spottiswoode,  pro- 
ceeded, under  the  command  of  Gooch,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  to  embark 
in  Vernon's  squadron,  and  shared  in  the  disastrous  enterprise  against  Car- 
thagena, which  was  defeated  by  the  dissensions  between  the  English  com- 
manders, and  cost  the  lives  of  twenty  thousand  British  subjects,  of  whom 
by  far  the  greater  number  were  the  victims  of  a  pestilential  distemper.^ 

Oglethorpe,  partaking  the  general  ardor  of  his  countrymen  to  punish  the 
insolence  of  Spain,  determined  not  to  confine  the  operation  of  the  force 
with  which  he  was  intrusted  to  defensive  warfare.  Having  concerted  a 
plan  for  the  invasion  of  Florida,  he  solicited  the  assistance  of  Virginia  and 
Carolina  to  its  execution.  The  assembly  of  South  Carolina  granted  one 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  pounds  of  Carolinian  currency  for  the  pur- 
pose ;  and  a  regiment  was  raised,  partly  in  Virginia  and  partly  in  North  and 

*  Loskiel.     Holmes.     Franklin's  Memoirs. 

'  Clarkaon's  History  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave-trade.     Southey's  Life  of  Wesley. 
^  "  Such  as  of  late  at  Carthagena  quenched 

The  British  fire.     You,  gallant  Vernon  !  saw 
The  miserable  scene  ;  you  heard  the  groans 
Of  agonizing  ships  from  shore  to  shore  , 
Heard  nightly  plunged  amid  the  sullen  waves 
The  frequent  corse."  —  Thomson. 
Vernon  had  supported  warlike  counsels  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  an  ardor  that  was 
highly  agreeable  to  the  nation,  and  proportionally  unacceptable  to  the  minister,  who,  on  find- 
ing war  inevitable,  seized  the   opportunity  of  pleasing  the  people  and  ridding  himself  of  a 
troublesome   censor  by   promoting  Vernoii  to  the  command  of  the  expedition  against  the 
SpoAidh  colonics.  #;, 


132  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XX. 

South  Carolina,  to  cooperate  with  the  forces  of  Oglethorpe.  The  com- 
mander of  the  Enghsh  ships  of  war  on  this  station  agreed  to  aid  the  enter- 
prise with  a  naval  armament,  consisting  of  four  ships  of  twenty  guns  each, 
and  two  sloops  ;  and  the  Indian  allies  of  the  English  declared  themselves 
ready,  at  a  moment's  warning,  to  send  a  powerful  auxihary  force  to  accom- 
pany the  expedition.  Oglethorpe,  learning  that  the  Spanish  garrison  at 
Augustine  were  straitened  for  provisions,  urged  the  speedy  advance  of  the 
colonial  militia  and  the  ships  of  war  ;  and,  hastening  to  enter  Florida  with 
four  hundred  chosen  men  of  his  own  regiment,  and  a  considerable  body 
of  Indians,  invested  Diego,  a  small  fort,  about  twenty-five  miles  from  Au- 
gustine, which,  after  a  short  resistance,  surrendered  by  capitulation.  Leav- 
ing a  garrison  of  sixty  men  there,  he  proceeded  to  the  place  of  general 
rendezvous,  where  he  was  joined  by  Colonel  Vanderdussen  with  the  Caro- 
linian and  Virginian  regiment,  and  a  company  of  Highlanders,  under  Captain 
M'Intosh.  A  few  days  after,  he  marched  with  his  whole  force,  consisting 
of  above  two  thousand  men,  regulars,  provincials,  and  Indians,  to  Fort 
Moosa,  within  two  miles  of  Augustine,  which  was  evacuated  by  its  garrison 
on  his  approach.  The  Spaniards  had  exerted  themselves  to  strengthen 
the  fortifications  of  the  town  and  castle  of  Augustine  ;  and  Oglethorpe, 
soon  perceiving  that  an  attempt  to  take  the  place  by  storm  would  be  an  act 
of  presumptuous  rashness,  changed  his  plan  of  operation,  and  resolved,  with 
the  assistance  of  the  EngHsh  ships,  which  were  now  lying  at  anchor  off  Au- 
gustine bar,  to  turn  the  siege  into  a  blockade.  For  this  purpose,  he  left 
Colonel  Palmer,  with  ninety-five  Highlanders  and  forty-two  Indians,  at  Fort 
Moosa,  with  orders  to  scour  the  woods  round  the  town,  and  intercept  all 
supplies  of  provisions  which  it  might  derive  from  the  country  ;  and  sent 
Colonel  Vanderdussen  with  the  Carolina  regiment  to  occupy  and  erect  a 
battery  on  Point  Quarrel,  a  neck  of  land  about  a  mile  distant  from  the  cas- 
tle ;  while  he  himself,  with  his  own  regiment  and  the  main  body  of  the  In- 
dians, embarked  in  boats,  and  landed  on  the  island  of  Anastatia,  fronting 
the  castle,  whence  he  resolved  to  attempt  the  bombardment  of  the  town. 
When  his  batteries  were  erected,  and  the  ships  of  war  so  stationed  as  to 
block  up  the  mouth  of  the  harbour  and  exclude  the  garrison  from  supplies 
by  sea,  he  summoned  the  governor  of  the  place  to  surrender  ;  but,  secure 
in  his  stronghold,  the  Spaniard  rephed  that  he  would  be  glad  to  shake 
hands  with  him  in  the  fortress.  Oglethorpe,  whose  disposition  was  fiery 
and  irascible,  expressed  much  inappropriate  anger  at  this  reply,  and  straight- 
way proceeded  to  open  his  batteries  upon  the  castle,  and  to  throw  shells 
into  the  town.  The  cannonade  was  briskly  returned  by  the  enemy  ;  but  the 
distance  was  so  great,  that,  although  it  was  continued  for  several  days, 
very  little  execution  was  done  on  either  side. 

A  series  of  disasters  and  calamities  now  befell  the  besieging  army.  The 
Spanish  governor,  remarking  the  smallness  of  the  force  stationed  at  Fort 
Moosa  under  Colonel  Palmer,  secretly  detached  three  hundred  of  his 
troops,  by  whom  Palmer  was  attacked  by  surprise,  and  his  party  of  gallant 
Highlanders  almost  entirely  cut  to  pieces.  Some  of  the  Chickasaw  Indians, 
having  caught  a  straggling  Spaniard,  cut  off  his  head,  and  presented  the 
gory  trophy  to  Oglethorpe  in  his  tent.  The  general  was  struck  with  dis- 
gust and  horror  at  this  savage  style  of  warfare,  and  hastily  exclaiming  that 
they  were  barbarous  dogs^  commanded  them  to  quit  his  presence.  Stung 
by  this  disdainful  behaviour,  the  Chickasaw  warriors  angrily  observed,  that, 


BOOK  IX.]  UNHAPPY  RESULTS  OF  THE  INVASION.  |33 

if  they  had  carried  the  head  of  an  Englishman  to  the  French,  they  would 
have  experienced  a  very  different  reception  ;  and  having  communicated 
the  insult  they  had  sustained  to  their  companions,  the  whole  detachment 
from  the  Chickasaw  tribe  immediately  abandoned  the  camp  and  returned 
home.  While  the  besieging  forces  were  thus  diminished,  the  Spanish  gar- 
rison received  a  reinforcement  of  seven  hundred  men  and  a  copious  sup- 
ply of  provisions  in  some  small  ships  from  Havana,  which  contrived  to 
elude  the  vigilance  of  the  British  vessels  and  to  enter  the  harbour  undis- 
covered. All  prospect  of  starving  the  enemy  into  a  surrender  consequently 
ceased,  and  the  besiegers  began  to  despair  of  a  successful  issue  to  their 
undertaking.  The  Carohna  troops,  enfeebled  by  the  heat  of  the  climate, 
and  dispirited  by  sickness  and  fruitless  fatigue,  marched  away  in  large  bodies. 
The  naval  commander  represented,  that,  from  the  deficiency  of  his  provis- 
ions and  the  near  approach  of  the  usual  season  of  hurricanes,  he  judged  it 
imprudent  to  retain  the  fleet  longer  on  this  coast.  The  general  himself 
was  attacked  by  a  fever,  and  his  regiment  was  worn  out  with  fatigue  and 
crippled  by  sickness.  This  combination  of  adverse  circumstances  rendered 
it  necessary  to  abandon  the  enterprise  ;  and  Oglethorpe,  overwhelmed  with 
chagrin,  raised  the  siege  and  returned  to  Frederica.  [July  10,  1740.]  The 
Carolinians  were  filled  with  anger  and  disappointment  at  this  catastrophe, 
and  openly  imputed  it  to  want  of  courage  and  skill  in  the  general  ;  while  he 
increased  their  irritation  by  retorting  their  injustice,  and  declaring  that  he 
had  now  no  confidence  in  their  militia,  who  had  refused  obedience  to  his 
orders,  and  mutinously  or  pusillanimously  deserted  his  camp.  Oglethorpe, 
indeed,  did  not  deserve  the  imputations  that  were  thrown  on  his  military 
skill,  and  much  less  on  his  courage,  of  which  the  strain  was  rather  heroic 
than  temperate  ;  but  he  showed  a  want  both  of  reflective  prudence  and  mod- 
eration^ in  stigmatizing  with  abrupt  and  vehement  censure  the  mode  of 
warfare  practised  by  a  faithful  though  savage  ally,  and  in  expecting  from  a 
troop  of  brave  but  undisciplined  militia  the  same  mechanical  obedience  that 
he  was  accustomed  to  exact  from  regular  soldiers.  The  Carolinians  had 
not  ceased  to  deplore  their  misfortune,  when  [November,  1740]  they  sus- 
tained a  heavy  aggravation  of  it  from  a  desolating  fire  which  broke  forth  in 
Charleston,  laid  in  ashes  three  hundred  of  the  principal  houses  in  the  town, 
and  occasioned  damage  that  was  estimated  at  two  hundred  thousand  pounds. 
The  assembly  appHed  for  relief  to  the  British  parliament,  which  granted 
twenty  thousand  pounds  to  be  distributed  among  the  sufferers.^ 

Nothing  could  be  more  unfortunate  than  the  conduct  of  Great  Britain 
in  this  war.  [1741.]  Admiral  Vernon,  hoping  to  retrieve  his  miscarriage 
at  Carthagena  by  a  more  successful  enterprise  against  another  of  the  colo- 
nial settlements  of  Spain,  obtained,  in  consequence  of  a  requisition  from  the 
British  government  to  the  North  American  provinces,  a  reinforcement  of 
three  thousand  six  hundred  men,  chiefly  supplied  by  the  States  of  New 
England.     Thus  recruited,  he  made  a  descent   upon  Cuba,  where,  without 

*  The  conduct  of  Oglethorpe,  at  this  period,  seems  to  have  resembled  his  conversation  in 
later  years,  v^rhich,  though  admired  for  its  generous  fire  and  vivacity,  was  reproached  as 
desultory  and  immethodical.  "  Oglethorpe,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  never  co?n;;Ze/c5  what  he 
has  to  say."  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson.  Horace  Walpole  says  that  Oglethorpe  "  was  always 
a  bully."  Letters  to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  October,  1746.  But  Horace  Walpole  was  no  very 
competent  judge  of  the  character  of  a  hero.  He  has  termed  Washington  "  an  excellent  fan- 
faron  !  "  lb.  October,  1754 ;  and  done  his  utmost  to  depreciate  the  genius  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney. 

2  Smollett.    Hewit.    Burk.    Williamson.    Holmes.--.    ~r . 


134  HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

venturing  to  attempt  any  operation  of  the  slightest  importance,  he  hngered, 
with  the  inactivity  of  a  weak  and  bewildered  mind,  till,  by  the  recurrence 
of  pestilential  maladies,  the  fleet  was  miserably  dispeopled,  and  the  army 
ingloriously  melted  away.  Of  the  New  England  auxiharies,  scarcely  one 
man  in  fifty  survived  the  expedition.  This  calamity  overspread  America 
with  mourning,  and  excited  a  mixture  of  grief  and  indignation  in  England, 
where  the  people  began  to  perceive  that  Vernon's  capacity  had  been  strange- 
ly overrated.  The  legislative  policy  of  Britain,  in  relation  to  the  war,  ex- 
hibited the  same  blundering  indiscretion  and  futility  that  characterized  her 
executive  operations.  Although  hostilities  had  not  yet  been  formally  pro- 
claimed between  Britain  and  France,  the  design  of  France  to  support  the 
quarrel  of  Spain  was  become  increasingly  manifest ;  and  it  was  equally  evi- 
dent that  England  would  be  soon  involved  in  the  continental  disputes  of  her 
sovereign,  as  Elector  of  Hanover,  with  France  and  her  German  allies.  A 
bill  was  now  introduced  into  the  British  parhament,  for  distressing  the 
French  and  Spaniards,  by  prohibiting  the  exportation  of  all  provisions,  of 
whatsoever  description,  and  particularly  of  rice,  from  any  part  of  the  British 
dominions.  With  great  difficulty,  the  parliament  was  prevailed  on  to  except 
rice  from  the  operation  of  this  act,  by  a  representation  from  South  Carolina, 
which  clearly  demonstrated  that  the  restriction  of  the  existing  commerce  of 
that  article  would  prove  highly  detrimental  to  Britain,  and  perfectly  harm- 
less to  her  enemies.  In  this  representation  it  was  asserted,  that,  "  if  any 
stop  be  put  to  the  exportation  of  rice  from  South  Carolina  to  Europe,  it 
will  not  only  render  the  planters  there  incapable  of  paying  their  debts,  but 
also  reduce  the  government  of  this  province  to  such  difficulties  for  want  of 
money,  as  at  this  present  precarious  time  may  render  the  whole  colony  an 
easy  prey  to  their  neighbours,  the  Indians  and  Spaniards,  and  also  to  those 
yet  more  dangerous  enemies^  their  own  negroes^  who  are  ready  to  revolt  on 
the  first  opportunity^  and  are  eight  times  as  many  in  number  as  there  are 
white  men  able  to  bear  arms  ;  and  the  danger  in  this  respect  is  greater  since 
the  unhappy  expedition  to  Augustine."  ^ 

Admiral  Vernon  having  now  quitted  the  American  seas,  the  Spaniards, 
delivered  from  the  fear  of  the  English  fleet  and  exulting  in  its  disasters,  de- 
termined to  improve  their  good  fortune  by  a  vigorous  effi^rt  for  the  conquest 
of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina.  An  armament  was  accordingly  prepared 
at  Havana,  whence  two  thousand  troops,  commanded  by  Don  Antonio  de 
Rodondo,  embarked,  under  the  convoy  of  a  powerful  squadron,  for  Augus- 
tine. [May,  1742.]  Before  they  reached  this  place,  they  were  descried 
by  the  captain  of  an  English  cruiser,  who  conveyed  the  tidings  of  danger  to 
Oglethorpe,  by  whom  a  messenger  was  despatched  to  Glen,  the  governor 
of  South  Carohna,  beseeching  instant  aid,  and  desiring  that  a  sloop  should 
be  despatched  to  the  West  Indies,  in  order  that  Vernon,  if  he  was  still  there, 
might  be  acquainted  with  the  intended  invasion.  But  the  Carolinians  now 
regarded  Oglethorpe  with  strong  dislike,  and  entertained  a  mean  opinion  of 
his  ability  ;  and  no  sooner  was  the  alarming  intelhgence  which  he  communi- 
cated made  generally  known,  than  the  planters  of  the  southern  frontier  of  the 
province,  accounting  the  conquest  of  Georgia  inevitable,  deserted  their  own 
habitations,  and  flocked  to  Charleston  with  their  families  and  effects.  The 
mhabitants  of  Charleston  warmly  declared  against  sending  any  assistance  to 
Oglethorpe,  and  determined  rather  to  fortify  their  city  and  collect  the  whole 
'  Douglass.     Smollett.     He  wit.     Gordon.     Trumbull. 


POOK  IX  ]  SPANISH  INVASION  OF  GEORGIA.  |35 

Strength  of  the  province  for  its  defence.  This  purpose  was  equally  ungen- 
erous and  imprudent.  In  such  an  emergency,  good  policy  required  that  the 
united  force  of  both  colonies  should  be  exerted  to  prevent  the  Spaniards 
from  penetrating  through  the  thickets  of  Georgia,  and  reaching  the  opener 
country  and  negro  population  of  South  Carolina.  Divided  by  erroneous  pol- 
icy, the  force  of  the  two  provinces  was  plainly  insufficient  to  the  public 
defence  ;  and,  by  abandoning  the  Georgians  to  their  fate,  the  Carolinians  pro- 
voked their  own  ruin.  Nevertheless,  they  conveyed  tidings  of  the  danger  of 
Georgia  to  Virginia,  where  a  wiser  and  more  liberal  policy  prevailed,  and  an 
instant  and  unanimous  resolution  was  embraced  by  the  assembly  to  detach  a 
naval  force  to  the  aid  of  Oglethorpe.  But  the  contest  was  decided  before  the 
Virginian  succour  arrived. 

In  the  mean  time,  Oglethorpe  was  making  the  most  active  preparation 
at  Frederica  for  the  reception  of  the  enemy.  The  Creeks  and  Cherokees, 
who  were  warmly  attached  to  him,  readily  obeyed  his  summons,  and  crowd- 
ed to  his  camp.  A  company  of  Highlanders  joined  him  on  the  first  notice, 
and  expressed  a  stern  and  earnest  satisfaction  at  the  prospect  of  revenging 
the  fate  of  their  friends  who  were  slaughtered  two  years  before  by  the 
Spaniards  at  Fort  Moosa.  With  his  own  regiment,  and  a  few  provincial 
rangers,  Highlanders,  and  Indians,  the  general  fixed  his  head-quarters  at 
Frederica,  confidently  expecting  a  reinforcement  from  Carolina,  and  daily 
looking  for  its  arrival  ;  but  withal  determined,  in  case  he  should  be  attacked 
unaided,  to  sell  his  life  as  dearly  as  possible  in  defence  of  the  province. 
In  the  latter  end  of  June,  the  Spanish  fleet,  consisting  of  thirty-two  vessels, 
and  carrying  upwards  of  three  thousand  men,  of  whom  Don  Manuel  de  Mon- 
teano,  the  governor  of  Augustine,  was  commander-in-chief,  arrived  in  the 
mouth  of  the  river  Alatamaha  ;  and  having  received  and  returned  the  fire  of 
Fort  Simon,  where  Oglethorpe  was  stationed,  sailed  up  the  river  beyond  the 
reach  of  his  guns.  The  invaders  disembarked  on  the  island  in  which  Fred- 
erica is  situated,  and  erected  a  battery  mounted  by  twenty  pieces  of  cannon. 
Among  their  land  forces  they  had  a  fine  company  of  artillery,  commanded 
by  Rodondo,  and  a  regiment  of  negroes.  The  negro  officers  were  clothed 
in  lace,  enjoyed  the  same  rank  with  the  Spanish  officers,  and  with  equal  free- 
dom accosted  and  conversed  with  the  commander-in-chief.  Such  an  exam- 
ple might  justly  have  inspired  terror  and  alarm  in  Carolina  ;  for  it  needed 
little  sagacity  to  perceive,  that,  if  the  invaders  should  penetrate  into  that  prov- 
ince, and  exhibit  the  spectacle  of  their  negro  regiment  to  the  swarms  of  dis- 
contented slaves  with  which  it  abounded,  they  would  infallibly  obtain  the 
accession  of  such  a  force  as  would  render  all  opposition  fruitless  and  des- 
perate. 

Oglethorpe,  finding  that  he  could  not  withstand  the  progress  of  the  enemy 
up  the  river,  and  judging  his  situation  at  Fort  Simon  insecure,  spiked  its 
guns,  and  retreated  to  Frederica.  With  a  force  amounting  to  little  more 
than  seven  hundred  men,  exclusive  of  Indians,  he  could  not  hope  to  act  but 
on  the  defensive,  until  the  arrival  of  the  lingering  aid  of  Carohna.  On  all 
sides  he  detached  scouting  parties  of  Highlanders  and  Indians  to  watch  the 
motions,  harass  the  outposts,  and  obstruct  the  advances  of  the  enemy,  while 
the  main  body  of  his  troops  were  employed  in  strengthening  the  fortifications 
of  Frederica.  The  provisions  of  his  garrison  were  scanty  and  of  indifferent 
quality  ;  and  as  the  Spaniards  possessed  the  command  of  the  river,  all  pros- 
pects of  a  farther  supply  were  cut  off.     Yet  hoping  for  relief  from  Carolba, 


136  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  .     [BOOK  IX. 

Oglethorpe  studied  to  prolong  the  defence,  by  concealing  every  discourag- 
ing circumstance  from  his  little  army  ;  and  in  order  to  animate  their  perse- 
verance, he  cheerfully  exposed  himself  to  the  same  privations  and  fatigues 
which  the  common  soldiers  endured.  This  generous  policy  was  attended 
with  its  usual  success,  and  sustained  the  patience  of  the  troops  under  labors 
,  and  hardships,  which  were  divested  of  the  appearance  of  constraint  by  the 
)  voluntary  participation  of  the  commander.  The  Spanish  troops  now  made 
J  several  attempts  to  pierce  through  the  woods  in  order  to  besiege  Ogle- 
Ithorpe's  head-quarters,  but  encountered  such  stubborn  resistance  from  deep 
'morasses,  and  dark  and  tangled  thickets,  lined  with  fierce  Indians  and  active 
Highlanders,  that  some  of  them  protested  impatiently  that  the  devil  himself 
could  not  make  his  way  to  Frederica.  In  two  skirmishes,  a  Spanish  captain 
and  two  lieutenants  were  killed,  and  a  hundred  of  their  men  taken  prisoners. 
Encouraged  by  this  ray  of  success,  and  learning  from  an  English  prisoner 
who  escaped  from  the  Spanish  camp,  that  a  disagreement  had  arisen  between 
the  forces  from  Havana  and  those  from  Augustine,  which  occasioned  a 
separation  of  their  encampments,  Oglethorpe  resolved  to  attempt  the  daring 
measure  of  sallying  from  his  stronghold  and  attacking  the  enemy  while  thus 
divided.  Availing  himself  of  his  acquaintance  with  the  woods,  he  marched 
in  the  night,  with  three  hundred  of  his  regular  soldiers,  the  Highland  com- 
pany, and  a  troop  of  provincial  rangers,  in  the  hope  of  surprising  one  of  the 
Spanish  camps.  Having  arrived  within  two  miles  of  it,  he  halted  his 
troops,  and  advanced  himself,  with  a  small  corps,  to  reconnoitre  the  enemy's 
position  ;  but  while  he  was  cautiously  manoeuvring  to  conceal  his  approaches, 
one  of  his  attendants,  a  Frenchman,  who  had  harboured  the  intention  of 
deserting,  seized  this  opportunity  of  carrying  it  into  effect ;  and,  discharging 
his  musket  to  alarm  the  Spaniards,  ran  off  and  gained  the  shelter  of  their 
lines.  ' 

This  act  of  treachery  defeated  the  hopes  of  the  assailants,  and  compelled 
a  hasty  retreat  to  Frederica,  where  Oglethorpe  now  endeavoured  to  accom- 
pHsh  by  stratagem  what  he  had  failed  to  achieve  by  surprise.  Apprehensive 
that  his  weakness  would  be  discovered  to  the  enemy  by  the  deserter,  he 
wrote  a  letter  to  this  man,  in  which  he  addressed  him  as  a  spy  in  his  em- 
ploy, and  instructed  him  to  assure  the  Spaniards  that  Frederica  was  in  a 
defenceless  state,  and  that  its  garrison  might  be  easily  cut  to  pieces.  He 
pressed  him  to  bring  forward  the  Spaniards  to  an  attack,  and,  if  he  could 
not  prevail  thus  far,  to  use  all  his  art  and  influence  to  detain  them  at  least 
three  days  more  in  their  present  situation  ;  for  within  that  time,  according 
to  advices  which  had  just  arrived  from  Carolina,  the  Georgian  troops  would 
be  reinforced  by  two  thousand  auxiliaries,  accompanied  by  six  British  ships 
of  war.  The  letter  concluded  with  a  caution  to  the  deserter  against  suffer- 
ing the  intelligence  of  Admiral  Vernon's  approaching  attack  upon  Augustine 
to  transpire,  and  with  assurance  of  the  amplest  recompense  that  the  British 
iking  could  bestow  on  him,  if  he  succeeded  in  preventing  the  escape  of  the 
Spaniards  from  Georgia.  This  ingenious  production  was  committed  to 
a  Spanish  prisoner,  who,  for  a  small  reward,  together  with  his  liberty,  un- 
dertook to  convey  it  privately  to  the  deserter  ;  but,  on  rejoining  his  coun- 
trymen, delivered  it,  as  Oglethorpe  expected,  to  the  commander-in-chief, 
who  instantly  put  the  deserter  in  irons.  The  Spanish  officers  were  not  a 
little  perplexed  and  confounded  by  the  contents  of  the  letter  ;  some  shrewd- 
ly suspecting  it  to  be  a  stratagem  to  prevent  an  attack  on  Frederica  ;  and 


BOOK  IX.]  TRIUMPH  OF  OGLETHORPE.  137 

Others  duped  by  its  literal  import,  and  believing  it  to  convey  sincere  instruc- 
tions to  direct  the  conduct  of  a  spy.  While  they  were  deliberating  on  these 
opposite  probabilities,  and  hesitating  what  measures  to  pursue,  their  counsels 
were  suddenly  decided  by  an  incident  beyond  the  calculation  of  human  in- 
genuity. Three  ships,  which  the  governor  of  South  Carolina  had  at  length 
despatched  to  Oglethorpe's  aid,  appeared  at  this  critical  juncture  off  the 
coast ;  and  an  effect,  more  than  proportioned  to  the  power  or  numbers  of 
this  reinforcement,  was  produced  by  its  opportune  arrival.  All  doubts  of 
the  purpose  of  Oglethorpe's  letter  were  terminated  by  so  palpable  a  con- 
firmation of  its  contents.  A  universal  panic  was  spread  through  the 
Spanish  army,  and  nothing  was  heeded  but  instant  departure.  Setting  fire 
to  the  fort  they  had  built,  and  leaving  behind  them  a  great  quantity  of 
artillery,  provisions,  and  military  stores,  they  precipitately  embarked  in  their 
vessels,  and  returned  to  Augustine  and  Havana.    [July,  1742.] 

The  triumph  of  Oglethorpe  was  complete,  in  this  happy  dehverance  of 
Georgia  from  the  brink  of  destruction.  Monteano  did  not  escape  the  cen- 
sure of  mihtary  critics,  who  remarked  that  he  passed  fifteen  days  on  the 
small  island  that  contained  Frederica,  without  being  able  to  reach  this  fort, 
and  lost  some  of  his  bravest  troops,  without  gaining  the  smallest  advantage 
over  the  inconsiderable  force  that  was  opposed  to  him.  Rodondo,  on  his 
arrival  at  Havana,  was  thrown  into  prison  for  his  share  in  the  ignominious 
result ;  and  a  resumption  of  the  invasion  of  Georgia  was  openly  announced 
by  the  Spaniards,  but  never  actually  undertaken.  The  inhabitants  of  South 
Carolina  incurred  deep  and  general  blame  for  their  conduct,  which  was  re- 
sented by  Oglethorpe  and  the  Georgians  with  the  liveliest  indignation. 
Some  of  the  Carolinian  planters  condemned  the  selfish  and  splenetic  policy 
of  their  countrymen,  and  united  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  other  provinces 
in  celebrating  the  bravery  of  the  Georgians,  and  hailing  Oglethorpe  as  the 
hero  and  deliverer  of  British  America.  Others  censured  every  part  of  his 
conduct,  depreciated  his  valor  and  skill,  and  ascribed  the  safety  of  Georgia 
to  the  favor  of  Divine  Providence,  or  the  blindness  of  chance.  Ogle- 
thorpe's Inerit  had  been  illustrated  too  conspicuously  to  suffer  him  to  pay 
any  regard  to  these  mean  effusions  of  pique  and  envy  ;  but  his  honor  was 
more  sensibly  touched  by  charges  of  fraud  and  embezzlement,  which  origi- 
nated with  certain  profligate  settlers  in  Georgia,  and  were  industriously  dis- 
seminated in  England  by  Colonel  Cook,  one  of  his  own  officers,  who  re- 
paired thither  for  the  purpose.  Learning  that  these  statements  had  made  an 
impression  on  some  of  the  Georgian  trustees,  and  provoked  much  discus- 
sion among  military  men  in  England,  Oglethorpe  judged  it  due  to  his  char- 
acter to  return  thither  without  delay.  [1743.]  Soon  after  his  arrival,  a  court- 
martial  of  general  officers  was  assembled  to  investigate  the  charges  preferred 
against  him,  which,  after  a  patient  inquiry,  they  adjudged  to  be  utterly  false 
and  malicious.  Cook  was  in  consequence  dismissed  from  the  British  army, 
and  declared  incapable  of  ever  again  serving  the  king.  Oglethorpe's  charac- 
ter was  thus  effectually  cleared ;  and  it  was  universally  acknowledged,  that 
to  his  generosity,  valor,  and  ability  Carolina  owed  her  safety  and  repose, 
and  Georgia  her  existence  and  preservation.  He  never  afterwards  returned 
to  Georgia  ;  but  in  England  continued  to  render  services  to  the  people  of 
this  province,  and  to  display  an  unwearied  zeal  for  their  happiness  and  im- 
provement.^ Oglethorpe  made  as  great  efforts  and  sacrifices  for  Georgia,  as 
^  Smollett.  Hewit.  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington.  Burk.  Oglethorpe  was  employed  in 
VOL.    II.  18  L* 


138  HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK      IX. 

William  Penn  had  done  for  Pennsylvania  ;  and  without  creating  a  private 
estate  to  himself,  or  seeking  any  personal  emolument  from  his  labors. 
But  he  was  not,  like  Penn,  at  the  head  of  a  religious  society,  which,  iden- 
tifying its  honor  with  his,  would  have  magnified  and  perpetuated  the  glory 
of  his  achievements  with  all  the  ardor  of  sectarian  partiality. 

The  provincial  government  to  which  Georgia  had  been  hitherto  subjected 
was  of  a  military  character,  and  administered  by  Oglethorpe  and  a  class  of 
subordinate  functionaries  appointed  by  him.  But  now  the  trustees  judged 
it  expedient  to  estabhsh  a  system  of  civil  jurisdiction,  of  which  the  admin- 
istration was  intrusted  to  a  president  and  four  assistants,  who  were  to  act  in 
conformity  with  the  instructions  of  the  trustees,  and  to  be  responsible  to  them 
for  their  pubHc  conduct.  William  Stephens  was  appointed  president,  and 
Thomas  Jones,  Henry  Parker,  John  Fallowfield,  and  Henry  Mercer, 
assistants.  They  were  instructed  to  hold,  every  year,  four  general  courts, 
at  Savannah,  for  regulating  public  affairs  and  adjusting  disputes  relative  to 
private  property.  No  public  money  could  be  disposed  of,  but  by  a  warrant 
from  the  president  and  a  majority  of  the  assistants  in  council  assembled,  who 
were  enjoined  to  transmit  monthly  accounts  of  their  expenditure  to  England. 
All  officers  of  mihtia  previously  appointed  were  continued  in  their  functions, 
and  required  to  hold  musters  for  the  purpose  of  training  the  colonists  to 
military  service  ;  and  Oglethorpe's  regiment  was  left  in  the  province  for  its 
additional  security.  An  important  alteration  took  place  at  the  same  time  in 
the  regulations  formerly  enacted  with  respect  to  the  tenure  of  lands  in  Geor- 
gia. The  trustees  had  already  transported  upwards  of  fifteen  hundred  per- 
sons to  the  province  (exclusive  of  the  emigrants  who  repaired  thither  at 
their  own  cost)  ;  but  not  a  half  of  this  number  now  remained  in  it ;  and  as  it 
was  justly  believed  that  the  desertion  of  the  settlers  was  partly  occasioned 
by  the  feudal  restrictions  originally  imposed  on  the  tenure  of  land,  this  sys- 
tem was  now  abolished,  and  the  right  of  absolute  property  in  land,  on  con- 
dition of  a  small  quitrent,  substitutionally  introduced.  This  innovation, 
which  prevented  the  province  from  being  entirely  deserted,  was  more  con- 
ducive to  the  advantage  of  the  colonists  than  to  the  mitigation  of  their  dis- 
content. Many  useful  and  industrious  settlers  had  already  withdrawn  the 
benefit  of  their  exertions  and  example  from  Georgia  ;  and  the  bulk  of  its 
population  was  composed  of  indigent  and  dissolute  persons,  who  had  little 
acquaintance  with  husbandry  and  less  inclination  to  labor,  who  preferred 
complaint  and  dependence  to  active  efforts  for  the  amelioration  of  their  own 
predicament,  and  who  continued  incessantly  to  clamor  for  the  introduction 
of  negro  slaves.  The  colonial  establishment  was  kept  alive  by  the  industry 
of  the  Scottish  Highlanders,  and  of  certain  German  laborers  who  had  latter- 
ly resorted  to  it.  Though  some  excellent  silk  had  been  already  produced 
in  Georgia,  yet  the  quantity  was  very  inconsiderable  ;  the  colonists  discov- 

Scotland,  in  the  year  1745,  against  the  rebels ;  and  died  in  the  year  1785,  after  beholding  the 

Erovince  he  had  founded  severed  from  the  British  empire,  and  converted  into  one  of  the  mem- 
ers  of  a  republican  confederacy.  "  This,  it  has  been  justly  observed,  is  the  first  example  in 
modern  times  of  the  founder  of  a  colony  who  has  lived  to  see  that  colony  recognized  by  the 
world  as  a  sovereign  independent  state.  The  late  President  Adams  saw  General  Oglethorpe  in 
1785,  a  short  lime  before  his  decease.  Within  a  day  or  two  after  his  arrival  in  London  as  am- 
bassador from  the  United  States,  the  general  visited  him,  and  was  very  polite  and  complimenta- 
ry. He  had  come,  he  said,  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  first  American  ambassador  and  his  family, 
whom  he  was  very  glad  to  see  in  England  ;  he  expressed  a  great  esteem  and  regard  for  Amer- 
ica, much  regret  at  the  misunderstanding  between  the  two  countries,  and  lively  satisfaction 
at  having  lived  to  see  the  termination  of  it.  About  a  month  after,  the  newspapers  announced 
<  Jg'ethorpe's  death,  at  the  uncommon  age  of  one  hundred  and  four  years."     Holmes. 


BOOK  IX.]  PROSPERITY  OF  SOUTH  CAROLINA.  |g9 

ered  no  inclination  to  augment  it  ;  and  the  hopes  of  England  in  this  respect 
were  disappointed. 

Shortly  after  the  departure  of  Oglethorpe,  the  colony  was  exposed  to 
great  peril  from  the  ambition  and  intrigues  of  one  Bosom  worth,  who  came 
to  Georgia  as  chaplain  of  Oglethorpe's  regiment,  and,  having  married  an  In- 
dian woman,  persuaded  the  Creeks  to  acknowledge  her  as  their  queen.  He 
contrived  to  estrange  this  people  from  the  provincial  government,  and,  march- 
ing against  Savannah  at  the  head  of  a  numerous  Indian  host,  supported  a 
pretended  claim  of  his  wife  to  a  considerable  portion  of  the  provincial  terri- 
tory, and  summoned  the  colonists  to  surrender  it  on  pain  of  extermination. 
By  the  prudence  and  firmness  of  President  Stephens  and  his  council,  and 
the  daring  valor  of  Jones,  the  captain  of  a  very  scanty  troop  of  militia,  the 
Indians  were  deprived  of  their  leaders  and  with  difficulty  constrained  to  a 
reluctant  submission.^ 

It  was  chiefly  in  its  effects  on  the  province  of  South  Carolina  that  the 
establishment  of  Georgia  at  first  seemed  to  fulfil  the  expectations  of  its 
founders.  Delivered  from  the  fear  of  the  Spaniards  by  the  intervention  of 
this  new  settlement,  which  effectually  covered  their  most  vulnerable  frontier, 
the  Carolinians  increased  their  plantations,  undisturbed  by  any  other  alarm 
than  what  was  suggested  by  the  concomitant  increase  in  the  numbers  of 
their  negro  slaves.  Soon  after  the  departure  of  Oglethorpe,  they  petitioned 
the  king  to  order  three  independent  companies  of  soldiers  to  be  raised  in 
the  various  colonies,  at  the  expense  of  Great  Britain,  for  the  defence  of 
Carolina  against  its  own  negro  population.  The  only  reason  that  wa§  urged 
in  support  of  the  petition,  that  the  colony  was  overstocked  with  negroes, 
appeared  unsatisfactory  to  the  British  privy  council,  to  which  the  petition 
was  remitted  ;  and  the  application,  though  finally  complied  with,  proved  in 
the  first  instance  unsuccessful.  Great  numbers  of  emigrants  continued 
meanwhile  to  repair  to  South  Carolina,  both  from  Germany  and  Holland  ; 
and  in  the  year  1744,  two  hundred  and  thirty  vessels  were  loaded  at  the 
port  of  Charleston  alone,  —  an  indication  of  the  increased  national  value  of 
the  province,  in  respect  not  only  of  the  quantity  of  British  goods  which  it 
consumed,  but  of  the  general  naval  strength  of  the  empire,  which  it  pro- 
moted. At  least  fifteen  hundred  seamen  were  then  employed  in  the  trade 
of  South  Carolina.  Among  the  later  emigrants  to  this  province  were  a 
great  many  artisans  and  manufacturers  ;  but  in  spite  of  the  profits  that  these 
settlers  derived  from  the  exercise  of  the  crafts  they  had  learned  in  Europe, 
they  were  all  very  soon  induced  to  become  planters,  by  the  dignity  attached 
to  the  possession  of  landed  property,  and  the  ease  and  pleasure  of  rural  life 
and  occupation.  The  rebellion,  which,  in  the  following  year  [1745],  origi- 
nated in  Scotland,  proved,  in  its  termination,  highly  beneficial  to  the  popula- 
tion of  the  North  American  provinces,  and  strongly  promotive,  at  the  same 
time,  of  jealous  and  vindictive  sentiments  towards  Britain.  Parhamentary 
statutes,  gleaning  the  refuse  of  the  sword  and  the  gibbet,  doomed  many  of 
the  unhappy  men,  who  had  followed  their  chieftains  in  assertion  of  the 
claims  of  the  Pretender,  to  be  transported  to  the  American  plantations  ;  and 

'  Collections  of  the,  Georgia  Historical  Society.  An  earlier  and  far  more  profound  and  inter- 
esting scheme  for  the  destruction  of  the  colony  has  been  ascribed  to  one  Preber,  a  German 
Jesuit,  whose  intrigues  among  the  Creeks  and  Cherokees  were  happily  detected  and  defeated 
by  Oglethorpe.  Of  this  Preber,  who  seems  in  genius  and  accomplishments  to  have  equalled, 
if  not  surpassed,  his  brother  Jesuit,  Sebastian  Rasles,  of  New  England  {ante.  Book  VIII. , 
Chap.  II.),  a  curious,  though  not  very  well  authenticated,  account  is  preserved  in  the  Annual 
Register  for  1760. 


140  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  IX. 

Carolina  and  Georgia,  among  other  States,  derived  from  this  source  a  large 
augmentation  of  the  numbers  of  their  inhabitants,  and  a  notable  immixture 
of  political  sentiment  and  opinion.  As  if  to  facilitate  the  subsistence  and 
enrichment  of  its  increasing  population,  the  important  discovery  of  the 
growth  of  indigo  in  South  Carolina  occurred  about  the  same  time.  This 
valuable  plant  was  observed  to  grow  spontaneously  almost  everywhere  in  the 
wild  glades  of  the  forest ;  and  as  an  immense  profit  attended  the  first  at- 
tempt to  introduce  it  into  commerce,  a  great  number  of  planters  directed 
their  attention  to  the  culture  of  indigo  and  the  art  of  extracting  its  dye.  So 
rapidly  did  the  newly  ascertained  supply  of  this  article  increase,  that,  in  the 
year  1747  at  least  three  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  indigo  had  been  ship- 
ped from  Carolina  to  England  ;  and  in  the  following  year  the  British  parha- 
ment  passed  an  act  ^  for  allowing  a  bounty  of  sixpence  per  pound  on  all 
indigo  raised  in  the  American  colonies  and  exported  directly  to  Britain. 

After  the  peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  the  chief  attention  of  the  British 
government  was  directed  to  the  colonization  of  Acadia,  or  Nova  Scotia 
[1749]  ;  but  the  interests  of  Carolina  and  Georgia  were  not  neglected  ;  and 
from  time  to  time  various  small  sums  were  granted  to  the  Georgian  trus- 
tees, to  aid  them  in  the  plantation  of  the  province  committed  to  their  care. 
In  the  year  1750,  South  Carolina  had  made  such  advances,  that  its  popu- 
lation amounted  to  sixty-four  thousand  persons.  In  the  same  year,  eight 
vessels  only  departed  from  Georgia  ;  and  the  exports  with  which  they  were 
loaded  amounted  to  little  more  than  two  thousand  pounds.  To  encourage 
the  growth  and  culture  of  silk  in  Carolina  and  Georgia,  an  act  of  parlia- 
ment was  now  passed,  exempting  from  custom-house  duties  all  silk  manufac- 
tured in  any  of  the  British  colonies  in  America,  and  imported  from  thence 
into  the  mother  country.  A  similar  exemption  was  extended  soon  after 
[1751]  to  pot  and  pearl  ashes,  of  which  large  quantities  had  been  imported 
from  foreign  nations  for  the  use  of  the  British  soap  manufacture.^  That  an 
increase  occurred  about  this  time  in  the  Georgian  trade  we  may  infer  from 
the  complaints  of  those  writers  who  have  lamentingly  stated,  that,  in  the  year 
1752,  the  whole  annual  exports  from  Georgia  did  not  exceed  in  value  ten 
thousand  pounds.  Yet  this  province  had  not  increased  in  proportion  to  the 
public  expectation  ;  and  its  inhabitants,  in  general,  were  affected  with  in- 
curable discontent.  Disgusted  with  this  result,  and  wearied  with  the  com- 
plaints of  their  people,  the  trustees  of  Georgia  now  willingly  surrendered 
their  expiring  charter  to  the  crown  from  which  it  was  derived.  A  provincial 
constitution,  precisely  similar  to  that  of  Carolina,  was  thereupon  established 
in  Georgia  [June  20,  1751]  ;  John  Reynolds,  a  naval  officer,  was  appointed 
the  first  "governor  ;  and  negro  slavery  was  forthwith  introduced.  Three 
years  afterwards,  a  court  of  justice,  modelled  in  conformity  with  the  courts 
of  law  in  the  parent  state,  was  established  by  letters  patent  from  the  crown. 
Some  time  had  still  to  elapse,  before  the  value  of  the  soil  of  Georgia  was 
generally  known,  and  that  spirit  of  industry  broke  forth  in  the  province,  by 
which  the  extent  of  its  resources  was  practically  ascertained.  It  was  in 
Carolina  that  the  first  effects  of  every  measure  of  the  parent  state  for  the  ben- 
efit of  Georgia  long  continued  to  be  visible.     In  the  year  1752,  upwards  of 

*  Stat.  21  George  II.,  Cap.  30.  In  the  parliamentary  investigation  which  preceded  this 
act,  it  was  ascertained  that  indigo  was  one  oi  the  most  beneficial  articles  of  French  commerce  ; 
and  that  Great  Britain  aU)ne  consumed  annually  six  hundred  thousand  pounds'  weight  of  French 
indigo,  which,  at  five  shillings  a  pound,  cost  the  nation  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds 
sterling.    Anderson.     Drayton. 

«  Stat.  24  George  II.,  Cap.  51. 


BOOK  IX.]  CONDITION  OF  GEORGIA.  141 

fifteen  hundred  foreign  Protestants  arrived  in  South  Carolina;  and  the  annual 
commerce  of  this  province  was  found  to  employ  three  hundred  British  ships.  ^ 

Georgia  was  the  only  one  of  the  North  American  provinces  of  which  the  ' 
formation  was  promoted  by  pecuniary  aid  supplied  by  the  British  govern- 
ment. None  of  the  other  colonies  in  their  infancy  excited  so  much  expec- 
tation of  national  advantage  in  England,  and  none  created  greater  disap- 
pointment, or  evinced  a  more  languid  increase.^  In  addition  to  the  other 
causes  that  have  been  already  particularized,  it  is  probable  that  the  parlia- 
mentary grants  by  which  the  settlers  were  aided  contributed  in  some  measure 
to  this  untoward  issue,  by  encouraging  them  to  rely  on  extraneous  assist- 
ance, in  contending  with  the  difficulties  of  their  situation.  Rice,  tobacco, 
cotton,  and  indigo  became  the  principal  objects  of  culture  to  the  colonists  ; 
and  the  restriction  imposed  on  trade  to  the  West  Indies  having  been  re- 
moved, considerable  quantities  of  lumber  were  exported  thither.  The  value 
of  the  exports  of  Georgia  in  1755  was  £  15,744  sterling.  In  the  following 
year,  the  exports  consisted  of  2,997  barrels  of  rice,  9,395  pounds  of  indigo, 
and  268  pounds  of  raw  silk,  which,  together  with  skins,  furs,  lumber,  and 
provisions,  amounted  in  value  to  £  16,776.  It  was  not  till  some  time  after, 
that  the  colonists  were  apprized  of  the  superior  excellence  of  the  Georgian 
tobacco,  and  of  the  peculiar  adaptation  of  their  territory  to  this  produce. 
The  first  issue  of  bills  of  credit  or  paper  money,  to  the  amount  of  about  eight 
thousand  pounds,  received  the  sanction  of  the  Georgian  legislature  in  the 
year  1760.^  For  the  convenience  of  the  increasing  cultivation  of  rice  and 
tobacco,  large  importations  of  negroes  were  made  from  time  to  time  ;  but 
many  years  elapsed  before  any  accurate  census  either  of  the  white  or  negro 
population  of  this  province  was  taken.  In  none  of  the  North  American 
provinces  did  slavery  prevail  more  extensively,  or  were  slaves  treated  with 
greater  rigor,  than  in  this,  where  alone  of  all  the  provinces  the  existence  of 
slavery  had  been  prohibited  by  its  fundamental  constitutions.  So  vain  are 
the  enactments  of  legislators,  without  the  auxiliary  support  of  moral  senti- 
ments and  general  opinion.  If  the  temptations  to  employ  slave  labor,  in 
the  infancy  of  a  colonial  settlement,  overpowered  even  the  boasted  virtue  of 
Quakers  in  the  milder  climate  of  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey,  it  was  vain 
to  expect  more  self-denial  from  the  idle  and  dissolute  persons  who  were  first 
transported  to  the  torrid  region  of  Georgia.  Among  other  innovations  on 
the  policy  of  the  trustees,  introduced  by  the  royal  government,  the  original 
restriction  on  the  importation  of  rum  was  removed,  and  vast  quantities  of 
this  and  other  spirituous  liquors  were  consumed  by  the  colonists,  who  justi- 
fied their  intemperance  by  the  plea,  well  or  ill  founded,  that  the  universal 
brackishness  of  the  water  of  Georgia  was  beneficially  corrected  by  an  infu- 
sion of  ardent  spirits.'* 

Collected  from  various  parts  of  the  world,  the  inhabitants  of  Georgia 
were  distinguished  by  a  great  diversity  of  character  and  manners.  The 
original    emigrants  from   Scotland   have    been  described  as  a  remarkably 

Oldmixon.     Wynne.     Hewit.    Drayton.     Stokes's  British  Colonies.    Holmes.     Smollett. 

'  In  Burke's  celebrated  speech  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  economical  reform,  in  1780, 
there  occurs  the  following  passage  :  —  "  Georgia,  till  lately,  has  made  a  very  slow  progress  ; 
and  never  did  make  any  progress  at  all,  until  it  had  wholly  got  rid  of  all  the  regulations 
which  the  Board  of  Trade,  had  moulded  into  its  original  constitution.  That  colony  has  cost 
the  nation  very  great  sums  of  money  ;  whereas  the  colonies  which  have  had  the  fortune  of 
not  being  godfathered  by  the  Board  of  Trade  never  cost  the  nation  a  shilling,  except  what 
has  been  so  profusely  spent  in  losing  them.  But  the  colony  of  Georgia,  weak  as  it  was,  carried  ^ 
with  it  to  the  last  hour,  and  carries  even  in  its  present  dead,  pallid  visage,  the  perfect  resem- 
blance of  its  parents." 

3  Morse's  American  Gazetteer.    Hewit.     Stokes.  •  Winterbotham. 


142  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  '  [BOOK  IX. 

moral,  religious,  industrious,  and  happy  race.  William  Bartram,  the  phi- 
losophic traveller  who  visited  Georgia  in  1773,  found  several  of  these 
families  living  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  rural  ease  and  plenty,  and  in  the  prac- 
tice of  every  kind  and  Christian  virtue.^  But  the  qualities  by  which  the 
Georgians  have  been  most  generally  characterized  are,  an  indolent  aversion 
to  labor,  —  imported  with  the  earliest  class  of  planters,  and  promoted  by 
the  heat  of  the  chmate,^ — the  employment  of  negro  slaves,  and  the  copious 
use  of  spirituous  liquors  ;  an  open  and  friendly  hospitality,  and  an  eager 
addiction  to  hunting,  horse-racing,  cock-fighting,  pugilistic  exercises,  and 
gambling.  The  introduction  of  Methodism  into  America,  a  few  years  after 
the  present  period,  by  the  exertions  of  Whitefield  and  other  associates  of 
John  Wesley,  exercised  a  salutary  influence  on  the  character  of  a  consid- 
erable portion  of  this  people.  A  great  variety  of  religious  sects  or  associ- 
ations arose  in  the  province  prior  to  the  American  Revolution,  but  the 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  were  Methodists  or  Presbyterians.  Except 
Whitefield's  Orphan-house,  which  was  unfortunately  destroyed  by  fire  after 
large  sums  of  money  had  been  expended  on  its  erection,  no  seminary  of  ed- 
ucation arose  in  Georgia  till  after  its  separation  from  the  parent  state.  The 
seat  of  government  of  the  province,  which  was  first  established  at  Savan- 
nah, was  afterwards  transferred  to  Augusta,  then  to  Louisville,  and  subse- 
quently to  Milledgeville.^ 

Surrounded  by  powerful  Indian  tribes,  and  sensible  of  the  advantage  of 
friendly  relations  with  them,  the  Georgians  demeaned  themselves  with  scru- 
pulous equity  and  courtesy  in  their  transactions  and  intercourse  with  these 
savage  neighbours.  The  same  wise  and  humane  policy  was  now  pursued 
by  the  government  of  South  Carolina,  which,  in  the  year  1752,  interposed 
its  good  offices  to  prevent  a  war  which  was  on  the  point  of  breaking  out 
between  the  Creeks  and  the  Cherokees."* 

Among  other  involuntary  laborers,  Georgia,  in  common  with  the  rest  of 
the  British  colonies,  received  considerable  importations  of  convicted  felons 
from  England.  From  the  state  of  society  in  the  colony,  this  commixture 
of  free  colonists  and  convicts  appears  to  have  proved  remarkably  injurious 
to  both.  "  Georgia,"  says  an  American  statistical  writer,  "  was  at  one 
time  the  principal  retreat  of  a  race  of  men  called  Crackers,  who  were 
chiefly  descended  from  convicts,  and  led  a  wild  and  vagrant  life,  like  the 
Indians,  with  no  other  effects  than  a  rifle  and  a  blanket,  and  subsisting  upon 
the  deer,  turkeys,  and  other  game  which  the  woods  furnish.  These  migra- 
tory bands  disappear,  as  the  country  is  settled."^ 

•  He  celebrates  their  hospitality  with  the  grateful  praise  which  this  virtue  always  obtains 
from  travellers: — "The  venerable  gray-headed  Caledonian  smilingly  accosted  me  coming 
up  to  his  house, '  Welcome,  stranger,  come  in  and  rest ;  the  air  is  now  sultry,'  "  «fcc.  "  Friend 
Bartram,"  said  another  of  these  settlers  of  Caledonian  extraction  to  the  traveller,  "  come  un- 
der my  roof,  and  I  desire  you  to  make  my  house  your  home,  as  long  as  convenient  to  yourself; 
remember  that  from  this  moment  you  are  a  part  of  my  family."  Among  these  people,  the 
traveller  adds,  "  I  found  sincerity  in  union  with  all  the  virtues  under  the  influence  of  re- 
ligion."    Bartram's  Travels  in  Carolina^  Georgia,  &c.  ' 

^  Henry  Ellis,  F.  R.  S.,  and  governor  of  Georgia,  in  a  letter  written  in  July,  1758,  from  the 
seat  of  his  government  to  a  friend  in  England,  declares  that  "  one  cannot  sit  down  to  any 
thing  that  requires  much  application,  but  with  extreme  reluctance  ;  for  such  is  the  debilitating 
quality  of  our  violent  heats  in  this  season,  that  inexpressible  languor  enervates  every  faculty, 
and  renders  even  the  thought  of  exercising  them  painful."     Annual,  Register  for  1760. 

3  Morse.     Winterbotham.     See  Note  VI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
.     *  Hewit. 

*  Warden.  Wordsworth  has  given  a  fine,  but,  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  a  poetical,  de- 
scription of  the  character  and  pursuits  of  this  class  of  the  Georgian  people,  in  his  beautiful 
poem.  Ruth. 


BOOK     X. 

PROGRESS  OF  THE  STATES  OF  NORTH  AMERICA,  TILL  THE  PEACE 

OF  PARIS,   IN   1763. 

CHAPTER    I. 

AfFairs  of  New  York.  —  Zenger's  Trial.  —  Prosperous  State  of  New  England.  —  Controversy 
between  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  —  Intrigues  for  the  Removal  of  Governor 
Belcher.  —  New  England  Missions.  —  Jonathan  Edwards.  —  David  Brainerd.  —  Aftairs  of 
Pennsylvania  —  Benjamin  Franklin  —  George  Whitefield.  —  Disputes  respecting  a  military 
Establishment.  —  Discontent  of  the  Indians.  —  War  with  France.  —  Louisburg  —  the  Inva- 
sion of  it  projected  by  New  England  —  and  undertaken  —  Siege  —  and  Surrender  of  Louis- 
burg.—  Jealousy  of  Britain.  —  Effects  of  the  Enterprise  in  America.  —  Rebellion  in  Behalf 
of  the  Pretender  in  Britain.  —  Armament  despatched  from  France  against  the  British  Colo- 
nies —  discomfited. 

Since  the  departure  of  Burnet  from  New  York,  the  government  of  this 
province  had  been  conducted  in  a  manner  injurious  to  the  colonists  and 
discreditable  to  the  parent  state.  The  feeble  and  negligent  sway  of  Mont- 
gomery was  terminated  by  his  death,  in  I73I.  Yet  no  improvement  of  pub- 
lic policy  was  perceptible  during  the  succeeding  year,  when  the  government 
was  exercised  by  the  senior  member  of  the  council,  Rip  Van  Dam,  a  sub- 
stantial burgher  of  New  York,  and  a  well-meaning,  but  sluggish  and  heavy- 
minded  man.  In  the  close  of  the  year  1732,  there  arrived  from  England, 
as  the  successor  of  Montgomery,  Colonel  William  Cosby,  an  officer  of  some 
talent  and  activity,  but,  unfortunately,  more  remarkable  for  arbitrary  princi- 
ples, a  haughty  and  imperious  demeanour,  a  violent  temper,  and  sordid  dis- 
position. Having  borrowed  a  large  sum  of  money  from  the  counsellor, 
Van  Dam,  he  endeavoured  to  evade  repayment  by  instituting  an  unjust  and 
absurd  suit  against  him  for  recovery  of  all  the  official  fees  and  perquisites 
he  had  received  during  his  temporary  administration  of  the  government. 
[1734.]  Cosby  insisted  that  the  judges  of  the  common  law  tribunal  of 
New  York  should  determine  this  process,  without  the  intervention  of  a 
jury  ;  and  when  Lewis  Morris,  the  chief  justice,  declared  that  this  was 
not  within  the  competence  of  the  court,  he  displaced  him  from  his  office, 
and  bestowed  it  on  James  De  Lancey,  who  professed  more  subservience 
to  the  governor's  will.  This  appointment  was  made  by  the  mere  authority 
of  Cosby,  without  the  consent  of  the  council,  which,  by  the  provincial  con- 
stitutions, was  requisite  to  the  validity  of  judicial  commissions.  In  his  in- 
tercourse with  the  assembly,  Cosby  conducted  himself  with  the  most  lofty 
and  offensive  arrogance,  and  soon  kindled  an  active  spirit  of  jealousy  and 
opposition  among  all  classes  of  people  in  the  province,  except  his  own 
immediate  dependents.  To  the  discontents  thus  occasioned  by  domestic 
provocation  were  added  a  strong  apprehension  of  external  hostility,  from 
the  increasing  influence  of  the  French  over  the  Indians.  In  the  course  of 
the  present  year,  some  precautions,  suggested  by  this  danger,  were  adopted 
by  the  New  York  assembly.  Upwards  of  eleven  thousand  pounds  was  ap- 
propriated for  strengthening  the  fortifications  of  New  York  and  Albany,  and 
purchasing  presents  for  the  Six  Nations.     But  more  wisdom,  vigor,  and 


144  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

public  spirit,  than  directed  the  provincial  councils,  were  wanting  to  pro- 
vide measures  adequate  to  counteract  the  encroaching  policy  pursued  by 
the  French. 

Governor  Cosby  continuing  to  supply  additional  cause  of  complaint  by 
the  insolence  of  his  manners  and  the  iniquity  of  his  policy,  the  instrumental- 
ity of  the  press  was  employed  by  his  opponents  to  inflame  and  propagate 
the  resentment  and  jealousy  which  his  conduct  was  fitted  to  inspire.  Lewis 
Morris  and  Rip  Van  Dam  having  severally  published  appeals  to  their  coun- 
trymen against  his  treatment  of  them,  the  success  of  this  proceeding  in 
animating  the  public  indignation  suggested  to  Zenger,  a  printer,  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  newspaper,  which  he  entitled  The  J^ew  York  Weekly  Journal^ 
and  which  attracted  universal  attention  by  the  boldness  and  freedom  of  its 
strictures  on  the  conduct  of  pubhc  affairs.  Cosby,  provoked  by  an  article 
in  this  journal,  which  contained  a  severe  philippic  on  his  administration,  and 
openly  declared  that  public  hberty  was  endangered  by  his  arbitrary  principles 
and  deportment,  prevailed  with  a  majority  of  the  council  to  request  the 
concurrence  of  the  assembly  in  a  mandate  that  the  offensive  publication 
should  be  burned  in  the  market-place  by  the  hands  of  the  city  hangman. 
The  assembly  having  refused  to  comply  with  this  request,  the  governor 
and  council  of  themselves  issued  a  mandate  for  burning  the  paper,  which 
they  required  the  executioner  to  perform,  and  the  mayor  and  aldermen  of 
New  York  personally  to  superintend.  These  magistrates  declined  to  take 
part  in  the  absurd  pageant  devised  for  the  gratification  of  tyrannical  spleen ; 
and  as  even  the  executioner  refused  his  presence  or  aid  at  the  ceremony, 
it  was  performed  by  a  negro  slave  of  the  sheriff  amidst  universal  contempt 
and  derision.  Incensed,  rather  than  instructed,  by  this  demonstration  of 
public  feeling,  Cosby  and  his  council,  assembling  on  the  following  Sunday, 
issued  a  warrant  for  the  apprehension  and  imprisonment  of  Zenger.  This 
proceeding  was  resented  alike  by  the  friends  of  liberty  and  religion,  as  at 
once  an  arbitrary  stretch  of  power,  and  a  wanton  violation  of  the  sanctity 
of  the  day.  Finding  it  impossible  either  to  subdue  Zenger's  spirit  or  to 
detain  him  in  perpetual  captivity,  the  governor  determined  to  bring  him 
to  trial  on  a  charge  of  libel  ;  and  the  grand  jury  refusing  to  give  their  sanc- 
tion to  this  charge,  he  directed  Bradley,  the  attorney-general,  to  exhibit  it 
in  the  shape  of  an  ex  officio  information.  Chambers  and  Smith,  two  lawyers 
of  New  York,  who  were  retained  by  Zenger,  had  the  courage  to  dispute 
the  validity  of  the  commissions  of  the  judges,  De  Lancey  and  Philipse, 
which  were  granted  by  the  governor  without  the  approbation  of  the  council. 
The  judges  overruled  this  plea  ;  and,  resenting  it  as  a  contempt  of  their 
dignity,  punished  its  authors  by  a  sentence  which  excluded  them  from 
farther  exercise  of  their  professional  functions. 

In  this  extremity,  Zenger  besought  the  aid  of  the  most  distinguished 
lawyer  in  America,  Andrew  Hamilton,  of  Philadelphia,  who  was  for  many 
years  speaker  of  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  and  both  at  the  bar  and  in 
the  senate  gained  a  high  renown  for  sound  learning,  eloquence,  integrity, 
and  pubhc  spirit.  Though  now  bending  under  the  weight  of  years  and 
infirmities,  Hamilton  cheerfully  obeyed  the  summons  to  make  a  last  exertion 
of  his  talents  in  behalf  of  American  liberty  ;  and,  repairing  to  New  York, 
undertook  gratuitously  the  defence  of  Zenger,  who,  after  an  imprisonment 
of  eight  months,  was  at  length  brought  to  trial  before  the  judges,  I)e  Lancey 
and  Philipse,  and  a  jury,  which,  in  spite  of  the  governor's  artifices,  was  ?e- 


CHAP.  I.]  ZENGER'S  TRIAL.  145 

lected  with  tolerable  impartiality.  The  court  and  all  its  avenues  were 
thronged  with  spectators,  who,  with  generous  interest  and  anxious  expecta- 
tion, awaited  the  issue  of  this  notable  struggle  between  their  arbitrary 
ruler  and  their  persecuted  fellow-citizen.  The  attorney-general  was  pre- 
pjiring  to  adduce  witnesses  to  show  that  Zenger  was  the  publisher  of  the 
paper  for  which  he  was  called  in  question,  when  Hamilton  at  once  admitted 
this  fact  on  the  part  of  his  client,  and  challenged  the  prosecutor  to  substan- 
tiate his  charge  of  libel  by  proving  the  falsehood  of  the  statements  to  which 
this  epithet  was  applied.  This  the  attorney-general  having  declined  to  do, 
Hamilton  proposed  to  call  witnesses  to  prove  that  the  statements  and  strict- 
ures published  by  Zenger  were  true  and  well  founded.  But  the  court  refused 
to  entertain  any  such  inquiry  ;  pronouncing,  in  conformity  with  the  maxims 
of  many  Enghsh  judges,  that,  in  cases  of  libel,  it  was  perfectly  immaterial 
whether  the  offensive  publication  contained  truth  or  falsehood,  and  that  truth 
was  a  libel  when  it  tended  to  the  discredit  of  the  members  or  institutions 
of  government.  This  doctrine  was  disputed  by  Hamilton,  who  observed 
that  the  attorney-general  had  stated  in  his  information  that  Zenger  was  the 
author  of  ''  a  certain /a/se,  malicious,  seditious,  and  scandalous  libel  "  ;  and 
requested  of  him  that  he  would  either  explain  the  meaning  of  the  word  false, 
or  admit  that  it  had  been  erroneously  introduced  into  the  information,  and 
suffer  the  record  to  be  altered  so  far  as  to  express  that  Zenger  was  the  au- 
thor of  "a  certain  true,  malicious,  and  seditious  libel."  He  cited  an 
English  case  in  which  Chief- Justice  Holt  required  a  person  accused  of  libel 
to  prove  the  truth  of  his  statements,  if  he  could.  But  the  attorney-general 
supported  his  arguments  by  precedents  of  a  different  complexion,  derived 
from  the  practice  of  the  famous  Star-chamber  tribunal ;  and  the  court  reiter- 
ated the  maxim,  that  the  truth  of  a  libel  could  never  be  pleaded  as  a  defence 
for  the  publication  of  it.  Hamilton  then  addressed  the  jury  in  a  speech  at 
once  elegant,  forcible,  and  ingenious  ;  and,  with  a  boldness  and  freedom  of' 
appeal  to  the  principles  of  universal  sense  and  reason,  unparalleled  till  many 
years  after  in  the  forensic  eloquence  of  England,  contended  for  the  invio- 
lable right  of  freemen  to  publish  to  their  fellow-citizens  every  truth  that 
concerned  the  general  weal,  and  every  grievance  by  which  their  common 
birthright  of  liberty  was  impaired  or  invaded. 

It  was  doubtless  true,  he  remarked,  that  the  American  governors  were 
liable  to  be  sued  in  the  king's  courts  at  Westminster  in  England  for  any 
wrongs  that  they  might  commit  in  the  colonies  ;  but  the  expense  of  the 
remedy  rendered  it  generally,  if  not  universally,  inapplicable  ;  and  the  public 
security  against  the  designs  of  an  evil  governor  was  best  promoted  by  the 
vigilance  awakened  by  an  open  promulgation  of  the  particular  instances  of 
his  conduct  from  which  such  designs  might  be  fairly  inferred.  It  was  im- 
possible, he  protested,  that  a  jury  of  free  and  honest  men  would,  by  a  ver- 
dict of  guilty,  affirm  that  charge  of  falsehood  which  was  recorded  in  the  in- 
formation, but  which  the  prosecutor  would  neither  undertake  to  prove  nor 
suffer  the  accused  to  disprove.  In  the  hope  of  defeating  the  force  of  this 
argument,  the  chief  justice  recommended  to  the  jury  that  they  should  return 
a  special  verdict,  which  would  exonerate  them  from  a  disagreeable  respon- 
sibility, and  leave  the  question  of  libel  to  the  court,  to  whom,  he  assured 
them,  it  properly  belonged  ;  yet,  withal,  he  declared  that  the  publication, 
as  tending  to  beget  an  ill  opinion  of  the  governmenjf',  was  undoubtedly  a  li- 
bel.    But  Hamilton  had  cautioned  the  jury  not  to  compromise  their  duty 

VOL.    II.  19  M 


448  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

hy  giving  a  special  verdict ;  and,  after  a  very  brief  deliberation,  they  re- 
turned a  general  verdict  of  not  guilty,  which  was  instantly  affirmed  and  re- 
warded by  the  approving  and  triumphant  acclamations  of  their  fellow-citizens. 
-Hamilton's  speech  on  this  occasion  was  published  and  circulated  through 
till  the  American  provinces  ;  and  the  corporation  of  New  York  expressed 
their  esteem  for  his  character  and  the  grateful  sense  they  entertained  of  his 
services,  by  presenting  him  with  the  freedom  of  the  city  in  a  gold  box  on 
which  the  most  flattering  inscriptions  were  engraven. 

The  issue  of  Zenger's  trial  was  very  disagreeable  to  the  partisans  of  royal 
prerogative  in  England  and  America,  and  was  regarded  by  them  as  a  dan- 
gerous triumph  of  popular  reason  and  will  over  the  authority  of  judicial  can- 
ons and  forensic  pedantry.^  Cosby 's  insolence  sustained  no  abatement  from 
ihis  defeat;  fcut  his  administration  was  abruptly  terminated  by  his  death  in 
the  following  y€ar.  [1736.]  The  government  of  the  province  was  now  con- 
fided to  George  Clarke,  whose  character  was  little,  if  at  all,  more  respecta- 
■Mg  than ^that  of  ibi^ ^edecessor,^  and  whose  administration  was  chiefly  signal- 
tized  hy  <&  scheme  of  which  the  projection  would  have  entitled  him  to  con- 
^derabie  praise,  if  its  miscarriage  had  not  reflected  disgrace  on  his  good  faith 
and  integrity.  Seaisible  of  the  error  which  had  been  committed  by  the 
provincial  goverimiejit,  in  suffering  the  French  to  build  a  fort  at  Crown 
Point,  he  dedue«,d  a  project  for  repairing  this  negligence  from  the  recent 
example  of  the  trustees  of  Georgia,  and  conceived  the  hope  of  engaging  a 
body  of  Scottish  ^Highlanders  to  emigrate  to  the  province  and  establish  a 
-settlement  in  the  frontier  territory  adjacent  to  Lake  George.  A  proclama- 
tion, eontainisig  the  most  liberal  and  inviting  offers  to  Highlanders  willing  to 
undertake  the  occupation  and  culture  of  this  district,  was  accordingly  pub- 
lished at  New  York,  and  transmitted  to  Scotland.  This  overture  attracted 
ithe  attention  of  Captain  Lachlan  Campbell,  a  Scottish  gentleman,  brave, 
bonorable,  enterprising,  and  possessed  of  a  considerable  estate  in  the  island 
of  Isla  ;  who  forthwith  repaired  to  New  York,  and  inspected  the  territory 
which  was  tendered  to  emigrants  from  his  native  country.  [1737.]  His 
journey  proved  no  less  satisfactory  to  himself  than  to  the  neighbouring  In- 
dians, who  were  greatly  captivated  by  his  Highland  garb,  and  earnestly  en- 
treated him  to  transplant  his  tribe  to  their  vicinity.  Governor  Clarke  gave 
him  assurance  of  a  grant  of  thirty  thousand  acres  of  land  free  from  all 
charges  except  the  expense  of  survey  and  the  king's  quitrent.  Confiding  in 
this  assurance,  Campbell  returned  to  Scotland,  sold  his  paternal  estate,  and 
shortly  after  transported,  at  his  own  expense,  to  New  York,  eighty-three 
Highland  families,  consisting  of  four  hundred  and  twenty-three  adults  and  a 
great  num^r  of  children.  But  his  hopes  were  miserably  disappointed.  The 
contract  on  which  he  thus  staked  his  fortune,  and  which  the  public  faith 
was  pledged  to  fulfil,  w^as  violated  with  the  most  scandalous  disregard  of 
honor,  justice,  and  good  policy.     When  he  applied  for  the  stipulated  grant 

*  Some  remarks  on  Zenger's  trial  were  published  by  a  learned  Tory  lawyer  in  America, 
who  pronounced  Hamilton's  speech  a  piece  of  legal  quackery,  and  the  Star-chamber  tribunal 
one  of  the  most  useful  and  beneficial  institutions  that  ever  existed  in  England.  This  produc- 
tion is  reprinted  in  Howell's  Slate  Trials. 

*  *'  It  unfortunately  happened  for  our  Ameucan  provinces,  at  the  time  we  now  treat  of, 
that  a  government  in  any  of  our  colonies  in  those  parts  was  scarcely  looked  upon  in  any 
other  light  than  that  of  a  hospital  where  the  favorites  of  the  ministry  might  lie  till  they  had 
recovered  their  broken  fortunes;  and  oftentimes  they  served  as  asylums  from  their  creditors." 
Wyone.     Pope  sarcastically  remarks  the  policy  in  conformity  with  wliich  a  courtier, 

*'•  Who,  having  lost  his  credit,  pawned  his  rent, 

.    Ib  therefore  nt  to  hure  a.  government.*'  .  ti.  ,  dtj. , 


CHAP.  I]  PROSPERITY  OF  CONNECTICUT,  ETC.  -^^ 

of  land,  he  was  required  to  admit  certain  friends  or  dependents  of  the 
governor  to  share  in  the  profits  which  he  might  derive  from  it ;  and  indig- 
nantly spurning  this  rapacious  and  dishonorable  condition,  he  found  all  his 
efforts  to  procure  the  completion  of  the  grant  ineffectual.  Neither  from  the 
provincial  assembly,  nor  from  the  English  Board  of  Trade,  was  he  able  to 
obtain  redress  ;  and,  after  a  tedious  solicitation,  he  found  it  necessary,  for 
the  sake  of  preserving  to  his  family  a  remnant  of  his  shattered  fortune,  ta 
abandon  the  care  of  his  followers,  and  cultivate  a  small  farm  which  he  pur- 
chased in  the  province.  Clarke  was  permitted  to  retain  the  government  of' 
Nevv  York  till  the  year  1741,  when  he  was  succeeded  by  George  Clinton, 
uncle  to  the  Earl  of  Lincoln.^ 

None  of  the  colonies  had  of  late  years  enjoyed  more  contentment,  re- 
pose, and  prosperity,  than  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  and  New  Jersey, 
—  whose  history,  exhibiting  nothing  nrwre  prominent  than  the  progress  of 
industry  and  population,  presents  a  picture  neither  varnished  by  glory  nor^ 
sullied  by  misery  or  crime.  [1738.]  No  palaees  arose  there  to  illustrate 
the  fine  conceptions  of  architectural  taste  and  genius,  or  to  proclaim  the 
depression  of  the  great  mass  of  society  in  subservience  to  the  exaltation  of 
a  small  portion  or  class  of  its  members  ;  no  wars  afforded  scope  for  the 
exercise  of  heroic  valor,  or  sanctioned  the  indulgence  of  hatred  and  fe- 
rocity ;  and  no  political  dissensions  invited  the  display  of  public  spirit,  or 
generated  party  rage  and  factious  intrigue.  But  if  these  scenes  are  barren 
of  events  that  agitate  the  passions,  and  disclose  no  partial  accumulations 
of  grandeur  that  strike  the  senses,  they  are  yet  adorned  with .  features  that 
gratify  the  survey  of  every  mind  seasoned  with  humanity  and  benevolence. 
There  was  a  general  diffusion  of  those  circumstances  which  are  most  favor- 
able to  the  worth  and  welfare  of  the  bulk  of  mankind.  Instead  of  that 
entertaining,  though  fallacious,  chase  of  pleasure,  so  eagerly  pursued  in  so- 
cieties where  leisure  and  affluence  abound,  and  of  which  the  most  notable 
success  is  to  enable  human  beings  to  pass  their  lives  in  idleness  without 
wearying,  —  there  was  a  composed  possession  of  substantial  felicity  derived 
from  the  liberal  reward  of  moderate  labor,  and  the  grateful  vicissitude  of 
useful  action  and  well  earned  rest.  The  land  was  generally  distributed 
among  a  great  number  of  proprietors,  in  portions  of  such  extent  and  value 
as  afforded  a  mediocrity  of  condition  fitted  to  produce  strong  bodies  and 
sound  minds.  If  few  persons  had  leisure  or  opportunity  to  attain  scientific 
or  literary  distinction,  and  kw  lasting  monuments  of  genius  arose,  —  there 
was  a  general  prevalence  of  that  degree  of  knowledge  which  is  sufficient  to 
expand  and  elevate  thought,  to  invigorate  the  understanding,  to  enlarge  hap- 
piness, and  fortify  virtue.  The  earth  was  subdued  and  replenished  with  a 
hardy  and  happy  race  of  men,  securely  and  thankfully  reaping  the  bounty 
of  Providence  in  the  fruits  of  honest  industry,  animated  by  recollections 
of  their  national  and  natural  origin,  and  accustomed  by  their  popular  insti- 
tutions to  deliberate  on  public  affairs,  to  connect  social  prosperity  with 
freedom,  and  to  accomplish  their  purposes  by  the  instrumentality  of  those 
political  organs  by  which  alone  the  collective  strength  of  a  numerous  people 
can  be  effectually  combined  or  safely  and  steadily  exerted.     The  facility  of 

•  Oldmixon.  W.  Smith.  S.  Smith.  HoweU's  Stale  Trials.  Proud.  Wynne.  The  histor- 
ical  narrative  of  W.  Smith  stops  at  the  commencement  of  Cosby 's  administration.  A  con 
tinuation,  which  he  is  supposed  to  have  written,  has  never  yet  appeared.  He  declares  that 
no  prudent  annalist  of  his  own  times  can  suffer  such  a  composition  ta  be  made  public  till  after 
his  death.  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  Xenophon,  Polybius,  and  other  great  writerft,  thought 
otherwise. 


148  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

attaining  a  plentiful  estate,  and  the  general  simplicity  of  manners  and  equality 
of  condition,  excluded  selfish  rivalship  and  envy  ;  and,  rendering  celibacy 
rare,  and  marriage  universally  and  remarkably  prolific,  operated  with  strong 
tendency  to  promote  the  worth  of  character  and  the  felicity  of  life.  Senti- 
ments of  patriotism  and  independence  were  ardently  cherished  and  widely 
diffused  in  a  country  where  every  man  had  a  stake  in  the  soil  and  the  polit- 
ical institutions  which  united  his  proudest  remembrance  with  his  fondest 
hopes, ^  which  represented  his  own  or  his  parents'  fortitude  and  success  in 
surmounting  difficulty,  planting  liberty,  and  subduing  the  earth,  and  assured 
a  comfortable  livelihood  and  honorable  condition  to  his  posterity.  Every 
citizen  was  interested  in  the  defence  of  a  particular  part  of  his  country,  and 
of  a  part  which  possessed  the  highest  and  noblest  value  in  his  estimation  ; 
and  every  one  possessing  himself  a  share  of  political  right  and  power  was 
interested,  by  regard  to  the  security  of  his  own  portion,  in  resisting  all 
invasion  of  the  shares  of  his  fellow-citizens.  If  the  condition  of  these  prov- 
inces offered  httle  scope  for  romantic,  fancy  or  antiquarian  retrospect,*  it 
presented  to  the  mind  a  more  generous  gratification  in  the  prospect  of  a 
wide  and  enlarging  expanse  of  human  happiness,  liberty,  and  virtue.^  Some 
ecclesiastical  controversies  arose  during  this  period  in  Connecticut  ;  but 
they  were  conducted  without  rancor,  and  their  most  ftotable  effect  was  to 
stimulate  religious  inquiry,  and  to  multiply  settlements  and  townships  by 
dividing  congregations  which  had  been  previously  united. 

The  war  which  broke  out  between  Great  Britain  and  Spain  in  1739  ex- 
tended to  the  American  possessions  of  these  nations.  But  it  was  in  the 
southern  British  colonies  that  its  chief  influence  was  exerted ;  and  in  tracing 
the  early  history  of  Georgia,  we  have  already  remarked  the  share  of  loss 
and  suffering  that  the  operations  of  this  war  entailed  upon  the  other  prov- 
inces. 

The  prosperity  enjoyed  by  New  England  was  not  confined  to  the  States 
of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island.  But  in  Massachusetts  much  embarrass- 
ment and  injustice  was  occasioned  by  the  excess  and  the  depreciation  of  its 
paper  currency  ;  and  between  this  province  and  New  Hampshire  there  had 
prevailed  for  several  years  a  territorial  dispute,  to  the  origin  of  which  we 
have   already  alluded,  and  which  in  its  progress  excited  much  bitter  and 

*  "  The  sympathy  existing  among  fellow-citizens,  from  the  habit  of  living  for  each  other  and 
by  each  other,  —  of  connecting  every  thing  with  the  good  of  all,  —  produced  in  republics  vir- 
tues which  despotic  states  cannot  even  imagine."    Sismondi's  History  of  the  Italian  Republics. 

*  "  A  succession  of  New  England  villages,  composed  of  neat  nouses,  surrounding  neat 
school-houses  and  churches,  adorned  with  gardens,  meadows,  and  orchards,  and  exhibiting  the 
universally  easy  circumstances  of  the  inhabitants,  is,  in  my  opinion,  one  of  the  most  delightful 
prospects  which  this  world  can  afford.  A  forest  changed,  within  a  short  period,'  into  fruitful 
fields,  covered  with  houses,  schools,  and  churches,  and  filled  with  inhabitants,  possessing  not 
only  the  necessaries  and  comforts,  but  also  the  conveniences  of  life,  and  devoted  to  the  wor- 
ship of  Jehovah,  when  seen  only  in  prophetic  vision,  enraptured  even  the  mind  of  Isaiah  ; 
and,  when  realized,  can  hardly  fail  to  delight  that  of  a  spectator.  At  least,  it  may  compen- 
sate the  want  of  ancient  castles,  ruined  abbeys,  and  fine  pictures."  Dwight's  Travels.  "  There 
is  something  to  me  in  the  sight  of  this  independence,  and  the  enjoyments  by  which  it  is 
accompanied,  more  interesting,  more  congenial  to  the  relish  of  nature,  than  in  all  the  melan- 
choly grandeur  of  the  decayed  castles  and  mouldering  abbeys  with  which  some  parts  of  Eu- 
rope are  so  plentifully  stocked."     Idem. 

Godwin,  in  his  Essay  on  Sepulchres.,  maintains  that  America,  destitute  of  ancient  monu- 
ments of  art,  must  be  a  very  uninteresting  country.  An  opposite  impression  has  prevailed 
with  another  great  modern  genius  ;  and  the  sentiment  of  Dwight,  who  never  beheld  Europe, 
is  thus  reechoed  by  a  writer  who  never  beheld  America  :  —  "I  feel  that  in  America  I  should 
love  modern  cities  and  modern  institutions.  Nature  and  liberty  there  so  fully  engage  the 
soul,  that  no  need  is  felt  of  distant  recollections.  But  in  the  old  world  we  desiderate  mon- 
wments  of  the  past."     Madame  de  Stael,  De  V AUevnagne. 


CHAP.  I.]         BOUNDARY  QUESTIONS  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  J  49 

passionate  feeling,  and  induced  a  wide  departure  from  equity  and  moderation 
on  both  sides.  The  details  of  this  controversy,  now  no  longer  interesting, 
have  been  preserved  by  the  historians,  Hutchinson  and  Belknap  ;  and  it  is 
remarkable  that  each  of  these  writers,  respectively,  bestows  the  severest 
blame  on  the  province  of  which  he  is  the  historian.  Massachusetts  pre- 
tended right  to  a  larger  extent  of  territory  than  her  charter  strictly  warranted, 
or  at  least  there  was  room  for  a  reasonable  doubt  that  part  of  the  territory 
embraced  by  her  actual  jurisdiction  was  more  properly  included  in  the 
original  titles  of  New  Hampshire  ;  but  her  pretensions  were  sanctioned  by 
an  order  of  King  Charles  the  Second  and  his  privy  council,  in  the  year 
1677,  which  for  more  than  fifty  years  obtained  undisputed  acquiescence, 
and  in  conformity  with  which  many  tow^nships  and  settlements  were  estab- 
lished by  the  people  of  Massachusetts  in  the  particular  district  which  New 
Hampshire  now  endeavoured  to  reclaim. 

Confident  in  the  justice  of  her  cause,  and  resenting  the  claim  of  New 
Hampshire  as  the  ungrateful  and  presumptuous  aggression  of  a  feeble  neigh- 
bour whom  she  had  repeatedly  befriended,  Massachusetts  adhered  pertina- 
ciously to  the  farthest  extent  of  her  pretensions,  and  rejected  all  compromise 
with  a  haughtiness  which  the  issue  of  the  controversy  gave  her  cause  to  re- 
pent ;  while  New  Hampshire,  irritated  by  what  she  deemed  the  contume- 
lious treatment  of  her  powerful  neighbour,  and  intoxicated  with  the  hope  of 
augmenting  her  resources  and  enabling  herself  to  support  a  separate  execu- 
tive government,  pursued  her  claims  with  an  eagerness  in  which  honor 
and  integrity  were  sacrificed  to  success.  After  various  discussions  in  Eng- 
land and  surveys  in  America,  the  controversy  was  at  length  matured  for 
the  decision  of  the  British  privy  council.  To  this  tribunal  the  agent  for 
New  Hampshire  presented  a  memorial,  in  which  he  not  only  fortified  the 
plea  of  his  constituents  by  the  most  ingenious  fiction  and  the  most  enter- 
prising hypothesis,  but  aided  it  more  effectually  by  allying  the  cause  of  New 
Hampshire  with  the  jealousy  and  prejudice  which  the  British  court  was 
known  to  entertain  against  Massachusetts.  The  basest  aspersions  were 
thrown  on  the  ambitious  and  disloyal  designs  of  ^Hhe  vast^  opulent j  over- 
grown province  of  Massachusetts'^''  \  while  it  was  represented  that  "  f/ie 
poor^  little^  loyal,  distressed  province  of  J^ew  Hampshire,'^''  together  with  the 
-king's  own  property  and  possessions,  was  ready  to  be  swallowed  up  by  the 
boundless  rapacity  of  a  people  whose  insolence  was  nourished  by  the  posses- 
sion of  a  charter.  [1740.]  This  pleading,  reinforced  by  private  solicitation 
and  intrigue,  proved  successful,  even  beyond  the  hopes  of  the  people  of 
New  Hampshire,  who  gained,  from  the  adjudication  of  the  privy  council, 
not  only  all  the  territory  that  they  had  ever  ventured  to  claim,  but  an  addi- 
tional tract  of  country  of  about  fourteen  miles  in  breadth  and  upwards  of  fifty 
in  length.  Great  was  the  rage  and  mortification  of  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts, when  they  were  apprized  of  this  decision  ;  but  alf  their  efiT)rts  to  ob- 
tain a  modification  of  it  proved  unavailing.  They  sustained  a  similar  dis- 
appointment shortly  after,  from  the  issue  of  a  territorial  controversy  with 
Rhode  Island,  which  a  compromise,  inefl^ectually  recommended  by  all  the 
wise  and  moderate  politicians  of  Massachusetts,  might  have  happily  pre- 
vented. The  claim  of  Rhode  Island  to  an  insignificant  territory,  to  which 
the  legal  pretensions  of  both  States  were  equally  plausible,  being  obstinate- 
ly resisted  by  a  majority  of  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  the  adjustment  of 
.  the  respective  boundaries  was  referred  to  the  British  government,  whose 


150  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

sentence  again  divested  Massachusetts  of  a  much  larger  extent  of  territory 
than  what  gave  rise  to  the  dispute  or  was  claimed  by  the  other  competitor. 

In  the  controversy  between  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  Governor 
Belcher  had  a  difficult  part  to  sustain.  He  was  governor  of  both  provinces  ; 
and  endeavouring  to  act  with  the  impartiality  which  he  professed,  he  exposed 
himself  to  the  suspicion  and  hostility  of  the  more  violent  partisans  of  either 
cause.  In  Massachusetts  the  number  of  his  enemies  was  increased  by  his 
steady  resistance  to  the  various  projects  which  were  suggested  from  time  to 
time  for  a  fallacious  mitigation  of  the  inconvenience  occasioned  by  the  state 
of  the  currency.  If  not  his  own  virtue,  at  least  the  profligacy  of  his  op- 
ponents, may  be  inferred  from  the  infamous  means  which  were  employed  to 
subvert  his  authority.  In  the  year  1738,  an  attempt  was  made  to  accom- 
plish this  purpose  by  reviving  the  calumnious  charge  which  Dunbar  once 
preferred  against  him,  of  having  encouraged  the  rioters  who  obstructed  the 
execution  of  the  acts  of  parliament  for  preservation  of  pine-trees.  A  letter, 
professing  to  be  written  by  five  of  the  principal  rioters,  and  avowing  that 
their  lawless  proceedings  had  been  secretly  instigated  by  Belcher,  was  ad- 
dressed to  Sir  Charles  Wager,  who  commanded  an  Enghsh  fleet  stationed 
in  the  American  seas,  in  the  hope  that  he  would  privately  convey  this 
important  information  to  the  English  ministry.  But  Wager,  too  honorable 
to  abet  a  clandestine  accusation,  sent  a  copy  of  the  letter  to  Belcher,  who 
found  no  difficulty  in  proving  that  it  was  a  forgery.  Yet  the  detection  of 
this  villany  was  insufficient  to  deter  his  enemies  from  a  repetition  of  it,  or 
to  prevent  him  from  falling  a  victim  to  their  insidious  slander  and  intrigue 
within  two  years  after.  Anonymous  letters  were  despatched  from  Massa- 
chusetts and  New  Hampshire  to  the  leading  Dissenters  in  Britain,  profess- 
ing to  be  the  compositions  of  ministers  of  the  Independent  and  Presbyterian 
churches  in  America,  who  were  deterred  from  signing  their  names  by  appre- 
hensions of  Belcher's  vengeance,  and  accusing  him  of  conspiring,  with  the 
Episcopal  clergy,  the  subversion  of  the  Dissenting  interest  in  New  England. 
Belcher  had  received  a  strict  command  from  the  king  to  disallow  the  farther 
issue  of  provincial  bills  of  credit  for  a  term  beyond  the  currency  of  those 
which  had  already  been  put  in  circulation,  of  which  none  extended  beyond 
the  year  1741. 

As  this  period  approached,  a  project  was  devised  by  a  party  of  the  money- 
jobbers  and  speculators  in  Massachusetts  for  evading  the  royal  injunction, 
and  maintaining  a  supply  of  paper  money,  by  the  establishment  of  a  private 
land  bank  on  a  very  extensive  scale  ;  and  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of 
Belcher,  which  were  seconded  by  all  the  wiser  and  more  respectable  por- 
tion of  the  community,  this  pernicious  device  was  carried  into  effect  in  the 
year  1739.  The  country  was  presently  deluged  with  the  notes  of  this  bank, 
for  the  circulation  of  which  the  most  skilful  and  adventurous  expedients  of 
commercial  artifice  were  adopted  ;  and  so  much  mischief  seemed  likely  to 
ensue,  that  the  interposition  of  the  British  government  was  urgently  sohcited 
by  some  persons  of  consideration  in  Massachusetts,  and  an  act  of  parlia- 
ment was  passed  in  the  present  year  for  suppressing  the  bank  and  prevent- 
ing the  formation  of  similar  establishments.  [1740.]  Some  of  the  partisans 
of  the  bank,  who  had  incurred  the  displeasure  of  Belcher  by  their  sup- 
port of  it,  now  joined  the  ranks  and  aided  the  intrigues  of  his  enemies, 
and,  with  unexampled  audacity  of  baseness  and  falsehood,  accused  him  to 
the  British  government  of  having  privately  encouraged  the  banking  schemes. 


CHAP.  I]  INTRIGUES  AGAINST  BELCHER.  |5| 

The  diligence  of  their  machinations  was  quickened  by  the  near  approach 
of  the  period  when  all  the  current  provincial  bills  of  credit  were  to  be  with- 
drawn from  circulation, — a  measure  which  was  regarded  with  general  alarm, 
and  which  it  was  well  known  that  Belcher  was  prepared  to  conduct  with  the 
most  uncompromising  strictness. 

While  the  charges  by  which  he  was  traduced  were  supported  even  by  per- 
jury, their  efficacy  was  farther  aided  in  some  degree  by  his  own  rash  reliance 
on  the  justice  and  discernment  of  the  British  court.  Resting  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  integrity,  he  was  not  sufficiently  careful  to  approve  his 
integrity  to  the  judgment  of  those  on  whom  his  fortune  depended.  His 
conduct  in  office,  ever  since  the  discussion  with  regard  to  a  fixed  salary, 
was  upright  and  disinterested  in  the  highest  degree.  To  his  official  duties 
he  sacrificed  a  lucrative  participation  in  commerce  ;  he  studied  to  promote 
the  general  interests  of  the  British  empire  in  America  ;  and  in  New  Eng- 
land he  zealously  labored  to  reconcile  a  faithful  service  to  the  crown  with 
an  earnest  and  liberal  regard  to  the  freedom,  happiness,  and  real  advantage 
of  the  people.  Confiding  in  his  merit,  he  despised  the  mafice  of  his  ene- 
mies, and  was  wont  to  say,  '■'  I  know,  that,  while  such  men  beset  the  court, 
I  can  expect  no  favor  ;  but  if  the  devil  were  there,  I  should  expect  justice 
under  the  British  constitution,  corroborated  by  the  Hanover  succession.'' 
The  British  ministers  and  the  leading  Dissenters  in  England  were  divided 
in  opinion ;  some  lending  credit  to  the  charges  against  Belcher,  and  others 
supporting  him  with  unshaken  confidence  and  approbation.  At  length  in- 
trigue prevailed  ;  and  Belcher  was  sacrificed,  as  Spottiswoode  had  previ- 
ously been  in  Virginia,  and  Burnet  at  New  York.  It  happened  that  Lord 
Euston,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  was  a  candidate  for  the  honor  of  rep- 
resenting the  city  of  Coventry  in  parliament.  A  rival  candidate  seeming 
likely  to  prevail,  Maltby,  a  zealous  Dissenter,  who  possessed  great  influ- 
ence with  the  electors  of  Coventry,  and  rashly  credited  the  assertion  of 
Belcher's  enemies,  that  he  was  conspiring  to  introduce  a  legal  establishment 
of  Episcopacy  into  New  England,  offered  to  the  Duke  of  Grafton  to  secure 
Lord  Euston's  election,  on  condition  that  Belcher  should  be  dismissed  from 
his  situation.  The  offer  was  accepted  ;  Belcher  was  immediately  recalled  ; 
and  the  government  of  Massachusetts  was  conferred  on  William  Shirley,  an 
English  lawyer  of  respectable  character  and  popular  manners,  whose  ca- 
pacity and  temper  evinced  a  rare  concurrence  of  active  and  enterprising 
genius  with  good  sense,  address,  and  discretion.  He  possessed  some  inter- 
est at  court,  but  had  emigrated  to  Boston  about  eight  years  before,  on  ac- 
count of  the  smallness  of  his  fortune  and  the  largeness  of  his  family. 

The  people  of  New  Hampshire,  at  the  same  time,  obtained  the  gratifica- 
tion they  so  earnestly  coveted,  in  the  appointment  of  a  separate  governor 
for  themselves  ;  this  office  being  now  bestowed  on  Benning  Wentworth, 
a  popular  inhabitant  of  the  province,  and  the  son  of  one  of  its  former  lieu- 
tenant-governors. [174L]  These  changes  proved  highly  grateful  to  both 
provinces.  Went  worth's  elevation  was  hailed  by  his  fellow-citizens  as  "the 
deliverance  of  New  Hampshire  from  contempt  and  dependence."'  And 
Shirley,  finding  that  the  people  of  Massachusetts  were  not  yet  prepared  to 
submit   to  the  sacrifice  of  taxing  themselves  to  pay  off  the  bills  of  credit, 

'  Yet,  so  fickle  and  impatient  are  mankind,  that,  only  a  few  years  after,  the  people  of  New 
Hampshire,  being  dissatisfied  with  certain  measures  which  the  governor  pursued  in  conformity 
with  nis  instructions  from  the  crown,  and  having  vainly  petitioned  for  his  removal  from  office, 
"  would  gladly  have  dissolved  the  government,  and  put  themselves  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
Massachusetts,  had  it  been  in  their  power.".    Belknap. 


152  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

ventured  to  gratify  them  by  departing  from  his  instructions,  and  permitting 
a  reissue  of  those  bills,  accompanied  with  certain  precautionary  measures  for 
preventing  the  fluctuation  which  their  value  was  apt  to  incur,  —  an  antidote 
which  proved  very  slightly,  if  at  all,  efficacious.  Whether  as  a  politic  de- 
vice to  procure  this  concession,  or  simply  from  a  sense  of  right,  the  Mas- 
sachusetts assembly  had  previously  voteu,  that,  so  long  as  Shirley  retained 
his  office,  his  salary  should  never  fall  short  of  one  thousand  pounds  sterling 
per  annum.  His  administration  proved  remarkably  free  from  domestic  con- 
troversy and  the  collision  of  political  parties,  —  an  advantage  due  partly  to 
his  own  prudence  and  moderation,  and  in  no  small  degree  to  the  deference, 
he  paid  to  the  counsels  of  Colonel  John  Stoddard,  a  man  highly  distin- 
guished by  the  depth  of  his  genius,  the  weight  and  force  of  his  character, 
and  the  veneration  which  he  inspired  in  all  classes  of  his  fellow-citizens. 
Belcher,  meanwhile,  who  was  so  unjustly  displaced,  repaired  to  London, 
where  he  exhibited  the  most  convincing  proofs  of  his  honor  and  probity, 
and  of  the  base  intrigues  to  which  he  had  been  sacrificed.  But  though 
his  character  was  effectually  vindicated,  it-  was  judged  impracticable  or  inex- 
pedient to  restore  him  to  office  in  New  England.  The  ministers,  however, 
promised,  as  some  compensation  for  the  unworthy  treatment  he  had  experi- 
enced, to  confer  on  him  another  royal  government  in  America  ;  and,  in  the 
year  1747,  he  was  appointed  governor  of  New  Jersey,  where  he  presided 
for  ten  years,  and  closed,  with  his  life,  a  respected  and  happy  administra- 
tion. Both  as  an  individual  and  a  magistrate,  he  was  ever  distinguished  by 
his  ardent  piety,  and  his  generous  zeal  for  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  and 
the  promotion  of  virtue.^ 

Amidst  the  scene  of  controversy  and  intrigue  by  which  Massachusetts 
was  so  much  disturbed  and  dishonored,  a  great  deal  of  happiness  was  en- 
joyed in  this  province,  and  a  great  deal  of  useful  talent  and  of  admirable 
piety  and  virtue  exerted.  Many  excellent  persons,  representing  the  oldest 
and  most  considerable  Puritan  families,  labored  with  pious  and  patriotic 
ardor  to  promote  the  worth  and  welfare  of  their  fellow-citizens,  and  both 
honorably  illustrated  and  successfully  propagated  by  their  example  the  vir- 
tues that  characterized  the  fathers  of  New  England.  The  most  distinguished 
of  those  individuals  was  John  Stoddard,  whom  we  have  already  had  occa- 
sion to  name,  and  who,  preeminent  alike  in  wisdom,  probity,  and  public 
spirit,  received  from  the  universal  attribution  of  his  contemporaries  the  title 
of  a  great  and  good  man.^  Among  other  fruits  which  manifested  that  the 
pristine  qualities  and  sentiments  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts  were  pre- 
served from  decay,  the  efforts  that  were  made  to  impart  civil  improvement 
and  religious  instruction  to  the  Indians  deserve  a  lasting  and  honorable  com- 
memoration. In  the  year  1737,  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  granted 
to  a  troop  of  the  Housatonic  Indians  a  settlement  in  the  western  part  of 
the  province,  which  obtained  the  name  of  Stockbrldge,  and  subsequently 
derived  a  considerable  accession  of  Indian  residents  from  the  resort  of 
converts  to  Christianity  gained  from  a  great  variety  of  tribes  by  the  labors 
of  the  provincial  missionaries.  At  this  settlement,  the  most  assiduous  en- 
deavours were  made  by  benevolent  individuals,  aided  by  the  public  funds 
of  the  provincial  community,  to  instruct  the  Indians  in  useful  knowledge, 
and  to  educate  them  in  habits  of  virtue  and  civility. 

»  Douglass.  Trumbull.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  S.  Smith.  Dwight's  Travels.  Eliot's 
Biographical  Dictionary  of  JVew  England. 

*  "  After  him,"  says  Dwight,  in  Scriptural  phrase,  "  men  spake  not  again." 


CHAP.  I]  JONATHAN  EDWARDS.  J 53 

The  charitable  enterprise  was  crowned  with  encouraging  success  ;  and,  in 
addition  to  its  happy  effects  upon  a  numerous  and  increasing  Indian  society 
at  Stockbridge,  contributed  to  revive  the  ardor  of  missionary  zeal  through- 
out New  England,  and  to  awaken  the  same  spirit  in  other  provincial  com- 
munities which  had  hitherto  been  strangers  to  it.  Now  was  seen,  though  on 
a  smaller  scale  than  had  been  anticipated  by  many  sanguine  and  philanthropic 
promoters  of  American  colonization,  another  instance  of  union  and  inter- 
course mutually  happy  and  beneficial  to  the  civilized  and  savage  men  who 
jointly  occupied  the  territory  of  the  New  World,  —  an  intercourse  in  which 
charity  manifestly  proved  itself  doubly  blessed  ;  for  the  efforts  of  the  colo- 
nists to  communicate  the  benefits  of  their  knowledge  and  superiority  tended 
even  more  effectually  to  the  improvement  of  their  own  faculties  and  charac- 
ter than  to  the  advantage  of  the  race  to  which  their  labors  were  devoted. 
This  grand  and  glorious  conception  had  not  yet  been  realized  in  any  other 
portion  of  the  British  dominions  in  America,  except  New  England.  The 
Pennsylvanian  Quakers  treated  the  Indians  with  mildness,  equity,  and  for- 
bearance, disarmed  their  jealousy  by  the  display  of  implicit  confidence,  and 
gained  their  friendship  by  liberal  presents  and  a  courteous  and  affectionate 
address.  But  the  only  advantage  (and  doubtless  a  very  great  one)  that  re- 
sulted from  this  policy  was  the  peaceful  establishment  of  the  colony  of  Penn- 
sylvania,—  without  the  derivation  of  any  benefit,  temporal  or  spiritual,  to  the 
Indian  race  from  the  vicinity  of  European  arts  and  knowledge.  The  gov- 
ernment of  New  York  occasionally  lavished  caresses  and  subsidies  on  its 
savage  neighbours  ;  but  instead  of  attempting  to  alter,  rather  studied  to  pro- 
mote, their  roving  and  barbarous  habits,  for  the  purposes  of  commerce  and 
of  war,  [1741.]  New  England  alone  had  hitherto  afforded  the  example 
of  communities  of  men  which  steadily  pursued  the  civil  and  religious  improve- 
ment of  the  Indians  as  a  part  of  their  state  policy,  and  of  individual  mis- 
sionaries who  willingly  devoted  their  lives  to  this  object. 

The  superintendence  of  the  various  measures  and  establishments  under- 
taken by  the  people  of  Massachusetts  for  the  benefit  of  the  Indians  was  con- 
fided to  a  board  denominated  the  Commissioners  for  Indian  Affairs  at  Bos- 
ton, whose  pecuniary  resources  were  derived  partly  from  occasional  grants 
by  the  provincial  legislature,  but  chiefly  from  private  and  voluntary  contri- 
butions of  the  colonists,  aided  by  a  religious  society  in  Scotland.  The 
first  pastor  appointed  by  these  commissioners  for  the  setdement  at  Stock- 
bridge  was  John  Sergeant,  a  native  of  New  Jersey,  and  a  man  of  excellent 
sense,  learning,  and  piety,  who  enjoyed  a  ministry  happy,  honored,  and 
successful,  till  his  death  in  the  year  1749.  The  highest  expectations  were 
entertained  of  advantage  to  the  establishment  from  his  successor  in  the  pas- 
toral office,  —  the  celebrated  Jonathan  Edwards,  a  native  of  Connecticut, 
and  afterwards  president  of  Princeton  College,  in  New  Jersey  ;  one  of  the 
greatest  theologians  and  metaphysical  writers  of  modern  times,  and  no  less 
distinguished  among  his  contemporaries  for  the  severe  and  awful  sanctitude 
of  his  life,  and  his  ardent  zeal  for  the  propagation  of  Christian  knowledge 
and  sentiment,  than  admired  by  posterity  for  the  strength  and  depth  of  his 
understanding,  and  the  grandeur,  penetration,  and  comprehension  of  his 
genius.^     The  assumption  of  the  pastoral  care  of  Stockbridge  by  so  emi- 

'  He  is  thus  characterized  by  an  American  divine  and  poet :  — 

"  From  scenes  obscure  did  Heaven  its  Edwards  call, 
That  moral  Newton,  and  that  second  Paul. 
He,  in  clear  view,  saw  sacred  systems  roll 
Of  reasoning  worlds  around  their  central  soul ; 

OL.   II.  20 


154  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

neut  a  personage  was  a  circumstance  not  less  honorable  to  himself  than  to 
the  patrons  of  the  settlement ;  but  the  expectations  that  led  to  it  were  dis- 
appointed. Edwards  was  a  man  of  recluse  habits,  contemplative  disposition, 
and  unpliable  manners  ;  more  fitted  to  elevate  the  wisdom  of  the  learned  by 
his  writings,  and  animate  the  virtue  of  the  pious  by  his  example,  than  to  in- 
struct and  train  a  coarse,  ilhterate,  and  miscellaneous  society.  By  all  wise 
and  good  men  who  enjoyed  opportunities  of  familiar  converse  with  him  he 
was  regarded  with  the  warmest  attachment  and  the  most  earnest  veneration. 
But  notwithstanding  the  denial  of  his  friends  and  biographers,  there  is  rea- 
son to  conclude,  both  from  various  events  of  his  life  and  from  the  tone  of 
many  passages  in  his  writings,  that  his  manners,  though  seasoned  with  that 
rarest  of  human  qualities,  a  deep  and  genuine  humility,  and  solemnly  graceful 
and  pleasing,  where  intimacy  rendered  him  perfectly  at  ease,  were,  in  gen- 
eral society,  so  much  embarrassed  by  involuntary  reserve  and  formality,  as 
to  convey  the  impression  of  an  austere  and  ungracious  disposition  ;  and  that 
he  was  more  plenteously  endowed  with  sagacity  to  detect,  and  with  zeal  to 
demonstrate,  the  existence  and  inveteracy  of  human  infirmity,  than  with  that 
condescending  indulgence  and  tender  forbearance  towards  its  victims,  without 
which  its  correction  is  seldom,  if  ever,  successfully  undertaken.  Consider- 
ing the  disadvantages  under  which  he  labored,  it  is  no  small  praise  to  him, 
that,  during  the  few  years  of  his  exercise  of  the  functions  of  pastor  at  Stock- 
bridge,  the  establishment  did  not  dechne.  But  neither  did  it  advance  ;  and 
of  this  the  explanation,  if  not  the  apology,  may  perhaps  be  derived  from  the 
fact,  that,  during  his  residence  there,  he  composed  that  grand  and  recon- 
dite disquisition,  which  he  afterwards  published,  on  the  Freedom  of  Human 
Will,  —  a  work  which  has  been  variously  regarded  as  a  doctrinal  compo- 
sition, but  which  no  intelligent  reader  has  ever  attentively  perused  without 
a  sentiment  of  admiration  and  astonishment  at  the  strength  and  stretch  of 
the  human  understanding.  It  obtained,  in  particular,  the  admiring  praise  of 
David  Hume  and  the  philosophers  of  his  school,  who  eagerly  sought  to  en- 
list some  of  the  reasoning  of  the  Christian  teachers  in  support  of  their  own 
system  of  infidelity.  After  the  removal  of  Edwards  from  this  situation  to 
tie  presidency  of  Princeton  College,^  the  care  of  Stockbridge  was  commit- 
ted to,  and  successfully  undertaken  by,  an  excellent  man,  the  son  and  the 
worthy  inheritor  of  the  name  of  Sergeant,  the  first  pastor  of  this  settlement. 

While  the  establishment  at  Stockbridge  was  still  in  its  infancy,  a  number 
of  New  England  ministers,  selected  and  supported  by  the  Commissioners  for 
Indian  Affairs  at  Boston,  were  pursuing  missionary  labors  among  various 
Indian  tribes.  [1742.]  Of  these  the  most  distinguished  was  a  young  man 
named  David  Brainerd,  a  native  of  Connecticut,  who,  in  compliance  with 
the  solicitations  which  his  renowned  zeal  and  piety  attracted  at  once  from 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  the  Presbyterian  ministers  of  New  York 

Saw  love  attractive  every  system  bind, 

The  parent  linking  to  each  filial  mind  ; 

The  end  of  Heaven's  high  w^orks  resistless  showed, 

Creating  glory,  and  creating  good." — D wight's  Triumph  of  Ivfidelity. 
Edwards  has  at  length  found  an  editor  and  critical  commentator  worthy  of  him,  in  Foster, 
a  clergyman  of  the  church  of  England,  author  of  The  JVatural  History  of  Enthusiasm.  Yet, 
with  much  admiring  respect  for  Mr.  Foster,  I  think  that  he  has  far  better  appreciated  the  per 
sonal  holiness  and  wonderful  genius  of  Edwards,  than  the  religious  utility  of  Edwards's  writings. 
^  He  died  there  in  1758,  and  in  the  fifty-fifth  year  of  his  age.  From  his  journals  it  appears  that 
his  researches  extended  to  physical,  as  well  as  ethical  science,  and  that  he  anticipated  and 
prophesied  those  sublime  investigations  of  the  machinery  of  Light,  subsequently  accomplished 
by  the  genius  of  Herschel.  He  openly  denounced  the  system  of  negro  slavery,  and  urged 
the  immediate  manumission  of  all  the  slaves  in  America. 


CHAP.  I]  DAVID  BRAINERD.  I55 

and  New  Jersey,  commenced  in  this  year  a  brief  but  memorable  career, 
unsurpassed  in  diligence  and  success  since  the  apostohc  era,  and  unequalled, 
perhaps,  except  by  the  labors  of  Eliot  and  Mayhew.  Of  the  natural  abili- 
ties of  Brainerd  it  is  difficult  to  form  any  distinct  or  satisfactory  conception, 
—  so  much  was  their  outward  lustre  eclipsed  by  the  strong  absorbing  influ- 
ence of  feelings  which  continually  prompted  him  to  divest  his  discourse  of 
the  graces  of  fancy  and  eloquence,  and  to  manifest  Christian  doctrine,  sen- 
timent, and  character  in  the  most  unadorned,  and  uncompounded  simplicity. 
Some  passages  of  his  celebrated  journal  display  great  depth  and  force  of 
thought ;  but  it  was  observed  of  him  in  general,  that  "  his  discourse  seemed 
to  issue  mainly  from  his  heart  ;  and  he  rather  talked  religion  than  talked 
about  it."  Throughout  his  short  life  he  labored  under  a  hypochondriacal 
malady,  which  clouded  his  soul  with  melancholy  and  dejection,  but  was  nev- 
er able  to  relax  his  diligence  or  shake  his  conviction  of  the  certain,  how- 
ever invisible,  fruit  of  his  labors.  With  unwearied  patience  he  pursued  his 
missionary  exertions  among  the  various  Indian  tribes  adjacent  to  the  colo- 
nies of  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey,  and  New  York. 
Driven  from  station  to  station  by  the  opposition  of  some  of  his  Indian  audi- 
tors, which  was  frequently  excited  by  the  artifices,  as  well  as  promoted  by 
the  vicious  example,  of  European  traders  who  assumed  the  title  of  Chris- 
tians, —  at  every  place  where  he  resided,  he  built  with  his  own  hands  a 
dwelling-house  for  himself ;  and,  for  the  more  effectual  instruction  of  the 
savages,  accommodated  his  style  of  life  to  a  model  of  as  much  simplicity  as 
was  consistent  w^th  the  civifized  manners  to  w^hich  he  desired  to  lead  them. 
His  success  at  length  was  astonishing,  and  was  more  especially  manifested 
among  the  Indians  of  the  Six  Nations,  who  were  peculiarly  exposed  to  a 
counteracting  influence  both  from  the  example  of  the  European  traders  from 
New  York,  who  resorted  for  commercial  purposes  among  them,  and  from 
the  intrigues  of  some  of  those  traders,  who  regarded  with  fear  and  aversion 
every  attempt  to  civilize  or  instruct  the  Indians.  Solemn,  yet  affectionate, 
in  his  address  ;  humble,  yet  earnest  and  indefatigable  ;  filled  with  zeal  and 
charity  ;  and  indulgent  to  every  body  except  himself,  —  Brainerd  excited 
among  his  auditors  a  mixture  of  tenderness  and  veneration  ;  and  inducing 
numerous  Indian  converts  to  adopt  the  manners  which  he  exemplified,  as 
well  as  the  faith  which  he  inculcated,  completely  falsified  the  common  theo- 
ry, that  mankind  must  be  morally  civilized  before  they  can  be  religiously 
converted, — by  demonstrating  that  Christian  instruction  is  the  most  effect- 
ual and  comprehensive  instrument  of  civilization.  Exhausted  by  constitu- 
tional disease,  and  by  the  intensity  of  his  missionary  toil,  Brainerd  died  in 
the  year  1747,  while  yet  in  the  bloom  of  youth;  but,  if  temporal  fame 
(which  he  was  very  far  from  affecting)  may  be  permitted  to  mingle  with 
our  conceptions  of  the  meed  of  such  labors  as  his,  he  had  first  achieved  a 
renown  that  amply  compensated  for  the  shortness  of  his  life.  The  efficacy 
of  his  exertions  was  promoted  and  extended  by  the  missionary  operations 
which  now  began  to  proceed  from  the  Moravian  establishments  that  were 
formed  in  Pennsylvania.^ 

During  the  administration  of  Governor  Gordon,  Pennsylvania  enjoyed 
uninterrupted  repose  and  prosperity.  Internal  dissensions  were  repressed 
by  the  prudence  and  moderation  of  the  governor,  aided  by  the  concurrence 

*  Douglass.  W.  Smith.  Holmes.  Hawksley's  and  Hopkins's  Memoirs  of  President  Ed- 
wards.  Brainerd's  Jnitrwrt/.  Edwards  s  Obsenmtions  on  the  Life  of  Brainerd.  Dwight's  Tra?*- 
ets.     Loskiel.     See  Note  VII.,  at  the  end  of  tlie  volume. 


156  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

of  favorable  circumstances,  and  not  a  little  by  the  wise  counsels,  the  pop- 
ular virtues,  and  persuasive  eloquence  of  Andrew  Hamilton  (whom  we  have 
already  had  occasion  to  notice),  for  many  years  speaker  of  the  provincial 
assembly.  Gordon,  dying  in  1736,  was  succeeded  two  years  after  by 
Thomas,  a  man  of  resolution  and  integrity,  and  whose  administration  at  first 
gave  universal  satisfaction.  The  venerable  Hamilton,  on  retiring  from  pub- 
he  life  in  1739,  expressed  a  generous  exultation  in  contemplating  the  happy 
condition  of  his  countrymen.  With  paternal  soHcitude,  he  reminded  them 
that  a  state  of  liberty  and  harmony  was  no  less  a  blessing  than  a  virtue, 
and  that  the  exercise  of  mutual  charity  and  forbearance  was  essential  to 
its  preservation  ;  cautioning  them  to  avoid  the  faction  and  animosity  that  had 
once  disturbed  their  pubhc  councils,  "  as  a  rock,  which,  if  not  escaped,  the 
constitution  of  this  province  will,  at  some  time  or  other,  infallibly  spHt  upon." 
A  still  more  distinguished  actor  on  the  stage  of  provincial  poHtics,  and  af- 
terwards in  scenes  of  greater  interest  and  renown,  had  recently  appeared  in 
the  person  of  Benjamin  Frankhn,  a  native  of  Boston,  but  now  a  printer  in 
Philadelphia,  and  since  the  year  1735  clerk  to  the  assembly  at  Pennsylva- 
nia, and  postmaster  of  the  province  ;  —  the  last  of  which  appointments  he 
owed  to  the  discernment  of  Colonel  Spottiswoode,  formerly  governor  of 
Virginia,  and  afterwards  postmaster-general  of  America.  His  father  was  a 
soap-boiler  and  tallow-chandler  in  Massachusetts,  whither  he  had  emigrated 
on  account  of  his  Puritan  principles,  some  years  prior  to  the  British  Revo- 
lution. From  his  earhest  youth,  Franklin  cherished  a  passion  for  reading, 
and  for  the  achievement  of  nature^s  chief  masterpiece  (as  it  has  been  termed), 
the  art  of  writing  well.  He  enlarged  his  scanty  access  to  books  by  the 
practice  of  the  strictest  temperance  and  economy  ;  and  turned  the  narrow- 
ness of  the  hterary  field  to  which  he  was  confined  into  an  actual  advantage, 
by  the  diligence  with  which  he  cultivated  and  appropriated  the  farthest  ex- 
tent of  its  resources.  His  amplitude  of  mind,  united  with  his  ceaseless  in- 
dustry, vigor,  and  dexterity,  qualified  him  to  advance  the  boundaries  of  sci- 
ence, and  to  embrace  and  conduct  the  most  extended  schemes  of  national 
pohcy  ;  yet  his  genius,  not  less  pliant  than  powerful,  could  stoop  to  the  hum- 
blest sphere  of  practical  good,  and  regulate  with  admirable  prudence  and 
skill  the  economy  of  a  city  hbrary,  a  provincial  school,  a  tradesmen's  club, 
or  an  insurance  office.  Industry  and  frugality  were  promoted  among  his 
townsmen  by  his  personal  example,  and  recommended  throughout  the  pro- 
vince by  the  forcible  and  sagacious  disquisitions  which  he  composed  and  pub- 
lished. No  man  ever  possessed  in  a  higher  degree  the  art  of  rendering  the 
observations  of  science  subservient  to  purposes  of  immediate  practical  utih- 
ty.  His  writings  are  justly  admired  for  a  plain  popularity  and  sinewy  sim- 
plicity of  style,  for  the' easy  vigor  with  which  conceptions  the  most  enlarged 
and  profound  are  developed,  for  operative  good  sense  and  philanthropy,  for 
humorous  Socratic  irony,  and  for  the  art  of  arguing  to  the  prudence  and 
self-love  of  mankind.  His  readers  are  constantly  reminded  of  the  benefit 
that  will  result  from  minute  frugality, ^  and  taught  to  consider  a  parsimonious 
thrift  not  merely  as  a  virtue  of  the  highest  order,  but  as  the  foundation  of 
all  that  is  honorable,  upright,  and  praiseworthy  in  human  conduct  and  be- 
haviour. The  accommodations  of  domestic  life  and  the  simphcity  and  effi- 
cacy of  municipal  institutions  were  improved  by  his  inventive  genius  ;  and 
literary  and  philosophical  establishments  were  founded  and  promoted  by  his 
ardor,  authority,  and  address.  In  the  year  1739,  an  influence  still  nobler 
*  See  Note  VIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


CHAP.  I]  •  PARTIES  IN  PENNSYLVANIA.  157 

and  more  benign  was  exerted  on  the  Pennsylvanians  by  the  ministry  of 
George  Whitefield,  the  pupil  and  associate  of  Wesley,  who  resided  for  some 
time  in  the  province,  and  on  subsequent  occasions  repeated  his  visits  to  it. 
"  It  was  wonderful,"  says  Franklin,  who,  in  attesting  Whitefield's  success, 
was  biased  by  no  partiality  for  his  doctrines,  "to  see  the  change  soon  made 
in  the  manners  of  our  inhabitants.  From  being  thoughtless  or  indifferent 
about  religion,  it  seemed  as  if  all  the  world  were  growing  religious  ;  so 
that  one  could  not  walk  through  the  town  in  an  evening,  without  hearing 
psalms  sung  in  different  families  of  every  street." 

But  the  state  of  repose  which  Pennsylvania  had  enjoyed  for  some  time 
was  now  drawing  to  a  close  ;  and  the  plentiful  confluence  of  strangers  to 
this  province,  which  attested  and  promoted  its  prosperity,  prepared  also  the 
materials  of  internal  discord  and  altercation.  The  Quakers  still  possessed 
the  command  of  the  assembly,  and  by  their  wealth  and  influence  were  ena- 
bled to  engross  the  principal  offices  of  government.  A  majority  of  the  in- 
habitants, notwithstanding,  belonged  to  other  religious  persuasions,  and  dis- 
sented so  completely  from  the  Quaker  system  of  policy,  especially  in  rela- 
tion to  the  duty  and  legitimacy  of  provisions  for  national  defence,  that  only 
a  fit  occasion  was  wanting  to  manifest  the  discordance  of  the  views  and 
opinions  by  which  the  colonists  were  divided.  In  all  the  other  royal  and 
proprietary  governments  of  North  America  the  duration  of  the  representa- 
tive assemblies  was  triennial  or  septennial.^  In  Pennsylvania  it  was  an- 
nual ;  and  the  recommendation  of  this  democratic  peculiarity,  together  with 
the  lenity  of  the  provincial  taxes,  and  the  economical  and  even  parsimoni- 
ous principles  which  regulated  the  salaries  of  office  and  every  other  ex- 
penditure of  public  money,  had  attracted  thither,  among  other  emigrants,  a 
great  number  of  persons  habituated  to  political  deliberations,  and  eager  to 
administer,  as  well  as  to  enjoy,  the  institutions  and  policy  of  a  popular  gov- 
ernment. The  Pennsylvanian  Quakers,  as  we  have  already  seen,  from  a 
pretty  early  period  regarded  with  uneasiness  the  increasing  concourse  of 
strangers  differing  from  them  in  rehgious  persuasion  ;  from  which  they  ap- 
prehended a  preponderance  of  other  sentiments  than  theirs  in  the  public 
councils,  and  finally,  perhaps,  an  entire  eradication  of  all  that  tincture  of 
Quaker  principle  which  they  had  infused  into  the  provincial  policy  and  ad- 
ministration. On  one  occasion,  to  which  we  have  already  adverted,  they 
made  an  essay  to  obstruct  the  resort  of  such  emigrants  as  a  small  tax  was 
sufficient  to  repel  ;  —  well  aware  of  the  facility  with  which  industrious  pov- 
erty could  mount  to  a  competent  estate  and  the  attainment  of  political  fran- 
chises in  Pennsylvania.  The  Quakers  still  formed  the  aristocracy  of  the 
country,  and  preserved  their  original  ascendency  over  the  deliberations  of 
the  assembly  ;  but  a  jealousy  had  taken  root,  and  continued  silently  to 
grow,  between  the  Quaker,  or,  as  it  was  now  termed,  the  old  interest  in  the 
province,  and  the  younger,  less  weighty,  but  more  crescent  and  vigorous 
party,  that  was  formed  by  those  planters  who,  disowning  Quakerism  as  re- 
ligious doctrine,  submitted  with  reluctance  to  the  imposition  of  its  precepts 
and  restrictions  as  municipal  and  political  ordinances. 

The  efforts  of  wise  and  good  men,  more  attached  to  the  province  than  to 

'  An  act  of  the  assembly  of  New  York,  in  the  year  1743,  commences  with  the  following  pre- 
amble :  —  "  Whereas,  by  an  act  passed  in  the  first  year  of  the  reign  of  his  late  Majesty,  of 
glorious  memory,  parliaments  in  Great  Britain  may  respectively  have  continuance  for  the  term 
of  seven  years  and  no  longer;  and  whereas  the  general  assembly  of  this,  his  Majesty's  loyal 
colony,  conceive  it  their  duty,  as  it  is  their  inclination,  to  copy  after  so  wise  an  example,"  &c. 
Lawi  ofJVew  York.  ^ 


158  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

any  particular  party,  were  successfully  employed  for  some  years  to  mode- 
rate this  jealousy  and  repress  its  effusions  ;  but  the  war  which  broke  forth 
between  England  and  Spain,  in  1739,  contributed  signally  to  enhance  and 
develope  its  utmost  virulence.  The  Quakers  had  strained  their  pacific  prin- 
ciples as  far,  at  least,  as  the  cover  of  a  decent  veil  could  extend,  in  order 
to  reconcile  their  retention  of  political  power  with  their  submission  to  the 
military  views  and  requisitions  of  the  parent  state.  We  have  seen  them 
refuse  to  give  money  which  was  expressly  demanded  for  warlike  purposes, 
and  yet  part  with  it  immediately  after,  under  the  cover  of  a  present  to  the 
king,  —  for  whose  misuse  of  the  instrument  thus  confided  to  his  hands  they 
reckoned  themselves  by  no  means  responsible,  as  being  totally  unable,  in 
the  blindness  of  their  innocence,  to  conjecture.  In  the  conclusion  of  the 
last  war,  after  a  long  and  stubborn  contest  in  the  assembly,  a  portion  of 
the  public  funds  was  expressly  appropriated  to  the  construction  of  a  redoubt 
for  the  protection  of  the  shipping  of  Philadelphia  against  hostile  privateers  ; 
and  some  vessels  belonging  to  Quakers  having  been  captured  while  the  re- 
doubt was  building,  it  was  remarked  that  several  members  of  the  Quaker 
society  were  particularly  active  in  forwarding  its  completion,  and  procuring 
the  establishment  of  a  subsidiary  magazine  of  gunpowder.  This  conduct 
certainly  contributed  neither  to  promote  the  prevalence  of  Quaker  theory, 
nor  to  reconcile  the  other  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania  to  its  ostentatious 
predominance,  united  with  its  practical  dereliction.  Governor  Thomas,  who 
was  a  stranger  to  the  refinements  of  casuistry,  gave  high  offence  to  the  pre- 
dominant party  in  the  assembly,  by  strongly  recommending  the  enactment 
of  a  law  for  embodying  a  provincial  militia,  and  by  encouraging,  meanwhile, 
the  enlistment  of  poor  European  emigrants  who  had  been  transported  to  the 
province  as  indented  servants  of  the  more  wealthy  planters.  After  long 
debates,  the  assembly  refused  to  sanction  the  proposed  militia  law  ;  and 
having  warmly  complained  of  the  practice  of  enlisting  indented  servants, 
voted  an  ample  indemnification  to  all  the  colonists  whose  servants  were 
thus  withdrawn  from  them. 

This  result  excited  a  great  deal  of  disgust  in  the  minds  of  all  the  Penn- 
sylvanians  who  were  not  votaries  of  Quakerism  ;  and,  from  the  struggle  that 
arose  between  the  two  parties  to  increase  their  political  power,  the  elections 
to  the  assembly,  in  the  present  year,  were  disgraced  by  much  tumult  and 
violence.  It  is  asserted  by  a  Quaker  historian,  and  seems  consistent  with 
probability,  that,  in  this  competition  between  superior  wealth  and  numerical 
strength,  it  was  the  party  to  which  the  latter  distinction  belonged  that  pro- 
moted tumultuary  and  riotous  proceedings.  So  greatly  were  the  Quakers 
now  outnumbered  by  the  dissenters  from  Quakerism,  that  the  continued 
legislative  ascendency  of  the  old  interest  was  maintained  by  the  mixed  influ- 
ence of  the  wealth  of  its  representatives,  their  general  respectability,  a  toler- 
able degree  of  union  among  themselves,  and  a  habitual  deference  entertain- 
ed by  many  persons  for  their  long  prevalent  authority,  —  added  to  the  na- 
tional and  sectarian  varieties  by  which  the  other  inhabitants  were  divided. 
The  governor  vainly  endeavoured  to  alter  the  determination  expressed  by 
the  majority  of  the  provincial  assembly,  and  displaced  from  office  a  number 
of  magistrates  who  particularly  distinguished  themselves  by  opposition  to 
his  wishes.^    Finding,  however,  that  the  assembly  was  inflexible,  he  address- 

'  One  of  these  magistrates  was  John  Wright,  a  zealous  and  eminent  Q,uaker,  who,  on  surren- 
dering his  magisterial  functions,  addressed  the  grand  jury  of  the  county  to  which  he  belonged 
in  an  oration  of  considerable  length,  which  has  been  preserved  by  the  historian  Proud.    In 


CHAP.  I]        MILITARY  ORGANIZATION    IN  PENNSYLVANIA.  159 

ed  himself  to  the  inhabitants  at  large  ;  and,  assisted  by  the  powerful  pen  of 
Franklin,  who  heartily  espoused  his  views,  urged  the  peoole  to  take  arms 
and  form  themselves  into  regiments  for  the  defence  and  security  of  their 
country.  Several  of  the  Quakers  themselves  openly  asserted  the  lawfulness 
of  defensive  war  ;  and  when,  in  compliance  with  the  governor's  recommen- 
dations, the  project  of  forming  provincial  regiments  and  purchasing  artillery 
was  discussed  in  various  commercial  societies  of  the  inhabitants,  a  considera- 
ble number  of  the  Quaker  members  of  these  societies  absented  themselves 
from  the  debate,  and  privately  encouraged  their  less  scrupulous  associates  to 
apply  the  common  funds  to  the  support  of  a  provincial  armament.^  The 
wishes  of  the  governor  and  the  arguments  of  Franklin  were  so  cordially 
seconded  by  the  spirit  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  people,  that  ultimately  a  pro- 
vincial mihtia  ^  was  embodied  and  supported  by  an  act  of  popular  will  direct- 
ly opposed  to  the  sentiments  and  declarations  of  the  provincial  legislature. 
[1743.]  There  was  thus  exhibited  in  Pennsylvania  the  extraordinary  spec- 
tacle of  a  martial  force  assembled  for  the  protection  of  the  state,  without  the 
consent  of  the  legislature  ;  of  a  government  defended  by  a  military  estab- 
lishment which  it  disowned  and  professed  to  disapprove. 

This  state  of  matters  could  not  endure  for  many  years  in  a  province  of 
the  British  empire,  and  manifestly  betokened  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  po- 
litical predominance  of  Quakerism  in  Pennsylvania.  The  covert  accession 
to  war,  which  had  already  been  repeatedly  extorted  from  the  Quakers,  might 
have  convinced  them  of  the  impossibility  of  reconciling  the  purity  of  their 
sectarian  principles  with  the  administration  of  political  power  in  a  mixed  so- 
ciety ;  and  in  the  example  of  the  Moravians,  who  were  now  established  in 
considerable  numbers  in  the  province,  and  who,  professing  the  same  mild 
and  pacific  tenets  with  the  Quakers,  forbore  to  discredit  them  by  employing 
negro  slaves,  or  to  endanger  them  by  arrogating  power  or  control  beyond  the 
bounds  of  their  own  rehgious  society,  they  might  have  beheld  a  more  gen- 
uine portraiture  of  practical  Quakerism  than  was  ever  before  represented 
in  Pennsylvania. 

The  quiet  of  the  province  was  about  this  time  still  farther  disturbed  by  a 
series  of  disputes  between  the  colonists  and  Thomas  Penn,  the  youngest  of 
the  proprietaries,  who  acquired  soon  after,  by  the  death  of  his  brother  John, 
the  principal  share  of  the  proprietary  dignity  and  interest  ;  and  whose  selfish 
pohcy  and  ungracious  manners  were  resented  (says  the  historian  Proud)  with 
a  disproportioned  warmth  of  animosity,  which  tended  rather  to  harden  than 

this  speech  he  rather  incorrectly  ascribed  his  dismission  from  office  not  to  his  defence  of  Qua- 
ker principles,  but  to  his  zeal  for  "  the  system  of  English  liberty,"  —  a  system  which  he  rec- 
ommended to  the  esteem  of  his  auditors,  in  strains  alike  unsuitable  to  his  circumstances  and 
his  principles,  by  reminding  them  of  "  the  blood  and  treasure  which  have  been  spent  in  defence 
of  it."  Thus  simply  and  beautifully  he  closed  the  discourse  :  —  "  And  now,  to  conclude,  I  take 
my  leave  in  the  words  of  a  judge  in  Israel :  Here  I  am^  witness  against  me.  Whom  have  1  de- 
frauded? whom  have  I  oppressed  ?  or  of  whose  hands  have  I  received  any  bribe,  to  blind  my  eyes 
thcreicith  ?  and  I  will  restore  it.  May  the  Prince  of  Peace,  who  is  the  King  of  kings,  protect 
the  people  of  this  province  from  domestic  foes  and  foreign  enemies  !  is  my  heart's  desire.  And 
so  I  bid  you  all  farewell." 

'  "  I  estimated  the  proportion  of  Quakers  sincerely  against  defence  as  one  to  twenty-one  on- 
ly." Franklin.  It  was  the  opinion  of  Franklin,  that  the  American  Quakers  in  general  were 
deterred  from  openly  sanctioning  defensive  war  only  bv  a  punctilious  hesitation  to  renounce 
opinions  that  had  been  published  by  the  founders  of  Quakerism.  In  the  writings  of  various 
American  Quukers  it  is  acknowledged  that  the  majority  of  their  society  were  desirous  of  avoid- 
ing all  discussion  of  this  subject,  and  willing,  under  color  of  taxation  for  municipal  purposes, 
to  contribute  to  the  support  of  a  military  establishment. 

'  Franklin  was  elected  colonel  of  the  Philadelphia  regiment ;  but  he  declined  this  honor,  and 
served  as  a  private  soldier. 


IQQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

to  correct  the  illiberallty  of  his  disposition.  How  far  this  writer  —  not  a 
httle  perplexed,  as  he  frequently  appears  to  be,  between  his  attachment  to 
the  Quakers  and  his  reverence  for  the  family  of  Penn — meant  to  include  in 
his  censure  the  Quaker  colonists  of  Pennsylvania  cannot  now  be  ascertained  ; 
thoug^li  a  strong  inference  that  the  Quakers  had  especially  incurred  the  pro- 
prietary's resentment  may  be  derived  from  the  fact,  that  they  were  shortly 
after  excluded  from  every  office  connected  with  the  administration  of  his  in- 
terest and  authority. 

Another  cause  of  uneasiness,  which,  though  generally  disregarded  by  the 
inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania,  yet  excited  the  apprehensions  of  reflective  men, 
was  supplied  by  the  manifest  alteration  that  had  taken  place  in  the  senti- 
ments with  which  the  colonists  and  the  provincial  government  were  regarded 
by  the  Indians.  Some  partisans  of  the  Quakers,  in  alluding  to  this  cir- 
cumstance, have  more  eagerly  than  successfully  attempted  an  explanation 
of  it  redounding  to  the  credit  of  those  sectaries,  by  connecting  it  with  the 
undeniable  facts,  that  the  Indians,  among  other  complaints,  asserted  that  they 
were  unjustly  deprived  of  lands  which  had  never  been  fairly  purchased  from 
them  ;  that  no  such  acquisitions  were  or  could  be  made,  except  by  the 
agents  of  the  proprietary;  and  that  the  Quakers  about  this  time  were  exclud- 
ed from  all  share  in  that  agency.  The  explanatory  plea,  so  flattering  to 
the  Quakers,  which  is  inferred  from  these  considerations,  though  exaggerated 
in  its  appHcation,  is  entitled  to  some  respect :  for,  though  the  Quakers  were 
by  no  means  entirely  blameless  in  their  intercourse  with  the  Indians,  yet,  un- 
doubtedly, they  succeeded  in  gaining  their  good-will  more  effectually  than 
any  other  class  of  the  Pennsylvanian  colonists,  before  the  arrival  of  the 
Moravians.  But,  for  a  long  series  of  years,  a  number  of  circumstances, 
less  consistent  with  the  claims  of  the  Quakers  to  exclusive  or  superior  vir- 
tue, had  contributed  to  create  and  increase  alienation  between  the  Indians 
and  the  people  of  this  province.  It  is  admitted,  even  by  Quaker  writers, 
that,  for  several  years  prior  to  this  period,  the  Indian  tribes  were  treated 
with  a  neglect  ^  which  they  naturally  contrasted  with  the  civihties  and  largesses 
of  the  emissaries  despatched  among  them  by  the  French  ;  who  urged  them 
to  consider  if  their  total  annihilation  was  not  manifestly  portended  by  the 
rapid  advances  of  every  English  colony,  and  might  not  be  averted  by  the 
friendship  and  assistance  of  France.  The  agents  of  the  French  protested 
that  this  people  sought  for  nothing  but  advantageous  commercial  stations  in 
America,  and,  without  desiring  to  enlarge  their  settlements,  were  willing  to 
depend  for  subsistence  principally  on  supphes  derived  from  their  own 
parent  state.  But  the  most  serious  complaint  preferred  by  the  Indians  was 
directed  against  the  abuse  and  iniquity  of  the  commerce  between  the  two 
races  of  people.  We  have  seen,  that,  at  a  very  early  period,  even  William 
Penn  found  it  impossible  to  obtain  from  an  assembly,  of  which  a  great  majori- 
ty were  professed  Quakers,  any  salutary  regulation  of  the  traffic  between  the 
colonists  and  the  Indians  ;  and  it  will  the  less  move  our  wonder  to  find  that 
little  regard  was  paid  to  a  message  of  Governor  Thomas  to  the  Pennsylva- 

'  This  neglect  may  be  in  part  referred  to  circumstances  which  Franklin  has  detailed  in  his 
Historical,  Review  of  tk?  Constitution  of  Pennsylvania.  The  colonists  had  become  impatient 
of  the  frequent  treaties  with  the  Indians,  which  were  chiefly  intended  to  promote  the  interest 
of  the  proprietaries.  On  these  occasions,  presents  derived  from  provincial  taxes,  to  which  the 
proprietaries  did  not  contribute,  were  made  to  the  Indians,  who,  in  return,  renewed  their  an- 
cient protestations  of  friendship  to  the  colonists,  and  made  additional  grants  of  land,  which 
were  added  to  the  estates  of  the  proprietaries. 


CHAP.  I]  INDIAN  GRIEVANCES.  |gj 

nian  assembly,  in  the  year  1744,^  declaratory  of  his  apprehension,  that  the 
manner  in  which  the  Indian  trade  was  ordinarily  conducted  would  speedily 
involve  the  colonists  "in  some  fatal  quarrel  with  the  Indians."  The  hke- 
lihood  of  such  a  quarrel  was  increased  by  the  increasing  prevalence  of  ine- 
briety among  the  Indians  ;  by  the  sordid  eagerness  with  which  the  provincial 
traders  ministered  to  this  pernicious  habit,  and  promoted  its  indulgence  ;  and 
by  the  fixed  resentment  with  which  reflection  and  experience  taught  the  In- 
dians to  regard  the  insidious  temptation  they  were  unable  to  resist,  but  the 
effect  of  which  they  plainly  perceived  was  to  render  their  property  the  prey 
of  the  most  unequal  bargains,  and  to  propagate  diseases  among  them  by 
which  their  bodies  were  debilitated  and  their  lives  abridged.^  It  would 
have  been  very  difficult  for  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly  to  provide  an  entire 
and  adequate  remedy  of  the  abuses  of  the  Indian  trade.  Unfortunately,  a 
just  sense  of  the  danger  and  the  moral  turpitude  of  these  abuses  was  wanting 
in  this  body,  and  the  remedial  measures  which  it  occasionally  adopted  were 
feeble,  partial,  and  totally  inefficient.  An  additional  circumstance,  differ- 
ently related  by  different  writers,  served  to  inflame  the  animosity  between 
the  European  and  the  aboriginal  occupants  of  Pennsylvania.  A  chief  of  the 
Delaware  Indians,  having  killed,  either  maliciously  or  accidentally,  a  colonist 
of  New  Jersey,  to  whom  he  had  been  attached  by  the  strongest  bonds  of  pri- 
vate friendship,  lamented  the  unhappy  deed  with  a  passionate  warmth  of  self- 
reproach,  which,  justly  or  erroneously,  was  interpreted  into  a  confession  of 
premeditated  guilt.  In  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  Indians,  the  guilty 
or  unfortunate  chief  was  capitally  punished  by  the  sentence  of  a  New  Jersey 
judicature,  which  the  Indians  in  general  exclaimed  against  as  an  act  of  de- 
liberate murder,  and  a  heinous  affront  to  their  race ;  and  for  which  they 
continually,  but  ineffectually,  demanded  atonement  from  the  governments  of 
New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania.^ 

The  war  that  had  prevailed  for  several  years  between  Britain  and    Spain 

*  This  year,  Arthur  Dobbs,  of  New  England,  who  had  promoted  various  enterprises  for  the 
discovery  of  a  north-west  passage  to  India,  made  another  attempt  for  the  same  purpose,  in 
which  he  was  aided  by  several  noblemen  and  persons  of  distinction  in  England.  As  an  en- 
couragement to  such  adventures,  the  British  parliament  offered  a  reward  of  twenty  thousand 
pounds  to  the  persons  who  might  first  accomplish  this  discovery.     Holmes. 

'  Though  the  Indians  expressed  much  disapprobation  of  the  conduct  of  those  who  furnished 
them  with  ardent  spirits,  tney  were  not  the  less  exasperated  when  this  fatal  commodity  waa 
withheld  from  them.  Of  this  an  instance  occurs  in  Franklin's  account  of  a  treaty  with  the 
Indians,  which  he  and  other  commissioners  were  deputed  to  conduct  by  the  Pennsylvanian 
assembly.  "  The  Great  Spirit,"  said  one  of  the  Indian  orators,  "  who  made  all  things,  made 
every  thing  for  some  use  ;  and  whatever  use  he  designed  any  thing  for,  that  use  it  should  al- 
ways be  put  to.  Now,  when  he  made  rum,  he  said.  Let  it  he  for  the  Indians  to  get  drunk  with; 
and  it  must  be  so."  "  Indeed,"  Franklin  adds,  "  if  it  be  the  design  of  Providence  to  extirpate 
these  savages,  in  order  to  make  room  for  the  cultivators  of  the  earth,  it  seems  not  impossible 
that  rum  may  be  the  appointed  means."     Franklin's  Memoirs. 

^  S.  Smith.  History  of  J^ew  Jersey.  Proud.  Franklin's  j1f(^mo/>5.  Kalm's  Travels.  Los- 
kiel.  Proud's  historical  narrative  terminates  at  this  epoch.  The  remainder  of  his  work  con- 
tains nothing  farther  than  a  catalogue  of  governors,  and  a  statistical  account  of  Pennsylvania 
prior  to  the  year  1770.  It  would  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  relate  the  disputes  that  en- 
sued between  the  proprietaries  and  the  colonists  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to  all  his  predilections. 
The  American  Revolution  was  a  subject  no  less  perplexing  to  him.  Some  allusions  to  this 
great  struggle  occur  in  the  close  of  his  work,  and  plainly  prove  that  the  principles  of  the  Qua- 
ker prevailed  with  him  over  the  sentiments  of  the  patriot.  He  denounces  the  revolt  of  the  col- 
oni.st8  as  one  of  those  convulsive  maladies  which  a  plethory  of  happiness  is  apt  to  generate  in 
collective  life;  and  predicts  that  its  result  will  be  the  downfall  of  virtue,  happiness,  and  liberty 
in  America.  His  work,  though  composed  during  the  Revolutionary  War,  was  not  published 
till  1797 ;  and  yet  he  suffered  these  expressions  to  remain  uncancelled.  In  his  preface,  which 
bears  the  date  of  179'2,  no  allusion  is  made  to  the  patriots  of  the  Revolution;  and  none  but 
Q,uaJcers  are  commemorated  as  benefactors  of  Pennsylvania. 

VOL.     II.  21  N* 


IQ2  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X 

inflicted  upon  the  greater  number  of  the  British  provinces  of  America  no 
farther  share  of  its  evils  than  the  burden  of  contributing  to  the  expeditions 
of  Admiral  Vernon,  and  the  waste  of  life  by  which  his  disastrous  naval 
campaigns  were  signalized.  Only  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  had  been 
exposed  to  actual  attack  and  danger.  But  this  year,  by  an  enlargement  of 
the  hostile  relations  of  the  parent  state,  the  scene  of  war  was  extended  to 
the  more  northern  provinces.  The  French,  though  professing  peace  with 
Britain,  had  repeatedly  given  assistance  to  Spain  ;  while  the  British  king, 
as  Elector  of  Hanover,  had  espoused  the  quarrel  of  the  emperor  of  Ger- 
many with  the  French  monarch  :  and  after  various  mutual  threats  and  demon- 
strations of  hostility  that  consequently  ensued  between  Britain  and  France, 
war  was  now  formally  declared  by  these  ^ates  against  each  other.  The 
French  colonists  in  America,  having  been  apprized  of  this  event  before  it 
was  known  in  New  England,  were  tempted  to  improve  the  advantage  of 
their  prior  intelligence  by  an  instant  and  unexpected  commencement  of 
hostihties,  which  accordingly  broke  forth  without  notice  or  delay  in  the  quar- 
ter of  Nova  Scotia.  This  province  had  been  alternately  claimed  and  pos- 
sessed by  the  English  and  French  for  more  than  a  century.  Since  the  peace 
of  Utrecht,  it  had  acknowledged  subjection  to  the  crown  of  Britain  ;  and 
the  French  inhabitants,  devoted  to  the  interests  of  France,  and  implicitly  di- 
rected by  their  priests,  who  exercised  a  sort  of  patriarchal  government  over 
them,  were  yet  retained  in  submission,  partly  by  the  dread  of  seeing  the 
dikes  destroyed  which  they  had  erected  to  prevent  the  sea  from  over- 
flowing their  fields,  and  partly  by  a  British  garrison  at  Annapolis,  where  a 
governor  and  council  resided.  The  Indian  tribes  that  inhabited  the  territory 
maintained  their  native  independence,  though  they  were  attached  to  the 
French  by  the  ties  of  common  faith,  as  well  as  by  ancient  friendship  and 
connection.  On  the  island  of  Canso,  adjoining  the  coast  of  Nova  Scotia, 
the  British  had  formed  a  settlement,  which  was  resorted  to  by  the  fishermen 
of  New  England,  and  defended  by  a  small  fortification  garrisoned  by  a  de- 
tachment  of  troops  from  Annapolis.  The  island  of  Cape  Breton  was  pos- 
sessed by  the  French,  and  lay  between  the  settlements  of  the  English  in 
Canso  and  Newfoundland.  There  was  manifest  danger  and  impolicy  in 
such  intermixture  and  relative  position  of  the  settlements  of  rival  nations, 
who  had  long  disgraced  their  superior  genius  and  civilization  by  cherishing 
the  barbarous  and  impious  notion  that  they  were  the  natural  enemies  of  each 
other.  Their  close  vicinity  in  this  quarter  of  America  was  rendered  the 
more  dangerous  by  the  keen  competition  that  prevailed  between  them  for 
the  appropriation  of  the  principal  share  in  the  adjacent  fisheries.  Duquesnel, 
the  governor  of  Cape  Breton,  on  receiving  intelligence  of  the  declaration 
of  war  between  the  two  parent  states,  conceived  the  hope  of  destroying 
the  fishing  establishments  of  the  English  by  the  suddenness  and  vigor  of 
an  unexpected  attack.  His  first  blow^,  which  w^as  aimed  at  Canso,  proved 
successful.  [May  13,  1744.]  Duvivier,  whom  he  despatched  from  his 
head-quarters  at  Louisburg,  with  a  few  armed  vessels  and  a  force  of  nine 
hundred  men,  took  unresisted  possession  of  this  island,  burned  the  fort  and 
houses,  and  made  prisoners  of  the  garrison  and  inhabitants.  This  success 
Duquesnel  endeavoured  to  follow  up  by  the  conquest  of  Placentia  in  New 
foundland,  and  of  Annapolis  in  Nova  Scotia  ;  but  at  both  these  places  his 
forces  were  repulsed.  In  the  attack  of  Annapolis,  the  Krench  were  joined 
by  the  Indians  of  Nova  Scotia  ;  but  the  prudent  forecast  of  Shirley,  the 


CHAP.  I]  WAR  WITH  FRANCE.  l^ 

gov  ernor  of  Massachusetts,  had  induced  the  assembly  of  this  province,  some 
time  before,  to  contribute  a  reinforcement  of  two  hundred  men  for  the  greater 
security  of  the  garrison  of  Annapolis  ;  and  to  the  opportune  arrival  of  the 
succour  thus  afforded  the  preservation  of  the  place  was  ascribed. 

The  conduct  of  the  French  exposed  them,  and  most  justly,  to  the  charge 
of  rashness  and  precipitation.  By  the  impetuosity  of  their  commencement, 
and  the  extensive  scheme  of  operations  which  they  attempted  to  pursue, 
whiie  yet  unprepared  with  a  force  nearly  adequate  to  sustain  it,  they  prema- 
turely disclosed  designs  calculated  to  awaken  the  utmost  alarm  in  New 
England,  and  to  rouse  this  powerful  and  provoked  rival  to  a  proportioned 
stretch  and  vigor  of  hostile  reaction,  which  her  condition  and  resources 
were  much  better  fitted  to  support.  In  effect,  the  people  of  New  England 
were  stimulated  to  a  pitch  of  resentment,  apprehension,  and  martial  energy, 
that  very  shortly  produced  an  effort  of  which  neither  their  friends  nor  their 
enemies  had  supposed  them  to  be  capable,  and  which  excited  the  admiration 
of  both  Europe  and  America.  Measures  were  promptly  adopted,  in  the 
first  instance,  by  the  governments  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  to 
guard  their  frontiers  from  the  expected  incursions  of  the  French  and  of 
the  Indian  allies  of  France  in  Canada.  War  was  declared  against  the 
Indians  of  Nova  Scotia,  who  had  assisted  in  the  atiack  upon  Annapolis ;  all 
the  frontier  garrisons  were  reinforced  ;  new  forts  were  erected  ;  and  the  ma- 
terials of  defence  were  enlarged  by  a  seasonable  gift  of  artillery  from  the 
king.  Meanwhile,  though  the  French  were  not  prepared  to  prosecute  the 
extensive  plan  of  conquest  which  their  first  operations  announced,  their 
privateers  actively  waged  a  harassing  naval  warfare  that  greatly  endamaged 
the  commerce  of  New  England.  The  British  fisheries  on  the  coast  of 
Nova  Scotia  were  interrupted  ;  the  fishermen  declared  their  intention  of  re- 
turning no  more  to  their  wonted  stations  on  that  coast  ;  and  so  many  mer- 
chant-vessels were  captured  and  carried  into  Louisburg  in  the  course  of  this 
summer,  that  it  was  expected  that  in  the  following  year  no  branch  of  mari- 
time trade  would  be  pursued  by  the  New  England  merchants,  except  under 
the  protection  of  convoy. 

Aroused  by  circumstances  and  prospects  so  fraught  with  injury  and  men- 
ace, the  national  genius  of  New  England  began  fully  to  awaken  ;  and  that 
determined,  adventurous,  and  yet  dehberate  spirit  by  which  the  first  colo- 
nists of  this  region  were  distinguished  was  now  developed  among  their  de- 
scendants with  an  ardor  and  lustre  worthy  of  their  lineage.  In  the  close 
of  this  year,  it  was  the  general  sentiment  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts 
that  Louisburg  must  be  subdued  ;  but  there  prevailed  at  first  almost  as 
generally  the  impression  that  the  united  force  of  all  the  British  colonies  was 
inadequate  to  an  undertaking  of  so  much  magnitude  and  difficulty,  without 
assistance  from  the  parent  state.  The  town  of  Louisburg  was  built  by  the 
French  on  the  island  of  Cape  Breton,  soon  after  the  peace  of  Utrecht.  It 
was  designed  for  the  security  of  the  French  shipping  and  fisheries,  and 
fortified  with  a  rampart  of  stone  thirty-six  feet  in  height,  and  a  ditch 
eighty  feet  in  width.  There  were  six  bastions  and  three  batteries,  contain- 
ing embrasures  for  one  hundred  and  forty-eight  pieces  of  cannon,  of  which 
sixty-five  were  mounted,  and  sixteen  mortars.  On  an  island  at  the  entrance 
of  the  harbour  was  planted  a  battery  of  thirty  cannons  carrying  shot  of  the 
weight  of  twenty-eight  pounds  ;  and  at  the  bottom  of  the  harbour,  directly 
opposite  to  the  entrance,  was  the  grand  or  royal  battery,  containing  twenty- 


|g4  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

eight  cannons  that  carried  balls  of  forty-two  pounds,  and  two  of  smaller 
dimensions.  The  entrance  of  the  town,  on  the  land^side,  was  at  the  west 
gate,  across  a  drawbridge,  near  to  which  was  a  circular  battery,  mounting 
sixteen  guns  that  carried  shot  of  twenty-four  pounds.  Twenty -five  yea;-s 
had  been  spent  in  building  these  works,  which,  though  still  uncompleted, 
had  cost  France  at  least  thirty  millions  of  livres.  The  place  was  deemed 
so  strong  as  to  be  impregnable  except  by  blockade,  and  was  styled  by  some 
the  Dunkirk^  and  by  others  the  Gibraltar  of  *Bmerica.  In  peace,  it  afforded 
a  safe  and  convenient  retreat  for  the  ships  of  France  homeward  bound 
from  the  East  and  West  Indies  ;  and  in  war,  it  formed  a  source  of  distress 
and  annoyance  to  the  northern  English  colonies,  by  harbouring  the  numerous 
privateers  which  infested  their  coasts  for  the  destruction  of  their  fishery  and 
the  interruption  of  their  general  commerce.  It  manifestly  tended,  besides, 
to  facilitate  the  reacquisition  of  Nova  Scotia  by  France,  —  an  event  which 
would  cause  an  instant  and  formidable  increase  in  the  numerical  strength  of 
the  enemies  of  the  British  crown  and  people.  The  reduction  of  Louisburg 
was,  for  these  reasons,  an  object  of  ardent  desire  and  of  the  highest  import- 
ance to  New  England. 

In  the  autumn  of  this  year,  Governor  Shirley  of  Massachusetts,  impressed 
with  the  interest  and  eager  to  second  the  wish  and  spirit  of  his  people,  ad- 
dressed himself  to  the  British  ministry,  soliciting  assistance  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  Nova  Scotia  and  the  acquisition  of  Cape  Breton.  But  before  any 
answer  was  returned  to  his  application,  the  rising  ardor  of  the  colonists  and 
the  spirited  counsels  of  some  leading  characters  among  them,  with  whom 
he  was  wont  to  advise,  inspired  his  genius  with  the  design  of  attempting 
this  important  conquest  with  the  forces  of  New  England  alone.  In  the  com- 
mencement of  winter,  a  bold  surmise  began  to  circulate  and  be  rumored  in 
Massachusetts,  that  Louisburg,  however  strongly  fortified,  might  now  be 
surprised  and  taken  by  a  sudden  attack,  of  which  the  efficacy  would  be 
aided  by  the  severity  of  the  season.  This  effusion  of  popular  spirit,  though 
entirely  disregarded  by  many  sensible  and  considerate  persons,  did  not  es- 
cape the  more  sagacious  appreciation  of  Shirley  and  others,  by  whom  it 
was  justly  recognized  as  the  indication  of  that  heroic  confidence  which 
prognosticates  as  well  as  presupposes  victory,  —  facilitating  the  achievement 
of  the  purposes  which  it  inspires,  and  enlarging  the  limits  of  prudence  and 
possibility  to  the  resolute  and  the  brave.  Various  individuals  have  been 
particularized  as  candidates  for  the  honor  of  having  first  suggested  to  Shirley 
a  plan  for  the  immediate  attack  of  Louisburg,  or  at  least  afforded  him  the 
earliest  aid  in  composing  and  maturing  it.  Among  the  persons  with  whom 
he  took  counsel  on  this  subject  were  Benning  Wentworth,  the  governor 
of  New  Hampshire,  who,  entertaining  a  high  opinion  of  Shirley's  honor  and 
capacity,  was  implicitly  guided  by  his  directions  in  the  administration  of  his 
own  provincial  command  ;  and  William  Vaughan,  the  son  of  a  former  lieu- 
tenant-governor of  the  same  province,  a  man  remarkably  daring  in  his  tem- 
per, and  no  less  tenacious  of  his  purpose,  and  whose  zealous  patriotism  on 
this  occasion  made  amends  for  the  errors  of  his  father,  and  restored  the 
lustre  of  an  honorable  name.  Shirley,  aided  by  the  partners  of  his  coun- 
sels, made  the  most  diligent  inquiries  of  all  persons  who  had  ever  been  at 
Louisburg,  either  as  traders  or  as  prisoners,  respecting  the  actual  condition 
of  the  garrison  and  fortifications,  the  usual  periods  of  the  arrival  of  supplies 
from  Europe,  and  the  practicability  of  cruising  off  the  harbour  ;  and  received 


CHAP.  I.]  PROJECTED  REDUCTION  OF  LOUISBURG.  |g5 

such  information  as  encouraged  the  hope,  that,  even  if  an  attempt  to  sur- 
prise the  place  should  prove  abortive,  it  would  be  compelled  to  yield  to  the 
continued  onset  of  a  vigorous  siege,  before  reinforcements  could  arrive  from 
France. 

Among  other  circumstances  propitious  to  a  speedy  attack,  Duquesnel,  the 
governor  of  Cape  Breton,  unexpectedly  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  Du- 
chambon,  an  aged  officer  of  inferior  and  very  narrow  capacity  ;  Duvivier, 
a  man  of  spirit  and  activity,  had  sailed  for  Europe  ;  and  some  New  Eng- 
land colonists,  recently  liberated  from  captivity  at  Louisburg,  reported  that 
the  object  of  his  voyage  was  to  solicit  immediate  succour  from  France,  and 
that  the  stores  of  the  garrison,  meanwhile,  were  scanty,  the  troops  discon- 
tented and  mutinous,  and  the  works  in  some  places  mouldering  and  decayed. 
Animated  by  the  result  of  their  inquiries,  Shirley  and  his  friends  proceeded 
with  vigor  and  secrecy  to  frame  the  plan  of  ^n  expedition  ;  in  conformity 
with  which  a  land  force  of  four  thousand  men  was  to  be  conveyed  in  small 
transports  to  Canso,  and  thence,  on  the  first  favorable  opportunity,  to  ad- 
vance to  Chapeau-rouge  Bay,  with  cannon,  mortars,  and  all  the  stores  and 
ammunition  requisite  for  a  siege  ;  while,  to  prevent  the  arrival  of  supplies 
to  the  hostile  garrison,  sundry  vessels  were  to  cruise  off  the  harbour  of 
Louisburg  as  soon  as  the  state  of  the  season  would  permit.  An  estimate 
was  made  of  all  the  naval  force  that  could  be  collected  in  Massachusetts 
and  the  neighbouring  colonies  ;  and  though  the  armed  vessels  were  few,  and 
the  largest  carried  no  more  than  twenty  guns,  it  was  considered  that  a 
reasonable  prospect  of  success  might  be  derived  from  the  cooperation  of 
this  maritime  armament  with  the  land  troops.  But  the  most  sanguine  hopes 
were  indulged  of  the  opportune  arrival  of  an  auxiliary  force  from  Britain, 
in  comphance  with  the  recent  apphcation  of  Shirley  ;  or,  at  least,  that 
Commodore  Warren,  who  was  cruising  with  a  fleet  ofl"  the  Leeward  Islands, 
might  be  prevailed  on  to  detach  some  of  his  vessels  to  join  the  expedition. 
With  such  aid,  h  was  concluded  that  the  reduction  of  Louisburg  might  be 
expected. 

It  was  now  the  commencement  of  that  memorable  year  [1745]  during 
which  the  centre  of  the  British  empire  was  shaken  and  desolated  by  the 
last  rebellious  eftbrt  of  the  partisans  of  the  Pretender  to  overthrow  the  gov 
ernment  that  had  subsisted  since  the  Revolution.  Vainly  agitating  a  title  re- 
pudiated by  reason,  extinguished  by  time,  and  formidable  only  to  the  gallant 
or  desperate  visionaries  by  whom  it  w^as  recognized,  Charles  Edward  Stuart, 
with  a  handful  of  men,  contrived  to  rush  through  Scotland  and  reach  in 
mad  career  the  centre  of  England,  before  flight  and  discomfiture  terminated 
an  enterprise  less  dangerous  than  disgraceful  to  the  established  government 
of  Britain.  In  a  distant  extremity  of  the  empire,  the  year  w^as  illustrated 
by  events  more  honorable  to  the  British  name,  and  the  possessions  and  re- 
nown of  ^e  parent  state  were  enlarged  by  a  conquest,  for  which  she  was 
principally  indebted  to  the  enterprising  bravery  of  her  American  progeny. 
To  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  consisting  of  the  provincial  coun- 
cil and  the  representatives,  assembled  at  Boston  in  the  beginning  of  this 
year  [.January,  1745],  Governor  Shirley  conveyed  a  message,  acquainting 
them  that  he  was  prepared  to  communicate  a  matter  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance, but  of  such  a  nature  that  the  disclosure  of  it  to  the  public  at  large, 
before  it  had  undergone  the  fullest  consideration  of  the  legislature,  might  be 
detrimental  to  the  general  interest ;  and  desiring  that  they  would  therefore 


IQQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

consent  to  receive  it  under  the  seal  of  an  oath  of  secrecy,  engaging  that  it 
should  not  pubUcly  transpire  without  the  express  authorization  of  both  houses. 
The  Court  without  the  shghtest  scruple  acceded  to  this  extraordinary  re- 
quest ;  ^  and  Shirley  thereupon  communicated  the  plan  that  was  formed  for 
the  invasion  of  Cape  Breton,  together  with  the  result  of  the  inquiries  in 
which  he  had  been  engaged,  and  the  reasons  from  which  he  inferred  the 
likelihood  of  a  successful  issue  to  the  enterprise.  Nothing  could  exceed 
the  amazement  with  which  a  great  part  of  the  assembly  received  the  pro- 
posal of  this  adventurous  design;  by  some  of  the  members  it  was  at  once 
condemned  as  chimerical  and  extravagant  ;  and  with  the  majority  the  pre- 
vailing sentiment  was,  that,  even  although  a  hope  of  success  might  not  un- 
reasonably be  indulged,  the  magnitude  and  expense  of  the  effort  would 
prove  ruinous  to  the  province.  Yet,  in  professed  deference  to  the  recom- 
mendation of  the  governor,  and  perhaps  also  from  real  perplexity,  occasioned 
by  a  struggle  between  adventurous  spirit  and  considerate  prudence,  an  am- 
ple and  leisurely  dehberation  of  the  project  w^as  appointed  ;  and  for  several 
days  it  was  pondered  and  discussed  with  the  most  earnest  attention  and  no 
small  difference  of  opinion. 

By  the  partisans  of  the  measure  it  was  urged,  that  Louisburg,  while 
it  remained  in  the  possession  of  the  French,  would  prove  a  perpetual 
scourge  to  the  fisheries  and  commerce  of  New  England  ;  that  the  actual 
condition  of  the  place  seemed  propitious  to  an  immediate  assault,  while 
the  delay  of  a  single  year  would  enable  the  government  of  France  to 
render  it  utterly  impregnable  ;  that,  considering  the  present  advanced  pe- 
riod of  the  year,  it  was  unlikely  that  any  French  ships  of  war  would 
be  despatched  to  Louisburg  before  the  fate  of  the  enterprise  was  de- 
cided, and  that,  if  only  one  should  arrive,  the  flotilla  accompanying  the  be- 
siegers would  be  sufficient  to  overpower  her  ;  but  that,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  was  highly  probable  that  the  forces  of  New  England  would  be  strength- 
ened by  the  arrival  and  cooperation  of  a  naval  armament  from  Britain  or 
the  West  Indies.  In  war  it  was  admitted  that  there  must  always  be  un- 
certainty ;  but  the  chance  here  was  worth  the  stake  ;  for,  if  the  attempt 
should  fail,  the  province  was  strong  enough  to  sustain  the  weight  of  its  evil 
fortune  ;  while  a  successful  issue  would  not  only  free  the  coast  of  New 
England  from  molestation,  but  signally  promote  the  glory  and  advantage  of 
Britain,  give  peace,  perhaps,  to  Europe,  and  doubtless  procure  from  British 
justice  a  complete  reimbursement  of  the  charges  of  the  adventure.  To 
these  arguments  it  was  replied  by  the  opposers  of  the  scheme,  that  it  was 
better  to  endure  the  pillage  and  diminution  of  the  provincial  trade,  than  to 
risk  its  destruction  by  the  expense  and  the  failure  of  so  vast  an  enterprise  ; 
that  the  garrison  of  Louisburg  consisted  of  regular  troops,  whose  disci- 
pline would  compensate  their  numerical  inferiority,  and  who  in  the  field 

'  "  The  secret,"  says  Belknap,  "  was  kept  for  some  days  ;  till  an  honest  member,  who 
performed  the  family  "devotion  at  his  lodgings,  inadvertently  discovered  it,  by  praying  for  a 
blessing  on  the  attempt." 

Of  the  origin  and  motives  of  the  expedition  the  following  account  was  afterwards  published 
in  England  by  Josiah  Tucker,  the  celebrated  Dean  of  Gloucester,  a  man  whose  rare  sagacity 
and  penetration  did  not  prevent  him  from  being  transported  into  the  most  egregious  folly  by 

Eassion  and  prejudice:  —  "The  leading  men  in  the  government  of  Massachusetts,  havmg 
cen  guilty  of  certain  malpractices,  for  which  they  were  in  danger  of  being  called  to  an  ac- 
count, projected  the  expedition  against  Cape  Breton  in  order  to  divert  the  storm,"  With  equal 
sincerity  and  absurdity,  he  adds,  —  "  I  build  nothing  upon  this  statement;  and  I  only  offer  it 
(because  not  corroborated  by  sufficient  evidence)  as  a  probable  case,  and  as  my  own  opin- 
ion."    Tucker's  Humble  and  Earnest.  Address,  «&c.,  Postscript. 


CHAP.  I.]  PROJECTED  REDUCTION   OF  LOUISBURG.  I^'jf 

would  find  no  difficulty  in  overpowering  the  inexperienced  militia  of  New 
England  ;  that  it  was  impossible  to  rely  on  the  accounts  that  were  given  of 
the  decayed  state  of  the  fortifications  of  Louisburg  or  the  disaffection  of 
the  French  troops,  and  that  history  contained  few  instances  of  the  success 
of  efforts  prompted  by  such  expectations  ;  that  it  was  absurd,  especially 
after  the  repeated  experience  of  the  tardiness  of  British  succour,  to  expect 
to  be  thus  speedily  joined  by  a  naval  force  from  England  ;  that  it  was  more 
probable  that  the  besieged  would  be  aided  by  the  arrival  of  French  ships  of 
war,  with  which  the  utmost  maritime  force  of  New  England  would  be  in- 
sufficient to  cope  ;  that  the  preparations  for  the  expedition  would  be  ob- 
structed by  the  rigor  of  the  season,  and  the  unwillingness  of  the  people 
to  exchange  the  comfort  and  repose  of  their  homes,  at  such  a.  period  of 
the  year,  for  the  toils,  privations,  and  dangers  of  so  dubious  an  enterprise  ; 
that,  even  if  success  were  attainable,  only  a  disproportioned  share  of  its 
beneficial  efTects  would  be  reaped  by  the  colonists  ;  and  that  failure,  which 
seemed  the  more  likely  result,  would  expose  them  not  only  to  a  heavy 
and  unpitied  loss,  but  to  the  reproaches  of  England  for  rashly  undertaking 
measures  of  such  importance  without  her  sanction  or  direction. 

These  views  having  prevailed  with  a  majority  of  the  assembly,  the  pro- 
jected expedition  was  disallowed  ;  and  for  some  days  all  'thoughts  of  it 
seemed  to  be  laid  aside.  Shirley,  however,  was  not  to  be  diverted  from 
his  partiahty  for  the  enterprise,  nor  yet  from  his  hope  of  inducing  the 
provincial  authorities  to  embrace  it.  But  wisely  refraining  from  personal 
importunity  with  the  assembly  or  private  applications  to  the  members,  he 
adopted  the  more  prudent  and  efficacious  poHcy  of  promoting  petitions  in 
unison  with  his  views  from  eminent  merchants  and  other  persons  of  con- 
sideration in  the  colony.  These  petitions,  which  were  signed  by  some 
wealthy  inhabitants  of  Boston,  and  by  almost  all  the  merchants  of  Salem 
and  Marblehead,  earnestly  entreated  the  assembly,  for  various  reasons,  and 
especially  for  the  sake  of  preserving  the  fisheries  from  entire  ruin,  to  recon- 
sider their  recent  determination,  and  once  more  revolve,  ere  it  was  yet  too 
late,  the  practicability  and  expediency  of  the  enterprise  suggested  by  the 
governor.  In  compliance  with  these  petitions,  the  assembly  again  resumed 
the  consideration  of  this  interesting  affair.  Their  deliberations  were  con- 
ducted with  the  utmost  calmness  and  moderation  ;  and  no  other  division 
appeared,  than  what  was  manifestly  owing,  and  on  both  sides  was  candidly 
ascribed,  to  conscientious  difference  of  opinion  with  respect  to  the  true  in- 
terests of  the  province  and  the  empire.  After  a  long  debate,  a  resolution 
in  favor  of  the  expedition  was  carried  by  the  majority  of  a  single  voice. ^ 
[January  .26,  1745.] 

The  announcement  of  this  important  determination  of  the  legislature  was 
followed  by  an  entire  and  cordial  union  of  all  parties  in  the  measures  that 
were  necessary  to  carry  it  into  immediate  execution.     With  a  magnanimous 

^  Among  the  members  of  this  assembly  were  two  persons  who  afterwards  acted  a  conspic- 
uous part  in  the  most  interesting  scenes  of  American  story,  —  Hutchinson,  who  became  the 
historian  and  governor  of  Massachusetts ;  and  Oliver,  who  was  associated  with  him  in  politi- 
cal sentiment,  and  in  command  as  lieutenant-governor.  Both  had  expressed  their  disapproba- 
tion of  the  expedition.  As  Oliver  was  repairing  to  the  house  on  the  day  when  the  proposal, 
which  he  was  determined  to  resist,  was  finally  to  be  debated,  he  chanced  to  fall  and  break 
his  leg.  In  consequence  of  his  absence,  when  the  house  divided,  the  numbers  on  both  sides 
were  found  to  be  equal.  Hutchinson,  who  was  the  speaker,  thereupon  surrendered  his  opin- 
ion to  what  seemed  to  him  the  general  desire  of  the  province,  and  gave  his  casting  vote  in 
favor  of  the  expedition.     Gordon. 


168  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

emulation  to  defeat  their  own  predictions  and  vindicate  their  patriotism, 
the  former  opponents  of  the  expedition  now  zealously  cooperated  with  its 
original  promoters  in.  accelerating  its  preparatory  arrangements,  and  in  sug- 
gesting ^  and  facilitating  the  procurement  of  every  attainable  means  of  in- 
creasing the  likelihood  of  a  successful  issue.  In  furtherance  of  this  object, 
an  embargo  was  laid  on  the  shipping  in  all  the  provincial  harbours  ;  and 
messengers  were  despatched  to  the  other  New  England  States,  and  to  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania,  sohciting  their  assistance  and  coop- 
eration in  the  enterprise.  All,  however,  declined  to  take  any  share  in  it,  or 
to  render  the  slightest  aid,  except  the  New  England  States  ;  and  even  of 
these,  Rhode  Island,  after  voting  a  contingent  of  three  hundred  men,  acted 
with  so  much  tardiness  and  hesitation  in  carrying  this  resolve  into  effect, 
that  the  enterprise  was  concluded  before  her  troops  were  ready  for  the 
field.  But  the  zeal  and  ardor  that  broke  forth  among  all  classes  of  people 
in  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  New  Hampshire,  supplied,  as  well  as 
reproached,  the  supine  indifference  of  the  other  provinces.  There,  every 
private  interest,  political  or  patrimonial,  was  either  spontaneously  absorbed 
by  concern  for  the  general  advantage  and  honor,  or  was  compelled,  by  the 
irresistible  cuyent  of  the  public  will,  to  bend  beneath  this  supreme  consid- 
eration. Committees  of  war  were  appointed  by  the  several  governments, 
and  authorized  to  enter  all  private  dwelhngs  and  warehouses,  and  to  appre- 
ciate and  seize  every  article  of  clothing  or  provision  adapted  to  the  exigen- 
cies of  the  public  service.  A  fleet  of  twelve  small  vessels  was  formed 
by  the  armed  sloops  belonging  to  the  four  New  England  States,  and  by 
hiring  two  privateers  that  belonged  to  Rhode  Island  ;  and  the  deficiency  of 
heavy  artillery  was  supplied  by  borrowing  a  number  of  cannons  from  New 
York.  An  express  boat  was  despatched  to  Commodore  Warren  to  ac- 
quaint him  with  the  projected  expedition,  and  to  beseech  the  assistance  of 
some  part  of  his  squadron. 

The  preparations  of  the  colonists  were  facilitated  by  the  extraordinary 
mildness  of  the  winter,  and  by  the  opportune  and  unexpected  arrival  of 
some  merchant-vessels  from  England,  conveying  an  ample  store  of  various 
materials  which  were  indispensably  requisite,  and  of  which  the  deficiency 
was  least  capable  of  being  supplied  in  America.  The  preceding  season  hav- 
ing been  remarkably  fruitful,  the  provisions  required  for  victualling  the 
forces  were  plentiful  and  cheap  ;  and  though  war  had  subsisted  for  some 
months  with  France,  neither  the  French  forces  in  Canada,  nor  their  Indian 
allies,  had  given  any  molestation  to  the  frontiers  of  New  England.  Some 
of  the  Indian  friends  of  the  French,  indeed,  having  discovered  the  project 
of  the  English  colonists,  carried  the  tidings  to  Canada  ;  but  their  report 
was  derided  by  the  French  as  absurd  and  incredible,  and  no  intelligence 
of  the  approaching  invasion  reached  Cape  Breton.  As  the  preparations 
advanced,  the  expense  of  them  was  found  greatly  to  exceed  the  original  es- 
timates and  expectations,  insomuch  that  several  of  the  first  promoters  of  the 
scheme  confessed,  that,  had  they  foreseen  its  actual  cost,  they  would  never 

'  Many  ridiculous  suggestions  Were  tendered,  and  much  wild  and  chimerical  expectation  in- 
dulged. A  catalogue  of  the  follies  thus  engendered  by  zeal,  vanity,  and  ignorance  has  been 
preserved  by  Belknap,  and  amply  demonstrates,  that,  if  half  of  the  schemes  benevolently 
elaborated  by  patriotic  absurdity  had  been  entertained,  the  colonial  forces  would  have  in- 
curred greater  dangers  from  their  friends  than  from  their  enemies.  Perhaps  no  enterprise  of 
great  general  interest  was  ever  projected  in  the  world,  without  an  attendant  crop  of  similar 
extravagances  of  speculation.  ,  -' 


CHAP.  I]  PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  EXPEDITION.  IQQ 

have  consented  to  it  ;  but  they  protested  that  it  was  now  too  late  to  recede. 
Governor  Shirley  announced  that  in  this  crisis  he  considered  himself  entitled 
to  depart  from  his  instructions  with  regard  to  paper  money,  and  a  large  issue 
took  place  under  his  sanction  in  Massachusetts,  —  an  example  which  was 
followed  in  New  Hampshire. 

The  selection  of  a  proper  commander  of  the  forces  was  a  nice  and  diffi- 
cult duty,  of  which  Shirley  acquitted  himself  with  his  usual  prudence. 
Upon  the  character  and  capacity  of  the  commander  depended  not  only  the 
success,  but  the  actual  prosecution,  of  the  enterprise  ;  for,  notwithstanding 
the  liberal  recompense  by  which  enlistment  was  encouraged,  it  was  impos- 
sible, in  a  country  where  indigence  was  unknown,  to  collect  any  consid- 
erable number  of  men  willing  to  forsake  their  domestic  connections  and  em- 
ployments, and  to  engage  in  a  painful  and  hazardous  expedition,  unless  the 
commander  of  it  were  an  individual  who  enjoyed  their  attachment  and  re- 
spect. Military  skill,  and  experience  in  the  conduct  of  regular  warfare,  were 
qualifications  which  it  would  have  been  vain  to  seek  for  in  New  England  ; 
but  good  sense,  ability,  resolution,  and  popularity  were  indispensable  requi- 
sites. These  qualities  were  very  happily  combined  in  William  Pepperell, 
a  colonel  of  the  Massachusetts  mihtia,  an  eminent  merchant,  possessed  of  a 
great  landed  estate,  and  generally  known  and  esteemed  in  Massachusetts  and 
New  Hampshire.  He  was  not  a  stranger  to  such  scenes  of  war  as  Ameri- 
can experience  could  supply,  —  having  served  from  his  youth  in  the  provin- 
cial militia,  and  inhabiting  a  part  of  the  country  peculiarly  exposed  to  the 
assault  of  French  and  Indian  hostility.  Happily  for  his  country,  and  for  his 
own  fame,  Pepperell  was  induced  by  the  earnest  instances  of  Shirley  to  ac- 
cept the  chief  command  of  the  forces  ;  and  next  to  him  in  authority  was 
Roger  Wolcott,  the  lieutenant-governor  of  Connecticut,  and  one  of  the  most 
respected  and  popular  of  its  inhabitants.  The  station  and  character  of  these 
men,  and  the  great  sacrifices  which  they  now  incurred  of  ease  and  interest, 
produced  a  powerful  effect  in  inciting  persons  of  humbler  rank  to  abandon 
for  a  season  their  own  less  important  domestic  concerns  for  the  service  of 
their  country,  and  to  imitate  on  a  smaller  scale  the  virtue  and  public  spirit 
of  their  favorite  leaders. 

Many  who  enlisted  as  private  soldiers  were  themselves  freeholders,  and 
many  more  were  the  sons  of  thriving  farmers  and  substantial  tradesmen,  — 
men,  whom  only  views  of  public  interest  could  persuade  to  enHst,  or  to 
consent  to  the  enlistment  of  their  children.  It  was  strikingly  and  justly  re- 
marked of  this  famous  enterprise,  comprehending  the  reduction  of  a  reg- 
ular fortress,  garrisoned  by  disciplined  troops,  that  it  was  conceived  and 
planned  by  a  lawyer,  and  undertaken  and  conducted  by  a  merchant  com- 
manding a  body  of  husbandmen  and  mechanics.^  George  Whitefield,  the 
Methodist,  was  at  this  time  travelling  and  preaching  in  New  England  ;  and 
so  great  was  the  repute  of  his  sanctity  and  talents,  that  many  persons  anx- 
iously endeavoured  to  derive  from  his  opinion  an  augury  of  the  issue  of  the 
expedition.  With  some  difficulty  he  was  prevailed  on  to  suggest  a  motto 
for  the  flag  of  the  New  Hampshire  regiment  ;  and  the  words  which  he  pro- 
posed were  "  JS'il  desperandum  Christo  sub  duce.'"  Some  of  his  follow- 
ers,  construing  this   into  a  benediction  of  the  enterprise  by  a  highly  gifted 

'  "  Instructed  by  such  examples,  let  rulers  be  persuaded  that  many  things,  which  appear  to 
be  beyond  measure  daring  and  full  of  danger,  are  not  less  safe  in  the  execution  than  admirable 
in  the  attempt ;  and  that  the  design  itself,  whether  frustrated  or  successful,  if  conducted  with 
ability,  will  draw  after  it  immortal  honors."     Polybius. 
VOL.    II.  22 


I7Q  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

servant  of  Heaven,  enlisted  into  it  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  rehgious  cru- 
sade ;  and  one  of  them,  a  regimental  chaplain,  carried  on  his  shoulder  a 
hatchet,  with  which  he  menaced  the  destruction  of  the  images  in  the  French 
churches.  By  dint  of  vigor  and  promptitude  of  exertion,  aided  by  the  gen- 
eral determination  to  spare  no  expense  that  could  improve  the  chances  of 
success,  there  was  embodied  in  New  England,  even  within  a  shorter  time 
than  had  been  anticipated,  a  force,  of  which  three  thousand  two  hundred 
and  fifty  men  were  supphed  by  Massachusetts,  five  hundred  and  sixteen  by 
Connecticut,  and  three  hundred  and  fifty  by  New  Hampshire.  Never  did 
an  army  take  the  field,  in  civilized  warfare,  less  formidable  by  its  experience 
and  tactical  accomphshments,  or  more  hkely,  from  the  piety  and  virtue,  the 
manly  fortitude  and  patriotic  enthusiasm  that  prevailed  in  its  ranks,  to  min- 
ister occasion  either  of  unstained  and  honorable  triumph,  or  of  profound 
affliction  and  regret  to  its  country.  The  earnest  expectation  that  pervaded 
New  England  was  at  once  sustained  and  regulated  by  religious  sentiment. 
Fasts  and  prayers  implored  the  divine  blessing  on  the  enterprise  ;  and  the 
people  and  their  rulers,  having  exhausted  all  the  resources  of  human  en- 
deavour, and  girded  the  choicest  of  them  for  battle,  now  sought  to  prepare 
their  minds  for  either  fortune  by  diligent  address  to  the  Great  Source  of 
hope  and  consolation,  and  awaited  the  result  with  anxious  and  submissive 
awe,  or  with  stern  composure  and  confidence. 

The  troops  of  Massachusetts  were  embarked  and  ready  to  sail  from 
Boston  [March  23,  1745],  when  the  express-boat,  which  had  been  de- 
spatched to  Commodore  Warren,  returned  with  an  answer  from  him,  im- 
porting, that,  as  the  provincial  enterprise  was  not  directed  or  sanctioned 
by  Great  Britain,  he  must  decline  to  take  any  share  in  it.  This  discour- 
aging intelligence  Shirley  and  Pepperell,  happily,  determined  to  withhold 
from  the  public  and  the  army  ;  apprehending  that  its  disclosure  at  such  a 
crisis  might  induce  a  total  relinquishment  of  the  expedition,  which  they  yet 
hoped,  even  if  it  should  fail  in  reducing  Louisburg,  might  be  productive  of 
advantageous  results,  in  the  recovery  of  Canso,  the  destruction  of  the  Fretich 
fishery,  and  the  increased  security  of  the  British  dominion  in  Nova  Scotia. 
The  Massachusetts  armament  accordingly  sailed  the  next  morning  [March 
24,  1745],  and,  reaching  Canso,  found  the  New  Hampshire  troops,  under 
the  command  of  Colonel  Samuel  Moore,  already  arrived  at  this  place,  where 
the  entire  assemblage  of  the  provincial  army  was  soon  after  completed  by 
the  accession  of  the  forces  of  Connecticut.  Full  of  health,  courage,  and 
intrepidity,  the  troops  here  aw^aited  the  dissolution  of  the  ice  by  which  Cape 
Breton  w^as  environed  ;  when  an  important  addition  was  made  to  their 
force,  and  the  highest  animation  imparted  to  their  hopes,  by  the  sudden  and 
unexpected  arrival  of  Commodore  Warren  with  four  ships  of  war,  —  one 
of  sixty  guns,  and  the  others  of  forty  guns  each.  [April  23,  1745.]  Shir- 
ley's application  to  the  British  ministry,  in  the  preceding  autumn,  had  pre- 
vailed with  them  to  despatch  orders  to  Warren  to  repair,  with  as  many  ships 
as  could  be  safely  detached  from  his  station,  to  Boston,  in  order  to  concert 
measures  for  the  general  promotion  of  the  king's  interest  in  America.  In 
consequence  of  these  orders,  which  he  received  shortly  after  his  refusal  to 
comply  with  the  provincial  invitation  of  his  assistance,  Warren  was  making 
sail  for  Boston,  when,  learning  from  a  New  England  vessel  that  the  provin- 
cial forces  had  already  proceeded  to  Canso,  he  altered  his  own  course, 
and  repaired  thither  also.    Warren  was  an  active,  judicious,  and  experienced 


CHAP.   I.]  SIEGE  OF  LOUISBURG.  17| 

commander  ;  and  nothing  could  be  more  seasonable  or  elating  than  his  arrival 
at  this  juncture  with  a  naval  armament  that  not  only  promised  material  as- 
sistance in  the  siege,  but  secured  the  besiegers  against  danger  from  any  mari- 
time force  arriving  from  France.  After  a  short  consultation  with  Pep- 
perell,  the  commodore,  with  his  ships  of  war,  sailed  to  join  and  cooperate 
with  a  few  armed  sloops  of  the  colonists,  which  had  been  for  some  time 
engaged  in  cruising  before  Louisburg,  and  had  already  performed  the  signal 
service  of  capturing  several  vessels  bound  for  this  place  with  provisions 
and  West  India  commodities,  and  even  repulsed  a  French  ship  of  thirty- 
six  guns,  which  vainly  attempted  to  penetrate  into  the  harbour.  Though 
these  cruisers  were  daily  descried  by  the  French  from  the  walls  of  Louis- 
burg, no  suspicion  was  awakened  of  the  enterprise  to  which  their  operations 
were  subservient. 

Soon  after  the  departure  of  the  British  ships  of  war  from  Canso,  Pep- 
perell,  learning  that  the  state  of  the  season  would  admit  of  a  disembarka- 
tion at  Cape  Breton,  summoned  his  forces  to  active  service,  and,  with  the 
troops  and  transports,  safely  arrived  in  Chapeau-rouge  Bay.  [April  30, 
1745.]  In  the  plan  of  operations  composed  and  communicated  to  him  by 
Shirley,  he  was  directed  to  make  a  nocturnal  assault  on  the  French  gar- 
rison, and  endeavour  to  carry  the  fortifications  by  storm  and  surprise.  This 
rash  enterprise,  which,  from  the  strength  of  the  place,  would  doubtless  have 
been  attended  with  severe  loss  and  a  discouraging  repulse  in  the  commence- 
ment of  the  siege,  was  happily  prevented  by  a  calm  which  hindered  the 
transports  from  entering  Chapeau-rouge  Bay,  till  the  morning  light  revealed 
their  approach  to  the  French,  —  with  whom  so  little  apprehension  existed 
of  the  vicinity  of  an  enemy,  that,  when  the  alarm  of  actual  invasion  was 
sounded,  most  of  their  officers  were  roused  by  it  from  the  slumbers  which 
they  had  just  begun  to  court,  after  the  festive  fatigue  of  a  ball.  The  New 
England  forces,  having  accomplished  their  landing,  after  a  vain  attempt  to 
obstruct  them,  in  which  the  French  w^ere  repulsed  with  some  loss,  made 
active  preparation  to  invest  the  city.  Vaughan,  who  had  exerted  himself 
with  intense  and  diffusive  ardor  in  promoting  the  expedition,  enjoyed  the 
rank  of  lieutenant-colonel  in  the  provincial  army,  but  declined  to  accept  any 
stated  position  or  particular  command  ;  and  possessing  a  seat  in  this  coun- 
cil of  war,  held  himself  ready  to  undertake  any  service  which  the  general 
might  think  adapted  to  his  capacity.  He  now  conducted  an  advanced 
column  of  the  forces  through  the  woods,  within  sight  of  Louisburg,  and 
greeted  the  first  view  of  the  place  and  its  battlements  with  three  cheers. 
Thence,  at  the  head  of  a  detachment  composed  chiefly  of  the  New  Hamp- 
shire troops,  he  marched  during  the  night  to  the  north-east  part  of  the  har- 
bour, and  setting  fire  to  certain  large  warehouses  situated  in  this  quarter, 
destroyed  them,  together  with  a  vast  collection  of  naval  stores  which  they 
contained.  The  smoke  of  this  conflagration,  driven  by  the  wind  into  the 
grand  battery,  excited  so  much  terror  and  confusion  among  the  French,  that 
they  hastily  abandoned  it,  and,  spiking  its  guns,  retired  into  the  city. 

The  next  morning,  Vaughan,  with  a  handful  of  men,  took  possession  of 
the  deserted  battery,  and,  in  spite  of  a  prompt  effort  of  the  French  to  dis- 
lodge him  and  regain  the  post  they  had  too  lightly  yielded,  maintained  his 
acquisition  till  it  was  effectually  secured  by  the  arrival  of  a  reinforcement 
adequate  to  its  preservation.  The  guns  of  this  battery  were  now  unspiked 
and  turned  against  the  town  with  a  good  deal  of  execution,  but  with  so  great 


172  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

an  expense  of  powder,  that  it  was  judged  proper,  after  a  while,  to  discon- 
tinue the  firing  and  reserve  the  besiegers'  ammunition  for  the  fascine  bat- 
teries. The  remarkable  success  which  had  thus  far  attended  the  enterprise 
contributed  to  animate  the  troops  with  resolution  to  support  the  arduous 
toils  and  formidable  obstructions  by  which  they  now  plainly  perceived  that 
their  hopes  of  victory  were  confronted.  The  fortifications,  it  was  ascer- 
tained, were  of  prodigious  strength,  and  the  approach  to  the  town  exceed- 
ingly difficult.  For  nearly  two  miles  the  besiegers  had  to  transport  their 
cannon,  mortars,  and  ammunition  across  a  morass,  where  horses  or  oxen 
would  have  been  unserviceable,  and  where  only  the  personal  labor  of  men 
could  be  efficiently  employed.  This  service  was  allotted  to  such  of  the 
troops  as  had  been  famiharized  to  toils  of  a  kindred  description  by  the 
employment  of  cutting  down  pine-trees  in  New  England,  and  dragging  them 
through  the  forests  and  across  the  swamps,  to  be  disposed  of  as  masts  for 
vessels.  Unacquainted  with  the  art  of  regular  approaches,  the  besiegers 
relied  on  no  other  shelter  than  what  darkness  afforded,  and  advanced  their 
works  only  during  the  night ;  and  when  some  one  of  greater  experience 
attempted  to  instruct  them  in  processes  of  more  scientific  and  continuous 
operation,  they  were  only  moved  to  merriment  by  the  strange  nomenclature 
of  his  art,  and  persisted  with  stubborn,  and  yet  animated,  exertion  in  pur- 
suing the  simple  dictates  of  their  own  uninstructed  judgments.  The  heroic 
and  patriotic  ardor  which  hurried  them  to  the  field  was  by  no  means  calcu- 
lated to  prepare  their  spirits  for  the  mechanical  submission,  precision,  and 
regularity  which  characterize  the  movements  of  disciplined  soldiers.  It 
was  a  fortunate  circumstance  for  them,  during  the  progress  of  these  opera- 
tions, that,  from  the  mutinous  disposition  which  the  troops  composing  the 
garrison  of  Louisburg  had  previously  manifested,  their  officers  could  not 
trust  them  to  make  a  single  sortie,  lest  they  should  seize  the  opportunity 
of  deserting.  A  vigorous  sally  from  the  garrison  would  have  been  attended 
with  great  peril  to  the  besieging  troops,  who,  though  they  displayed  the  ut- 
most steadiness  and  circumspection  when  in  the  trenches,  and  always  pre- 
sented a  formidable  front  to  the  enemy,  yet  evinced  their  want  of  discipHne 
in  the  rear  of  their  encampment,  which  continually  exhibited  a  tumultuary 
scene  of  gayety,  pastime,  and  confusion.  At  length  [May  20,  1745],  by 
dint  of  the  most  indefatigable  exertions,  five  fascine  batteries  were  erected, 
and  a  fire  was  maintained  from  them  with  considerable  effisct. 

While  the  land  forces,  aided  by  a  detachment  of  Warren's  marines,  were 
thus  employed  on  shore,  the  ships  of  war  and  armed  sloops  cruised,  with 
vigilant  watch,  off  the  harbour  ;  and  on  the  18th  of  May,  the  commodore 
succeeded  in  capturing  a  French  man-of-war  of  sixty-four  guns,  carrying  a 
large  supply  of  stores  of  all  sorts,  intended  for  the  use  of  the  garrison.^ 
The  disappointment  which  this  capture  occasioned  to  the  besieged  was  pro- 
portioned to  the  joy  which  it  afforded  to  the  besiegers,  whose  auxiliary 
naval  force  was  soon  after  augmented  by  the  arrival  and  cooperation  of  sev- 
eral other  English  ships  of  war.      The   siege  was  now  pressed  with  in- 

^  Tliis  vessel  was  commanded  by  the  Marquis  de  la  Maison-forte,  whose  arrival,  the  be- 
siegers learned,  had  been  anxiously  expected  by  the  French  garrison.  How  to  proclaim, 
without  seeming  to  overvalue,  his  capture  was  the  difficulty.  At  length  Warren  suggested 
a  plan  which  was  adopted  by  Pepperell.  The  marquis,  who  was  a  humane  man,  was  per- 
tuaded  to  visit  his  countrymen,  the  French  prisoners,  in  tlieir  confinement,  and  to  write  a  let- 
ter to  Duchambon,  describing  what  he  had  witnessed,  and  recommending  that  the  English 
prisoners  should  be  treated  with  equal  humanity  and  consideration.  This  letter,  as  was.fore- 
«een,  struck  the  French  commander  with  surprise  and  consternation.  ■ 


OHAF.  I.]  CAPTURE  OF  LOUISBURO.  J  73 

creased  activity  and  vigilance  by  Warren  and  his  squadron,  and  with  the 
most  vigorous  perseverance  by  the  land  forces.  A  battery,  constructed  by 
the  besiegers  in  a  commanding  situation,  began  to  overpower  the  island 
battery  of  the  garrison  ;  the  circular  battery  was  nearly  demolished  ;  and 
the  other  fortifications,  as  well  as  the  town  itself,  had  sustained  considerable 
injury.  The  practicabihty  of  capture  by  storm  was  at  length  suggested  ;  and 
after  some  consultation  between  Pepperell  and  Warren,  preparations  were 
made  to  bring  some  of  the  ships  of  war  into  the  harbour  to  cooperate  with 
the  land  forces  in  a  joint  attack  upon  the  town.  Duchambon,  the  com- 
mander of  the  garrison,  perceiving  the  symptoms  of  a  general  assault,  afraid 
to  incur  the  risk  of  it,  and  disheartened  alike  by  the  vigor  of  the  besiegers 
and  the  hopelessness  of  rehef  from  France,  demanded  an  armistice  for  the 
purpose  of  arranging  the  terms  of  a  capitulation.  [June  15,  1745.]  Two 
days  after,  and  at  the  end  of  a  siege  of  forty-nine  days,  the  city  of  Louis- 
burg  and  island  of  Cape  Breton  were  surrendered  to  the  crown  of  Great 
Britain.  The  garrison,  which  thus  became  prisoners,  was  found  to  consist 
of  six  hundred  regular  troops  and  thirteen  hundred  militia,  and  possessed 
a  store  of  provisions  and  ammunition  sufficient  to  have  prolonged  the  siege 
for  five  or  six  months.  When  the  captors  entered  the  fortress,  and  per- 
ceived its  massive  and  but  slightly  diminished  strength,  the  bravest  among 
them  were  struck  with  awe,  and  congratulated  themselves  on  the  circum- 
stances that  had  so  happily  intercepted  the  impracticable  designs,  first  of 
carrying  it  by  surprise,  and  afterwards  of  reducing  it  by  storm.  Nothing, 
indeed,  could  have  occurred  more  opportunely  for  the  besiegers  than  the 
surrender.  From  the  length  and  hardships  of  the  siege,  their  powder  had 
begun  to  fail,  and  their  effective  strength  was  diminished  by  disease. 
Urgent  application  had  been  made  to  New  England  for  reinforcements 
both  of  men  and  ammunition  ;  and  though  the  hope  of  victory  was  there 
greatly  depressed,  the  application  was  promptly  comphed  with  ;  and  from 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  there  were  despatched  additional  troops  and 
supphes,  which,  however,  did  not  reach  their  destination  till  after  the 
contest  was  decided. 

Scarcely  had  the  surrender  taken  place,  and  the  besieging  troops  ob- 
tained the  shelter  of  the  captured  town,  than  the  periodical  rains  began,  and 
for  ten  days  prevailed  with  a  violence  that  must  have  greatly  impeded  their 
operations,  and  would  probably  have  induced  them  to  relinquish  the  siege 
altogether.  Till  the  conclusion  of  the  enterprise,  the  utmost  harmony  pre- 
vailed between  the  provincial  general  and  the  British  commodore  ;  the 
naval  operations  were  conducted  with  vigor  and  skill  ;  and  the  behaviour 
of  the  land  forces  (necessarily  void  of  the  factitious  merits  of  disciplined 
soldiers)  was  generally  characterized  by  a  firm,  unbending  fortitude,  and  a 
heroic  daring  and  determination,  that  reflected  no  less  honor  on  them  than 
on  the  country  to  which,  and  not  to  military  habit  or  scientific  tuition,  their 
character  derivatively  belonged.  Notwithstanding  the  length  and  hardships 
of  the  siege,  the  provincial  army  lost  altogether  by  sickness  and  the  sword 
little  more  than  a  hundred  men,  of  whom  sixty  perished  in  an  unfortunate 
attack  on  the  island  battery. 

The  conquest  thus  achieved  w^as  not  less  advantageous  to  Britain  than 
injurious  to  France,  whose  schemes  were  disconcerted  and  deranged  by  it 
in  a  remarkable  degree.  In  consequence  of  Duvivier's  applications  to  the 
French  court,  he    was  despatched  with  a  force  which  would  have   oeeii 


174  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

sufficient  not  only  to  secure  Loulsburg  against  the  possibility  of  capture,  but 
to  undertake  the  reconquest  of  Nova  Scotia  ;  but  the  efficacy  of  the  suc- 
cour which  he  was  hastening  to  bring  was  defeated  by  the  superior  vigor 
and  promptitude  of  New  England  ;  and  learning  on  his  passage  that  Louis- 
burg  had  fallen,  he  returned  with  the  mortifying  intelligence  to  France.  The 
town  was  taken  at  a  period  of  the  year  when  the  resort  of  many  French 
ships  to  the  harbour  was  usually  expected.  To  decoy  them,  the  French 
flag  was  kept  flying  on  the  ramparts  of  Louisburg  ;  and  the  eflect  of  this 
manoeuvre  was  the  capture  of  so  many  vessels,  as,  added  to  the  prizes 
acquired  during  the  siege,  were  valued  at  upwards  of  a  miUion  of  pounds 
sterling. 

The  provincial  troops,  who  performed  the  original  and  most  substantial 
part  of  the  enterprise,  and  who  for  nearly  a  year  formed  the  sole  British 
garrison  by  which  Louisburg  w^as  occupied,  together  with  the  crews  of  the 
New  England  vessels  which  cooperated  with  the  British  ships  of  war,  vainly 
expected  and  demanded  a  share  of  the  prize-money  that  accrued  from  the 
captures.  Their  claim  to  participate  in  this  advantage  was  disallowed  by 
the  British  government  ;  and  the  whole  of  the  prize-money  was  appropri- 
ated to  the  officers  and  crews  of  the  royal  ships  of  war.  Unfortunately,  the 
harmony  that  prevailed  between  the  provincial  forces  and  the  British  naval 
squadron  during  the  siege  did  not  survive  its  successful  issue  ;  and  it  was 
not  without  dispute  that  Pepperell  asserted  his  just  right  to  receive  the  de- 
livery of  the  keys  of  the  town,  and  to  take  precedence  of  a  detachment  of 
the  naval  forces  in  entering  to  assume  its  occupation.  The  British  govern- 
ment, though  favored  by  this  provincial  enterprise  with  the  first  ray  of  suc- 
cess that  illustrated  its  arms  during  the  war,  displayed  the  most  ilhberal  desire 
to  magnify  the  merits  of  the  royal  and  naval  force,  and  to  depreciate  the  fair 
claim  of  the  colonists  to  the  glory  of  the  conquest.  Great  Britain,  indeed, 
partook  the  general  astonishment  which  the  achievement  excited  ;  but  her 
ministers  blended  with  their  surprise  no  small  degree  of  jealousy  against  the 
province  and  the  provincial  pohticians,  w^ho  pretended,  by  an  especial  vic- 
torious energy,  to  redeem  the  disgrace  of  general  disaster  and  defeat.^ 
Among  other  rewards,  the  title  of  a  baronet  was  conferred  as  an  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  services  of  Warren  ;  and  though  a  seeming  impartiality 
of  recompense  was  studied,  by  the  communication  of  the  same  dignity  to 
Pepperell,  the  official  accounts  of  the  conquest  of  Cape  Breton,  that  were 
published  in  England,  suppressed  the  merits  of  the  provincial  forces  in  a 
manner  that  filled  them  with  equal  surprise  and  resentment,  and  taught  them 
to  consider  the  reputation  of  America  as  a  distinct  and  separate  interest, 
instead  of  blending  it  in  their  regard  with  the  general  glory  of  Britain. 
But  in  spite  of  ungenerous  neglect  and  insidious  disguise,  the  real  truth 
broke  out,  and  the  British  empire  in  general  owned,  with  wonder  and 
awakened  interest  and  curiosity,  the  obligations  for  which  it  was  indebted 
to  America.^     Among  other  officers  who  distinguished  themselves  by  their 

*  It  is  remarkable  that  the  first  conquest  gained  by  the  English  from  the  French  in  America, 
the  conquest  of  Canada,  in  1629  (ante,  Book  II.,  Chap.  I.),  was  also  the  fruit  of  a  war  of  which 
the  events  in  Europe  were   disgraceful  to  England. 

2  Even  Smollett,  whose  national  partiality  has  induced  him  to  declare  that  "  the  reduction 
of  Louisburg  was  chiefly  owing  to  the  vigilance  and  activity  of  Mr.  Warren,  one  of  the  bravest 
and  best  officers  in  the  service  of  England,"  has  been  constrained  by  the  force  of  truth  to 
add,  that  "the  natives  of  New  England  acquired  great  glory  from  the  success  of  this  enter- 
prise." —  "  Circumstanced  as  the  nation  is,"  continues  this  writer,  "  the  legislature  cannot  too 
tenderly  cherish  the  interests  of  the  British  plantations  in  America." —  "  The  continent  of 


CHAP.  I.]  GENERAL  REJOICING  IN  THE  PROVINCES.  I75 

valor  during  the  siege  was  David  Wooster,  of  Connecticut,  who  afterwards 
attained  the  rank  of  general  in  the  American  service,  and  died  fighting  for 
the  independence  of  his  country  in  the  beginning  of  the  Revolutionary  War. 

The  tidings  of  this  important  victory  excited  a  general  transport  of  joy 
in  New  England.  Considerate  and  rehgious  men  remarked  with  mingled 
gratitude  and  wonder  the  coincidence  of  numerous  circumstances  and  events 
on  which  the  success  of  the  enterprise  essentially  depended,  and  which  in- 
duced a  contemporary  writer  to  declare,  that,  ''  if  any  one  circumstance  had 
taken  a  wrong  turn  on  the  English  side,  and  unless  every  circumstance  had 
taken  a  wrong  turn  on  the  French  side,  the  expedition  must  have  en- 
tirely miscarried."  While  the  adventurous  ardor,  the  firmness,  and  patri- 
otism of  the  men  who  projected  and  executed  a  design  of  such  magnitude, 
and  attended  with  so  much  danger  and  difficulty,  were  extolled  with  just 
and  unstinted  commendation,  it  was  acknowledged  that  the  attempt  disclosed 
extreme  temerity,  and  that,  in  its  progress  and  accomplishment,  the  pro- 
pitious agency  of  Divine  Providence  was  singularly  manifested.  It  was, 
indeed,  an  enterprise  which  only  success  could  justify  or  even  excuse  ;  and, 
like  the  celebrated  recapture  of  Calais  by  the  Duke  of  Guise,  confirmed 
the  military  maxim,  that  seeming  impossibihty  may  facilitate  a  grand 
achievement.  From  New  England,  the  intelligence  was  diffused  with  sur- 
prising rapidity  through  the  other  provinces  of  America,  and  everywhere 
elicited  the  expressions  of  triumph  and  admiration.  The  States  which 
had  refused  their  assistance  in  the  expedition  were  not  restrained  by  mean 
shame  or  jealousy  from  confessing  the  glory  that  New  England  acquired  by 
undertaking  it  unaided,  and  conducting  it  with  so  much  fortitude,  persever- 
ance, and  success.  They  paid  a  willing  tribute  to  a  renown  which  exalted 
the  character  and  prospects  of  America  ;  and,  with  sympathy  warmed  by 
gratitude  and  exultation,  hastened  to  tender  unsolicited  subsidies  for  the 
support  of  the  New  England  forces  and  the  preservation  of  their  conquest. 
Even  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  now  that  the  slaughter  was  over,  were 
not  deterred  by  their  religious  scruples  from  voting  an  instant  contribution 
of  four  thousand  pounds  for  this  purpose  ;  three  thousand  pounds  were 
contributed  by  New  York  ;  and  two  thousand  pounds  by  New  Jersey. 
Virginia  had  not  to  reproach  herself  with  having  declined  originally  to  aid 
New  England  in  the  expedition,  of  which  she  was  first  made  acquainted 
by  the  intelligence  of  its  successful  issue  ;  and  at  this  time  some  circum- 
stances existed  that  seemed  likely  to  reawaken  the  jealousy  that  of  yore 
prevailed  between  .the  New  Englanders  and  the  Virginians. 

A  remarkable  revival  of  the  primitive  warmth  of  religious  zeal  had 
occurred  of  late  years  in  New  England  ;  and  this  influence,  which  was 
greatly  promoted  by  the  genius  and  piety  of  George  Whitefield,  was  prop- 
agated more  or  less  extensively  by  his  itinerant  labors  in  all  the  other  pro- 
vincial communities.  The  admirable  piety  of  the  Moravians  had  also  con- 
tributed to  animate  religious  sentiment  in  America  ;  and  numerous  prose- 
lytes to  their  doctrines  and  constitutions  began  to  appear  in  every  one  of  the 
States.     New  England  was  regarded  as  the  centre  and  focus  of  this  influ- 

North  America,"  he  proceeds,  "  if  properly  cultivated,  will  form  an  inexhaustible  fund  of 
wealth  and  strength  to  Great  Britain  ;  and,  perhaps,  may  become  the  last  asylum  of  British 
liberty.  When  the  nation  is  enslaved  by  domestic  despotism  or  foreign  dominion  ;  when  her 
substance  is  wasted,  her  spirit  broken,  and  the  laws  and  constitution  of  England  are  no  more; 
then  those  colonies,  sent  off  by  our  fathers,  may  receive  and  entertain  their  sons  as  hapless  ex- 
iles and  ruined  refugees."  Compare  this  with  the  language  of  Edmund  Burke,  cited  in  Note 
XXXIX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


176  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOR  X. 

ence,  which  was  viewed  with  apprehensive  bigotry  and  dislike  by  the  Epis- 
copal clergy  and  the  magistracy  of  Virginia.  Gooch,  the  governor  of  this 
province,  though  a  man  of  excellent  talents,  and  justly  celebrated  for  the 
good  sense,  public  spirit,  and  generosity  by  which  his  civil  administration 
was  characterized,  was  yet  a  stranger  to  the  sentiment,  and  still  more  so  to 
the  principle,  of  religious  toleration.  Attached  to  the  church  of  England, 
he  beheld  the  multiplication  of  dissenters  from  its  established  system  with 
impatient  displeasure,  and  vainly  labored  to  check  the  progress  of  opinion 
and  the  freedom  of  thought  by  proclamations  against  the  assemblages  of  Mo- 
ravians and  Methodists,  who  were  threatened  with  a  rigorous  execution  of  all 
the  theoretical  intolerance  which  still  pervaded  the  ecclesiastical  constitu- 
tions of  Virginia.  This  persecution,  though  moderated  in  its  infliction  by 
the  humane  and  tolerant  spirit  of  the  age,  was  yet  cordially  abetted  by  many 
persons  of  consideration  in  Virginia,  and  among  the  rest  by  Edmund  Pendle- 
ton and  some  other  individuals  who  were  afterwards  distinguished  as  cham- 
pions of  the  purest  principles  of  hberty,  and  of  every  generous  right  of  hu- 
man nature. 

Notwithstanding  the  tendency  of  such  exasperated  bigotry  to  repress  the 
growth  of  friendship  and  good-will  betw^een  this  province  and  New  Eng- 
land, the  conquest  of  Louisburg  was  celebrated  with  the  most  enthusiastic 
praise  and  exultation  in  Virginia,  where  the  only  abatement  of  the  general 
satisfaction  was  occasioned  by  the  regret  of  the  people  that  they  had  not 
enjoyed  the  opportunity  of  aiding  the  bravery,  and  sharing  the  danger  of 
their  countrymen.  A  great  quantity  of  provisions  was  purchased  by  the 
Virginian  government  and  presented  to  the  New  England  garrison  at  Louis- 
burg ;  and  to  encourage  a  plentiful  exportation  of  whatever  articles  the  col- 
ony could  supply  for  their  use,  a  trade  free  of  all  duty  was  allowed  be- 
tween Virginia  and  Cape  Breton.  But  honorable  and  gratifying  as  these 
testimonies  vvere  to  the  States  of  New  England,  the  embarrassments  in 
which  they  were  involved  by  the  heavy  expense  of  the  Louisburg  expedition 
compelled  them  to  sohcit  a  more  substantial  tribute  from  the  justice  of  Brit- 
ain, and  to  urge  their  claim  to  reimbursement,  from  the  general  treasury 
of  the  empire,  of  the  cost  of  an  enterprise  by  w^hich  the  national  honor  and 
interest  were  so  highly  promoted.  This  claim,  though  equally  supported 
by  principles  of  justice  and  considerations  of  sound  policy,  did  not  prevail 
without  urgent  and  protracted  solicitation  ;  nor  was  the  indemnity  granted, 
till  Britain  had  diminished  the  grace  and  enhanced  the  necessity  of  it  by 
consenting  to  restore  Louisburg,  as  the  price  of  peace  with  France.^ 

More  interest  was  excited  in  Britain  by  the  unexpected  display  of  martial 
vigor  in  her  colonial  progeny,  than  was  inspired  in  the  colonies  by  the  in- 
teresting conflict  that  arose  between  the  government  and  the  Scottish  insur- 
gents in  the  centre  of  the  empire.  Virginia  was  the  only  one  of  the  prov- 
inces in  which  the  intelligence  of  the  rebellion  in  Britain  awakened  much 
attention  or  anxiety,  or  from  which  there  was  elicited  any  strong  manifesta- 
tion of  sentiments  akin  to  the  emotions  by  which  the  parent  state  was 
agitated.^     The  utmost  alarm  and  indignation  were  kindled  in  this  province  ; 

'  Douglass.  Smollett.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  Trumbull.  Burk.  Holmes.  Eliot's  J^ew 
England  Biographical  Dictionary. 

2  Some  time  after  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion,  indeed,  a  loyal  address  of  congratulation 
on  this  event  was  voted  by  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  to  the  king;  in  which  they  expressed 
the  strongest  attachment  to  his  Majesty's  person,  family,  and  government ;  a  deep  sense  of 
the  happiness  which  Connecticut  enjoyed  under  his  auspicious  reign  ;  and  the  utmost  ab- 
horrence  of  "  that  unnatural  and   wicked  rebellion  raised  in   favor  of  a  Popish  pretender 


CHAP.  I]  EMIGRATION  OF  SCOTCH  HIGHLANDERS.  |7?jr 

and  its  inhabitants  united  in  addresses  to  the  British  government,  expressive 
of  their  loyal  abhorrence  of  the  Pretender,  and  pledging  their  lives  and 
fortunes  to  the  most  determined  resistance  of  his  designs.  Proclamations 
were  issued  by  the  Virginian  government,  denouncing,  w^ith  all  the  injustice 
of  terror,  the  pretended  conspiracies  of  the  Catholic  clergy  of  Maryland 
to  seduce  the  people  from  their  allegiance  and  extend  the  flame  of  civil  war 
to  America.  Additional  jealousy  was  excited  even  against  the  Protestant 
Dissenters  by  the  peril  to  which  the  church  of  England  was  exposed  from 
the  arms  of  the  Pretender  ;  and  the  religious  assemblages  of  Presbyterians, 
Methodists,  and  Moravians  were  prohibited  under  the  severest  penal- 
ties.  [1746.] 

The  suppression  of  the  rebellion  was  attended  with  consequences  of 
general  importance  to  the  American  States.  After  the  rage  and  terror  with 
wliich  the  British  nation  was  inspired  by  the  enterprise  of  the  rebels  had  been 
fully  satiated  by  the  infliction  of  mihtary  ravage  on  a  large  district  of  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland,  and  by  numerous  instances  of  the  more  formal,  but 
not  less  barbarous  executions,  authorized  by  the  ancient  statutes,  for  the 
punishment  of  treason  in  England,  the  remainder  of  the  victims  were  ex- 
empted from  slaughter,  and  consigned  to  the  mitigated  penalty  of  trans- 
portation for  life  to  the  dominions  of  the  crown  in  America.  A  great  number 
of  brave  and  hardy  emigrants  were  thus  distributed  among  all  the  provinces  ; 
and  the  historians  of  the  southern  settlements  especially  have  acknowledged 
the  valuable  accession  which  was  derived  from  this  source  to  the  provincial 
strength,  resources,  and  industry.  In  America  these  emigrants  experienced 
much  greater  liberty  and  indulgence  than  even  the  guiltless  portion  of  their 
race  that  remained  in  Scotland  was  permitted  to  enjoy.  Among  other  ad- 
vantages, they  obtained  the  privilege  of  wearing  their  peculiar  garb,  to 
which  they  were  strongly  attached,  but  which  was  now  prohibited  in  Scot- 
land by  an  absurd  and  tyrannical  act  of  parliament.  It  was,  perhaps,  im- 
politic of  Great  Britain  thus  to  strengthen  her  colonies,  by  transplanting 
to  them  a  race  of  men  who  cherished  enmity  against  her  monarchical  es- 
tablishment, together  with  a  deep  resentment  of  the  cruelty  and  humiliation 
inflicted  on  their  native  land.  The  farther  resort  of  Scottish  emigrants  to 
America  was  promoted  soon  after  by  the  measures  adopted  by  the  British 
parliament  for  abolishing  the  military  tenure  of  lands,  which  had  hitherto  sub- 
sisted in  Scotland,  and  had  enabled  the  Highland  chieftains  to  produce  the 
late  rebellion.  The  proprietors  of  Highland  estates,  no  longer  permitted  to 
exact  military  service  from  the  occupants  of  their  lands,  and  no  longer  de- 
riving advantage  from  the  numerous  population  they  formerly  studied  to 
maintain  around  them  as  feudal  retainers,  rather  than  tenants,  universally 
raised  their  rents  and  enlarged  their  farms  ;  whereby  vast  multitudes  of 
Highlanders  were  ejected  from  their  homes,  and  many  more  were  induced 
voluntarily  to  relinquish  them  by  the  disgust  and  impatience  which  these 
innovations  provoked.  To  this  disappointed  and  discontented  race  the 
American  provinces  presented  the  strongest  attractions.  Here  they  might 
cheaply  obtain  abundance  of  land,  and  enjoy  their  national  manners  and  hab- 
its of  independence  without  molestation  ;  and  here,  accordingly,  for  many 

against  the  best  of  kings  and  the  best  of  governments."  The}'  concluded  by  praying  that 
"  the  merciful  Providence  vv^hich  has  placed  his  Majesty  on  the  British  throne,  and  given  him 
so  long  and  so  illustrious  a  reign,  may  still  protect  his  sacred  person,  subdue  his  enemies, 
make  his  reign  prosperous,  and  continue  the  crown  in  his  royal  and  illustrious  family  to  the 
latest  posterity."     Trumbull.  *.   ,• 

VOL.    II.  23 


^7JB  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

'years  after,  numerous  detachments  of  Scottish  Highlanders  continued  annu- 
ally to  repair.^ 

Meanwhile,  both  Britain  and  France  were  roused  by  the  capture  of 
Louisburg  to  the  projection  of  vigorous  and  extended  operations  in  Ameri- 
ca. Governor  Shirley,  flushed  with  the  conquest  which  reflected  so  much 
credit  on  his  genius  and  administration,  contemplated  nothing  less  than  the 
entire  and  immediate  subjugation  of  the  French  colonial  dominions  ;  and 
when  he  announced  the  capture  of  Louisburg  to  the  British  ministers,  he 
employed  the  utmost  urgency  of  counsel  to  induce  them  straightway  to 
despatch  an  armament  suflicient  not  only  for  the  preservation  of  Cape 
Breton  and  Nova  Scotia,  but  for  the  invasion  and  reduction  of  Canada. 
It  was  not  without  reason,  that,  while  he  suggested  the  expediency  of 
farther  conquest,  he  urged  the  necessity  of  aiding  the  defence  of  the  exist- 
ing possessions  of  Britain  ;  for  the  French  government,  astonished  and  in- 
censed at  the  disgrace  which  it  had  sustained,  meditated  a  great  vindictive 
effort,  and  was  preparing  an  expedition  for  the  recovery  of  Louisburg,  the 
conquest  of  Nova  Scotia,  the  bombardment  of  Boston,  and  the  devastation 
of  the  whole  American  coast  from  Nova  Scotia  to  Georgia.  The  British 
ministers  seemed  at  first  to  hearken  readily  to  the  counsels  of  Shirley  ;  and 
in  the  spring  of  this  year,  circular  letters  were  addressed  by  the  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  secretary  of  state,  to  the  governors  of  all  the  American  prov- 
inces of  Britain  except  the  CaroHnas  and  Georgia,  requiring  them  to  raise  as 
many  forces  as  they  could  afford,  to  cooperate  with  a  British  army  in  a 
general  attack  upon  the  American  possessions  of  France.  According  to 
the  plan  of  the  enterprise  communicated  by  the  royal  ministers  to  Shirley,  a 
squadron  of  ships  of  war,  under  the  command  of  Admiral  Warren,  together 
with  a  body  of  land  forces  under  General  St.  Clair,  were  to  be  sent  from 
Britain  against  Canada  ;  the  troops  raised  in  New  England  were  directed  to 
join  the  British  fleet  and  army  at  Louisburg,  whence  the  combined  arma- 
ment was  to  proceed  up  the  river  St.  Lawrence  ;  while  the  forces  of  New 
York  and  the  other  southern  colonies  were  to  be  collected  at  Albany, 
and  march  thence  against  Crown  Point  and  Montreal. 

The  assembly  of  Massachusetts  betrayed  at  first  some  disinclination  to 
participate  in  the  enterprise,  and  represented  to  their  governor  that  it  was 
impossible,  without  financial  ruin,  to  make  any  addition  to  the  burdens  which 
'  the  recent  expedition  against  Louisburg  had  already  entailed  on  the  prov- 
ince. But  Shirley  in  reply  assured  them  that  they  were  ruined  already, 
unless  they  could  procure  reimbursement  of  their  late  expenditure  from  the 
parent  state  ;  and  that  the  surest  means  of  obtaining  such  relief  was  to 
enforce  the  cogency  of  their  claim  to  it  by  involving  the  province  still  more 
deeply  in  debt,  and  to  conciliate  British  favor  by  the  display  of  undimin- 
ished zeal  and  bravery.  Additional  arguments  were  supplied  to  him  by  the 
ravages  which  the  French  forces  in  Canada  and  their  Indian  allies  now 
committed  on  the  frontiers  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  Instead 
of  a  burdensome  and  inefl^ectual  system  of  defensive  warfare  along  a  fron- 

'  Burk.     Hewit.     Williamson.     Smollett.     Johnson's  Tour  to  the  Hebrides. 
"  Alas  !  poor  Caledonia's  mountaineer, 
That  want's  stern  edict  e'er,  and  feudal  grief. 
Had  forced  him  from  a  home  he  loved  so  dear  ! 
Yet  found  he  here  a  home  and  glad  relief"  —  Campbell. 
Some  of  the  Highland  partisans  of  the  Pretender,  in  1778,  addressed  to  him  a  memorial,  in 
which  they  offered  to  raise  his  standard  in  the  back  settlements  of  America.    Sir  Walter  Scott 
told  Washington  Irving  that  be  had  seen  the  memorial. 


CHAP.  I.]  PREPARATIONS  FOR  INVADING  CANADA.  J79 

tier  which  it  was  impossible  to  render  at  all  points  secure,  Shirley  advised 
the  Massachusetts  assembly  rather  to  cooperate  with  an  enterprise  which 
promised  finally  to  extinguish  the  source  of  those  desolating  hostihties.  His 
reasoning,  seconded  by  the  inclinations  of  many  of  the  colonists,  who  were 
averse  to  pause  in  the  career  of  prosperous  fortune,  proved  successful  with 
the  assembly,  which,  again  resuming  preparations  for  offensive  war,  conduct- 
ed them  with  so  much  spirit,  that,  of  eight  thousand  two  hundred  ^  men 
which  were  raised  by  all  the  colonies  that  engaged  in  this  design,  three 
tliousand  five  hundred  were  furnished  by  Massachusetts.  The  provincial 
force  thus  embodied  exceeded  the  expectations  of  the  British  ministers, 
who,  without  specifying  the  contingent  of  troops  required  from  the  respective 
provinces,  had  merely  announced  that  it  was  the  wish  of  the  king  that  the 
total  levies  should  not  fall  short  of  five  thousand  men. 

But  the  hopes  which  Britain  thus  again  rekindled  in  her  American  colonies, 
of  deliverance  from  the  hostile  vicinity  of  the  French,  were  fated  to  pro- 
duce only  a  repetition  of  former  disappointments.  Whether  it  was,  as  some 
American  politicians  believed,  that  the  British  ministers  were  jealous  of  the 
bold  and  enterprising  spirit  of  the  colonists,  and  secretly  averse  to  remove 
the  restraint  imposed  upon  them  by  the  propinquity  of  a  rival  power,  or 
that  those  ministers  really  suspected,  as  has  been  alleged,  that  the  armament, 
which  the  French  were  preparing,  ostensibly,  for  the  invasion  of  America, 
was  actually  destined  to  invade  Great  Britain,  —  the  whole  summer  elapsed 
without  the  arrival  of  troops  or  orders  from  England  ;  and  the  British  fleet, 
which  had  been  promised,  and  which  consisted  of  nearly  thirty  ships  of  war, 
after  delaying  its  departure  till  a  period  of  the  year  when  it  was  reckoned 
unsafe  to  risk  the  large  vessels  on  the  American  coasts,  received  orders 
to  undertake  a  substitutional  enterprise,  and  performed  nothing  more  mem- 
orable than  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  surprise  Port  L 'Orient,  in  Brittany. 
[September,  1746.]  Shirley,  at  last,  perceiving  that  it  was  vain  to  await 
any  longer  the  arrival  of  an  armament  from  Britain,  resolved,  with  the  ap- 
probation of  Sir  William  Pepperell  and  other  leading  persons  in  New  Eng- 
land, to  attempt,  with  the  provincial  forces  alone,  the  reduction  of  some  part 
of  the  American  possessions  of  France.  It  was  proposed  to  detach  a  por- 
tion of  the  New  England  troops  to  join  the  forces  assembled  at  Albany, 
and  in  conjunction  with  them  to  invest  and  attack  the  French  fort  at  Crown 
Point  ;  a  project  which  was  warmly  embraced  by  Clinton,  the  governor  of 
New  York,  who  solicited  and  engaged  the  assistance  of  the  Six  Nations. 
The  preparations  for  this  enterprise,  however,  were  interrupted  by  intelli- 
gence from  Mascarene,  the  governor  of  Nova  Scotia,  of  the  march  of  a 
body  of  French  troops  and  Indians  against  AnnapoHs,  and  of  symptoms  of 
revolt  among  the  resident  population  of  the  province.  Instant  succour  was 
required  to  prevent  this  territory  from  being  again  wrested  from  the  British 
dominion  ;  and  the  forces  of  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and  New  Hamp- 
shire were  accordingly  directed  to  proceed  to  this  new  scene  of  action. 
[September  20,  1746.]  But  when  they  were  on  the  point  of  embarking, 
the  schemes  of  the  provincial  authorities  were  again  disconcerted  by  tli  ^ 
alarming  tidings  of  the  arrival  of  a  French  fleet  and  army  at  Chebucto  Bay, 

'  Of  these  troops,  New  Hampshire  furnished  five  hundred;  Massachusetts,  three  thousand 
five  hundred  ;  Rhode  Island,  three  hundred  ;  Connecticut,  one  thousand  ;  New  York,  ono 
thousand  six  hundred  ;  New  Jersey,  five  hundred  ;  Maryland,  three  hundred ;  Virginia,  one 
hundred ;  and  Pennsylvania  (by  a'popular  act  unsanctioned  by  its  assembly),  four  hundred 
Belknap  differs  from  all  the  other  authorities  in  stating,  that  New  Hampshire,  on  this  occa- 
»ion,  raised  eight  hundred  men. 


]3Q  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

in  Nova  Scotia.  This  armament,  consisting  of  forty  vessels,  of  which  eleven 
were  ships  of  the  line,  together  with  transports  conveying  upwards  of  three 
thousand  disciplined  troops,  and  a  formidable  apparatus  of  artillery  and  mil- 
itary stores,  was  conducted  by  the  Duke  d'Anville,  a  nobleman  on  whose 
courage  and  capacity  the  court  of  France  reposed  more  confidence  than 
the  event  seems  to  justify.  The  French  inhabitants  of  Nova  Scotia,  it 
was  expected,  would  cooperate  with  the  invading  forces  ;  and  Ramsay,  a 
French  officer,  with  one  thousand  seven  hundred  Canadian  troops  and 
Indians,  had  already  repaired  thither  in  expectation  of  their  arrival.  Nothing 
could  exceed  the  astonishment  and  dismay  which  this  intelligence  produced 
in  New  England,  where  the  spirit  of  the  people,  worn  with  anxious  sus- 
pense and  disappointment,  was  prepared  to  receive  the  most  gloomy  im- 
pressions. In  the  first  moments  of  panic,  it  was  believed  that  the  British 
colonies  were  now  devoted  to  inevitable  destruction.  But  these  emotions 
were  speedily  controlled  by  deep-rooted  fortitude  and  courage  ;  and  boldly 
confronting  the  danger  with  which  they  were  menaced,  the  New  Englanders 
were  elevated  by  the  alarm  of  this  emergency  to  the  highest  pitch  of  manly 
constancy  and  resolution. ^ 

The  most  vigorous  preparations  were  made  for  the  general  defence.  In 
the  course  of  a  very  few  days,  six  thousand  four  hundred  of  the  Massachu- 
setts militia  marched  into  Boston,  and  united  themselves  to  the  troops  that 
were  already  assembled  there  ;  and  Connecticut  announced  that  she  was 
ready  at  the  first  signal  to  despatch  an  additional  reinforcement  of  six  thou- 
sand men.  New  forts  and  batteries  were  erected  along  the  coast ;  the 
utmost  vigilance  was  exerted  to  guard  against  surprise  ;  and  for  six  weeks 
the  whole  country  resounded  with  the  clang  of  martial  preparation,  and  was 
pervaded  by  the  most  agitating  suspense  and  anxiety.  As  time  wore  on 
without  the  approach  of  the  French,  the  public  hope  was  sustained  by  a 
growing  conviction  that  succour  must  speedily  arrive  from  England.  It  was 
impossible,  the  people  generally  exclaimed,  that  the  king's  ministers  should 
be  unacquainted  with  the  sailing  of  the  French  fleet  ;  and  unless  they  were 
willing  to  deliver  up  the  colonies  to  the  rage  of  the  enemy,  it  .was  not  to  be 
doubted  that  an  English  squadron  would  presently  appear  in  America.  But 
this  confidence  proved  fallacious  ;  and  the  colonial  dominion  of  Britain 
would  infallibly  have  received  a  dangerous,  if  not  a  fatal  blow,  had  not  a  sur- 
prising train  of  adverse  circumstances  occurred  to  dissipate  the  strength 
and  confound  the  hopes  of  the  invaders.  The  French  fleet  sustained  much 
damage  by  storms,  and  several  losses  by  shipwreck  ;  and  while  D'Anville 
awaited  the  repair  and  reassemblage  of  his  scattered  vessels,  a  pestilential 
fever  broke  out  among  the  land  forces.  These  calamities  preyed  severely 
on  the  mind  of  the  French  commander  ;  and  their  efficacy  was  promoted 
by  an  incident  in  which  the  sanguine  temper  of  Shirley  proved  strangely 
subservient  to  the  interest  of  New  England. 

Partaking  the  general  conviction  of  the  speedy  arrival  of  a  fleet  from 
Britain,  he  communicated  this  cheering  intelligence  rather  as  a  certainty 
than  a  speculation  in  letters  addressed  to  the  garrison  of  Louisburg  ;  but 
the  capture  of  the  vessel  by  which  his  letters  were  conveyed,  fortunately 
for  his  interest,  though  contrary  to  his  views,  exposed  the  enemy,  instead 
of  his  friends,  to  the  mistaken  impression  he  had  adopted.     A  division  of 

^  We.  may  well  apply  to  this  people  the  remark  of  Polybius  on  the  Romans,  that,  "  Such  is 
tlieir  disposition  ana  temper,  that,  whenever  they  have  any  reaj  o^use  of  fear,  they  are  at  that 
ti/n«f  themselves  most  greatly  to  be  dreaded." 


aiAP.  I.]      FORMIDABLE  FRENCH  FLEET.  — ITS  DISPERSION.  JgJ 

opinion  now  arose  among  the  French  officers  ;  and,  in  the  midst  of  their 
deliberations,  D'Anville  suddenly  died,  by  a  stroke  of  apoplexy,  as  some 
reported,  or  by  swallowing  poison,  as  others  supposed.  D'Estournelle, 
who  succeeded  to  the  command,  disheartened,  like  his  predecessor,  by  the 
disasters  that  had  befallen  the  expedition,  and  the  apprehension  that  an 
English  fleet  was  at  hand,  and  learning  that  a  reinforcement  of  French  ships 
of  war,  which  he  expected  from  the  West  Indies,  had  returned  to  France, 
proposed  a  similar  retreat  to  a  council  of  his  officers  ;  and  in  consequence 
of  the  rejection  of  his  proposal,  was  attacked  with  a  frenzy  or  delirium, 
in  which  he  threw  himself  upon  his  sword  and  expired.  The  command  of 
the  French  was  now  assumed  by  Jonquiere,  the  governor  of  Canada  [Oc- 
tober 15,  1746],  whose  vigor  and  intrepidity  gave  promise  of  a  change  in 
the  aspect  of  affairs,  when  the  fleet  was  overtaken  by  a  tremendous  tempest, 
which,  continuing  for  several  days,  occasioned  so  much  loss  and  dispersion, 
that  all  the  vessels  which  survived  the  fury  of  the  storm  hastened  to  return 
separately  to  France.  Never  had  so  great  an  armament  been  despatched 
from  Europe  to  North  America  ;  and  never  had  any  proved  more  ineffi- 
cient or  incurred  equal  disasters.  Had  the  project  of  the  French  succeeded, 
the  British  colonies  would  have  sustained  a  ravage  and  desolation  of  which  it 
is  impossible  to  calculate  the  extent  or  the  consequences.  Of  this  the  peo- 
ple of  New  England,  amidst  all  their  energy  and  determination,  were  especial- 
ly sensible  ;  and  when  they  learned  the  surprising  deliverance,  which,  without 
the  slightest  human  aid  or  exertion,  was  vouchsafed  to  them,  they  acknowl- 
edged with  grateful  and  solemn  admiration,  that,  as  they  had  formerly  been 
indebted  for  victory  and  conquest,  so  now  they  owed  their  safety  and  rescue 
from  destruction,  to  the  signal  favor  and  interposition  of  Divine  Providence. 
These  pious  sentiments  were  entirely  unmixed  with  impressions  of  respect 
or  gratitude  to  the  parent  state.  Indeed,  the  conduct  of  the  British  govern- 
ment, and  of  its  naval  commanders,  on  this  occasion,  was  but  too  well  cal- 
culated to  provoke  the  resentment  and  contempt  of  the  colonists.^  Al- 
though the  king's  ministers  had  received  early  intelligence  of  the  departure 
of  D'Anville's  squadron  for  America,  they  made  no  attempt  to  intercept 
the  blow  with  which  the  British  colonies  were  threatened.  Their  concern 
extended  no  farther  than  the  preservation  of  Louisburg,  for  the  security  of 
which  they  despatched  Admiral  Townsend  with  a  squadron  to  reinforce  the 
ships  of  war  that  were  stationed  there  under  Commodore  Knowles  ;  and 
these  two  commanders,  doubtless  in  conformity  with  orders  which  they  re- 
ceived, contented  themselves  with  guarding  Louisburg  from  attack,  without 
making  the  slightest  demonstration  in  support  of  New  England.^ 

*  Yet,  three  months  after  the  dispersion  of  the  French  squadron,  the  assembly  of  Connecti- 
cut voted  the  loyal  address  which  we  have  remarked,  on  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion  in 
Britain.  Sometimes  one  or  two  members  of  a  public  body  propose  demonstrations  which  the 
majority,  without  relishing,  are  reluctant  to  oppose  ;  and  hence  the  language  even  of  a  repre 
sentative  assembly  does  not  always  afford  a  correct  sample  of  the  disposition  of  the  people. 

*  Belknap.     Trumbull.     Holmes.     Smollett.     Hutchinson. 


Igjg  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 


CHAPTER    II. 

Progress  of  the  War.  —  Tumult  excited  by  naval  Impressment  in  Boston.  —  Peace  of  Aix- 
la-Chapelle.  —  Regulation  of  Paper  Currency  in  New  England.  —  Policy  of  the  British 
Government  relative  to  America.  —  Political  Sentiments  and  Speculations  of  the  Americans. 
—  Condition  of  America,  and  miscellaneous  Transactions.  —  Origin  of  Vermont.  —  The 
Ohio  Company. — American  Science  and  Literature. 

Although,  by  the  discomfiture  of  the  French  armament,  the  British  col- 
onies were  relieved  from  the  apprehension  of  the  greatest  danger  to  which 
they  had  ever  been  exposed,  their  frontier  settlements  were  still  harassed  by 
predatory  hostilities  ;  and  fears  were  entertained  of  the  loss  of  Annapolis 
and  the  revolt  of  Nova  Scotia.  No  sooner  was  it  known  in  New  England 
that  D'Anville's  squadron  was  dispersed  and  compelled  to  return  to  France, 
than  the  troops  originally  destined  to  Nova  Scotia  were  again  directed  to 
proceed  thither  without  delay,  for  the  purpose  of  capturing  or  expelling  the 
Canadian  forces  assembled  under  the  command  of  the  Chevalier  Ramsay. 
This  expedition  proved  unfortunate.  Only  the  regiment  embodied  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, amounting  to  six  hundred  men,  commanded  by  Colonel  Noble, 
reached  Nova  Scotia  ;  the  troops  of  Rhode  Island  having  been  shipwrecked 
on  their  passage,  and  those  of  New  Hampshire  driven  back  by  contrary 
winds.  [January  31,  1747.^]  In  the  middle  of  a  tempestuous  night,  the 
Massachusetts  regiment  was  suddenly  attacked  by  a  superior  French  force  ; 
and,  after  an  obstinate  resistance  and  the  loss  of  its  commander  and  a  hundred 
and  sixty  men,  was  compelled  to  surrender.  Notw^ithstanding  this  victory, 
Ramsay  judged  it  proper  to  defer  the  attack  upon  Annapolis  ;  and  the 
French  inhabitants  of  Nova  Scotia  forbore  to  incur  the  danger  of  open  revolt 
till  the  arrival  of  succours,  which  they  still  hoped  to  receive,  from  France. 
Nor  were  their  hopes  ill  founded.  The  French  government,  more  irritated 
by  the  loss  of  Louisburg  than  discouraged  by  the  disastrous  issue  of  D'An- 
ville's  expedition,  prepared  with  unabated  spirit  to  retrieve  its  recent  failure 
and  repeat  the  intercepted  blow.  A  strong  naval  force,  equipped  with  the 
utmost  speed  for  this  purpose,  set  sail  from  France,  under  the  command  of 
Jonquiere,  the  governor  of  Canada,  but  was  overtaken  by  a  British  fleet, 
commanded  by  Admirals  Anson  and  Warren,  and,  after  a  gallant  resistance, 
defeated  and  captured.  [May  3,  1747.]  Ramsay,  apprized  of  this  catastro- 
phe, hastened  to  evacuate  Nova  Scotia,  and  reconducted  his  troops  to 
Canada  ;  whence  the  French,  with  the  aid  of  their  Indian  allies,  continued 
to  infest  the  borders  of  New  England  and  New  York  with  hostilities  re- 
sembling more  the  practices  of  banditti  than  the  operations  of  civilized  war- 
fare, and  tending  to  no  other  results  than  obscure  individual  suffering  and 
partial  havoc  and  devastation. 

The  frontier  settlements  of  New  Hampshire,  in  particular,  were  exposed 
to  such  incessant  danger  from  these  incursions,  that  the   inhabitants  were 

*  No  seminary  of  learning  having  yet  arisen  in  Rhode  Island,  several  public-spirited 
citizens  this  year  founded  a  library  at  Newport  for  the  promotion  of  literature  m  the  colony. 
One  of  them  contributed  books  to  the  value  of  five  hundred  pounds  sterling.  A  charter  of  in- 
corporation was  obtained  from  the  provincial  government,  and  a  handsome  building  erected 
for  the  library.  The  plan  seems  to  have  been  derived  from  that  of  the  Library  Company  of 
Philadelphia,  which  was  formed  under  the  auspices  of  Dr.  Franklin  about  five  years  before. 
Franklin's  Memoirs.    Holme*. 


CHAP.  II.]  RAVAGES  OF  THE  FRENCH  AND  INDIANS.  183 

compelled  to  fortify  their  houses,  and  could  never  venture  to  stir  from  them 
unarmed.  They  were  probably  on  that  account  the  less  willing  to  maintain 
public  fortresses  ;  and  notwithstanding  the  urgent  entreaties  of  their  governor, 
the  assembly  of  this  province  positively  refused  to  make  any  grant  for  the 
support  of  Fort  Dummer,  which  was  situated  in  the  territory  that  New 
Hampshire  had  recently  and  undeservedly  gained  from  Massachusetts.  This 
defect  of  public  spirit,  however,  was  supplied  by  the  generosity  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Massachusetts,  who  undertook  to  defend  for  the  neighbouring  State 
a  possession  of  which  her  intrigues  had  despoiled  them.  The  most  con- 
siderable of  the  enterprises  undertaken  by  the  French  Canadians  and  their 
allies  were  directed  against  iwo  forts  on  Connecticut  Kiver,  garrisoned  by 
detachments  of  the  Massachusetts  militia.  One  of  them  was  taken  ;  but  the 
other,  which  was  occupied  by  Captain  Stevens  and  thirty  men,  though  a 
place  of  little  strength,  and  hotly  attacked  for  several  days  by  a  very  superi- 
or force,  withstood  the  assailants  with  a  vigor  and  success  that  excited  uni- 
versal surprise  and  applause.  In  the  territory  of  New  York,  among  other 
ravages  committed  by  the  French  and  their  allies,  the  village  of  Saratoga, 
containing  thirty  families,  was  entirely  destroyed,  and  the  inhabitants  massa- 
cred without  reserve  or  discrimination. 

The  annals  of  New  Hampshire,  during  the  last  two  years  of  the  war, 
present  a  long  and  mournful  catalogue  of  plantations  laid  waste,  and  colonists 
slain  or  carried  into  captivity  by  the  enemy.     Pillage,  rather  than  conquest, 
was  the  object  of  the  invaders  ;   and  their  prowess  was  directed  less  against 
states  and  armies,  than  against  dwelling-houses,  families,  rural  industry,  and 
domestic  life.    This  was  the  style  of  warfare  most  conformable  to  the  tastes, 
the  habits,  and  the  interests  of  the  savages  who  cooperated  with  the  French. 
They  had  no  relish  or  conception  of  wars  in  which  private  property  was 
respected  ;  they  had  nothing  to  gain  from  conquests  achieved  in  conjunction 
with  a  more  powerful  ally  ;  and  preferably  approved  those  predatory  hostili- 
ties which  afforded  the  greatest  scope  to  the  qualifications  in  which  they 
excelled,  enriched  them  with  plunder,  and  exasperated  the  mutual  animosity 
of  the  rival  European  powers,  without  affording  to  either  a  decisive  superi- 
ority over  the  other.     It  is  probable  that  the  French,  unless  they  were 
actuated  by  mere  hatred  and  cruelty,  pursued    this  barbarous   system  of 
warfare  chiefly  in  order  to  cultivate  their  own  interest  with  the  savages,  and 
to  confirm  them  in  habits  of  hostility  to  the  English.     Yet  it  was  remarked, 
that,  during  the  present  war,  the  Indians,  whether  from  increased  humanity 
or  improved  policy,  displayed  a  degree  of  forbearance  and  clemency  which 
they  never  before  exhibited,  and  which  the  English  had  deemed  incompati- 
ble with  the  savage  nature  of  such  belligerents.     They  inflicted  no  tortures 
on  their  prisoners,  and  very  rarely  slew  them  ;  in  general,  they  lavished 
upon  them  the  most  tender  and  compassionate  attentions  ;  and  on  one  oc- 
casion they  evinced  the  rare  moderation  of  sparing  a  prisoner,  who,  after 
suing  for  and  obtaining  quarter,  wounded  his  captor  and  endeavoured  to  es- 
cape.    No  attempt  was  made  by  the  British  colonists  to  requite  these  preda- 
tory hostilities  on  the  territory  of  the  enemy.     Though  filled  with  resent- 
ment against  the  French,  they  were  generally  averse  to  any  active  enter- 
prise short  of  the  invasion  and  complete  conquest  of  Canada.     Their  war 
fare  was  entirely  defensive  ;  and  it  seems  in  general  to  have  been  conducted 
with  more  bravery  than  skill  or  efficiency.     A  confusion  of  councils  and  a 
multiplicity  of  directors  caused  every  project  and  purpose  to  transpire  before 


184  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

it  was  carried  into  effect,  and  produced  frequent  changes  of  measures,  and 
the  most  injurious  delays  in  their  execution. 

The  Canadian  government,  of  which  the  frame  was  more  simple  and 
compendious,  was  enabled  to  act  with  greater  promptitude  and  secrecy  ; 
and,  enjoying  the  plenitude  of  arbitrary  power,  it  granted  commissions  to 
none  of  its  subjects  but  such  as  had  distinguished  themselves  by  their  talents 
and  exploits.  But  the  British  provincial  governors,  controlled  by  jealous 
and  independent  assemblies,  were  frequently  compelled  or  tempted  to  con- 
fer military  commands  on  useful  adherents  and  popular  politicians,  who 
mistook  ambition  or  patriotic  zeal  for  science  and  capacity  ;  and  they  were 
disabled  from  exerting  that  concentrated  readiness  and  energy  which  charac- 
terized the  executive  policy  of  the  French.  In  addition  to  the  losses  in- 
flicted by  the  depredations  of  the  enemy,  a  great  expense  was  incurred  for 
the  maintenance  of  numerous  troops,  who  were  yet  too  few  to  cover  the 
frontiers,  and  rarely  succeeded  in  avenging  the  violation  of  them,  by  over- 
taking or  intercepting  the  invaders.  During  the  latter  years  of  this  war, 
the  most  perfect  contrast  appears  in  every  point  between  the  conduct  of  the 
French  and  the  British  provincials.  The  operations  of  the  French  were 
offensive,  methodical,  cheap  (for  the  charges  were  defrayed  by  plunder) ,  and 
distressing  to  their  enemies  ;  the  warfare  of  the  British  was  defensive,  desul- 
tory, costly,  and  almost  entirely  inefficient.  Predatory  incursions  into  the 
Canadian  territory  would  have  given  certain  employment  to  the  British 
provincial  troops  ;  and,  by  engaging  the  French  to  defend  themselves,  would, 
perhaps,  have  afforded  relief  to  the  British  frontier.  But  this  system  of 
hostility  was  repugnant  alike  to  the  dignity  of  the  States  and  the  general 
sentiments  of  the  people  of  New  England.  Besides  the  Canadian  Indians, 
the  French  were  assisted  in  this  war  by  their  ancient  allies,  the  Indian  tribes 
inhabiting  the  territories  of  Maine  and  Nova  Scotia ;  but  repeated  defeats 
had  broken  the  strength  and  depressed  the  courage  of  these  tribes,  and 
their  hostility,  though  productive  of  some  devastation  of  frontier  settlements, 
proved  now  less  vigorous  and  harassing  than  on  former  occasions.^ 

It  was  an  indirect  consequence  of  the  war,  that  produced  the  most  notable 
event  by  which  this  year  was  signalized  in  America  [1747]  :  a  tumultuary  « 
movement  in  Massachusetts,  which  for  a  time  suspended  the  functions  of  | 
government,  and  in  some  of  its  features  exhibited  so  close  an  analogy  to 
the  grander  scene  that  arose  about  twenty  years  after,  that  it  appears  like 
a  rehearsal,  as  it  was  certainly  an  omen,  of  the  leading  and  initial  events  of  the 
American  Revolution.  Had  the  warning  which  it  was  fitted  to  convey  been 
duly  appreciated  by  the  British  government,  this  remarkable  occurrence 
might  have  tended  to  avert  the  great  extremity  which  it  resembled  and  be- 
tokened. 

During  the  prevalence  of  feudal  manners  and  institutions  in  England,  the 
crown  exercised  the  prerogative  of  equipping  its  navies  in  war,  by  appropri- 
ating, or,  as  it  was  termed,  impressing,  the  vessels  and  the  seamen  employed 
by  the  merchants.  The  revenue  of  the  crown  was  not  more  capable  of 
maintaining  a  standing  naval  establishment  than  a  standing  army  of  land  forces; 
and  the  feudal  institutions  did  not  admit  of  the  same  regulated  service  and 
definite  subordination  of  the  national  merchants  and  seamen,  as  of  the  terri- 
torial barons  and  vassals,  to  the  king.  The  aids  which  he  obtained  from 
them  were,  accordingly,  irregular,  occasional,  and  the  fruits  of  a  prerogative 

» Douglass.     Universal  History.    Wynne.     Hutchinson.    Belknap.    Trumbull.    Holmes. 


CHAP.  II]  NAVAL  IMPRESSMENT.^     '  |35 

restrained  by  no  constitutional  principle  or  limitation.  By  the  territorial 
vassals  there  were  rendered  to  the  king  the  contingents  of  personal  or  pecu- 
niary service  ascertained  by  their  respective  charters  ;  but  from  the  mer- 
chants and  traders  he  exacted  compulsory  loans  and  gifts  of  their  property, 
to  an  extent  bounded  only  by  his  power,  his  rapacity,  or  the  emergency 
of  the  occasion.  This  overweening  prerogative  was  at  length  controlled 
by  the  rising  importance  of  that  order  of  men  whose  rights  and  interests  were 
peculiarly  its  prey.  When,  in  process  of  time,  the  increasing  wealth  and 
consequence  of  the  merchants  and  tradesmen  of  England  had  paved  the  way 
to  the  introduction  of  a  more  regular  and  general  system  of  liberty  in  the 
place  of  the  feudal  institutions,  all  classes  of  the  people  were  enabled  to 
claim  the  protection  of  fixed  and  settled  law  ;  and  while  the  crown  was  in- 
vested with  a  larger  and  simpler  revenue  than  it  formerly  enjoyed,  it  was 
restricted  from  irregular  aids  and  arbitrary  exactions.  Such,  at  least,  were 
the  principles  of  that  system  of  which  the  gradual  rise  and  development 
corresponded  with  the  dechne  and  fall  of  the  feudal  establishments.  But 
although  the  British  constitution  was  now  generally  leavened  with  these  lib- 
eral principles,  it  was  not  entirely  pervaded  by  them,  and  still  continued  to 
be  defaced  by  some  traces  of  feudal  prerogative  and  arbitrary  power.  The 
convenience  of  the  crown  and  the  unprotected  condition  of  common  mari- 
ners preserved,  in  particular,  the  prerogative  of  impressment  from  more 
than  a  partial  abolition  ;  and  though  the  vessels  of  merchants  were  ex- 
empted from  arbitrary  appropriation  to  the  public  service,  the  persons  of 
seamen  continued  to  be  subjected  to  the  hardship  of  this  peculiar  liability. 
A  striking  instance,  among  many  others,  of  the  unequal  respect  entertained 
by  the  English  laws  for  the  property  of  the  rich  and  the  lives  of  the  poor  ! 
So  late  as  the  nineteenth  century.  Great  Britain  has  still  continued  to  pre- 
serve, in  the  impressment  of  sailors,  a  practice  which  even  those  who  de- 
fend it  on  the  tyrannical  plea  of  necessity  have  acknowledged,  neverthe- 
less, to  be  a  flagrant  outrage  on  popular  liberty,  and  a  violation  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  British  constitution. 

The  ministers  of  the  crown,  in  conformity  with  opinions  which  they 
obtained  from  the  attorney  and  solicitor-general  of  England,  had  repeatedly 
asserted  the  legitimacy  of  extending  the  practice  of  impressment  to  the 
American  provinces  ;  but,  aware  of  the  determined,  though  silent,  oppo- 
sition with  which  the  colonists  and  their  assemblies  withstood  this  preten- 
sion, they  very  rarely  attempted  to  carry  it  into  effect.  The  governors  of 
Virginia  ventured  occasionally  to  issue  proclamations  authorizing  the  im- 
pressment of  mariners  ;  which,  though  they  attracted  no  open  comment 
from  the  assembly  or  the  planters,  were  still  so  far  from  commanding  acqui- 
escence, that,  in  every  one  of  the  few  instances  in  which  impressment  was 
attempted,  it  was  resisted  and  defeated  by  popular  interference.^  Till 
now,  no  attempt  was  ever  made  to  introduce  this  odious  and  arbitrarv 
practice  among  a  people  so  jealous  of  their  liberties  as  the  inhabitants  of 
New  England  ;  and  the  British  government,  notwithstanding   the   haughti- 

*  As  America  was  the  quarter  of  the  British  empire  in  which  this  practice  was  first  re- 
sisted, so  an  American  was  the  first  writer  by  whom  its  indefensible  injustice  was  demon- 
strated. The  arguments  by  which  it  is  commonly  defended  were  refuted  in  a  masterly  man- 
ner by  Dr.  Franklin,  in  his  Remarks  on  Judge  Fosters  Apology  for  Impressment. 

Either  a  nation  must  have  virtually  lost  its  independence,  or  its  political  system  must  be 
unjust  and  defective,  when  it  cannot  ofier  sufficient  inducements  to  persuade  its  people  volun- 
tarily to  undertake  its  defence. 

VOL.   II.  24  -       p* 


]36  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X, 

ness  of  its  pretensions,  was  practically  contented  with  making  occasional  de- 
mands of  levies  of  men  for  the  supply  of  its  armaments  from  the  New  Eng- 
land States,  and  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  the  inefficacy  of  these 
requisitions.  But,  unfortunately,  the  English  ministers  neglected  to  incul- 
cate on  their  naval  commanders  the  same  cautious  forbearance  of  which 
they  themselves  perceived  the  expediency  ;  and  Commodore  Knowles,  who 
was  stationed  at  this  time  with  some  English  ships  of  war  at  Nantasket,  in 
Massachusetts,  having  lost  a  number  of  his  sailors  by  desertion,  bethought 
himself  of  repairing  the  loss  and  recruiting  his  crews  by  a  vigorous  act  of 
impressment  at  Boston.  [November  17,  1747.]  For  this  purpose,  he  de- 
tached his  boats  to  the  town  at  an  early  hour  in  the  morning,  and,  taking 
the  people  by  surprise,  not  only  seized  all  the  seamen  that  were  found  in 
the  vessels  lying  in  the  harbour,  but,  with  the  undiscriminating  violence  that 
usually  attends  the  impress  service,  swept  the  wharves,  and  carried  off  a 
great  many  apprentices  to  ship-carpenters  and  working  landsmen.  At  Lon- 
don, such  an  act  of  power  might  have  been  safely  perpetrated,  and  the 
victims  of  it  would  have  obtained  little  sympathy  from  their  countrymen  ;  ^ 
but  at  Boston  it  produced  a  burst  of  popular  indignation  so  violent,  that 
the  frame  of  the  established  executive  government  tottered  and  sank  be- 
neath its  fury. 

All  the  inhabitants  of  the  town  were  astonished  and  provoked  ;  but 
the  rage  of  the  working  classes  was  perfectly  uncontrollable.  A  numerous 
concourse  of  these  persons,  hastily  seizing  whatever  arms  they  could  find, 
repaired  to  the  governor's  house  to  demand  satisfaction  from  some  of  the 
captains  of  the  British  squadron  who  happened  to  be  there  at  the  time. 
These  officers,  arming  themselves  with  carbines,  expressed  their  deter- 
mination to  preserve  their  liberty  or  lose  their  hves  ;  and  a  scene  of  blood- 
shed would  have  ensued,  but  for  the  address  of  a  number  of  sedate  per- 
sons, who,  mixing  with  the  multitude,  prevailed  with  them  to  refrain  from 
breaking  into  the  house.  A  deputy  sheriff,  at  the  same  time,  attempting 
with  more  zeal  than  discretion  to  exert  his  authority  for  the  restoration  of 
order,  was  seized  by  the  populace,  carried  away  in  triumph,  and  impounded 
in  the  stocks ;  where  the  rueful  aspect  of  magisterial  dignity,  partaking  the 
penance  which  it  was  accustomed  to  inflict,  excited  a  degree  of  merriment 
that  tended  to  cool  the  general  choler.  But  when  the  evening  came,  and 
no  tidings  were  received  of  the  restoration  of  the  impressed  men,  the 
public  rage  broke  forth  with  redoubled  violence  and  uproar  ;  and  several 
thousands  of  people,  assembhng  around  the  town-house  where  the  General 
Court  was  sitting,  assaulted  the  doors  and  windows  of  the  building  with 
stones  and  brickbats,  and  clamorously  demanded  that  either  their  country- 
men should  be  restored,  or  the  English  officers  detained  as  hostages  for 
their  recovery.  The  governor,  trusting  to  his  popularity,  ventured  to  ad- 
dress the  exasperated  multitude  from  the  balcony  of  the  town-house  ;  and  in 
a  prudent  and  conciliating  speech  declared  his  disapprobation  of  the  impress- 
ment, pledged  his  utmost  endeavours  to  obtain  the  discharge  of  every  one 
of  the  inhabitants  who  had   been  carried  ofl^,  but  withal  mildly  reproved 

*  Yet  the  most  popular  national  song  in  England  addresses  mariners  in  this  well  known 
couplet :  — 

"  We  freely  invite  you,  not  press  you  like  slaves  ; 
For  who  should  be  free  but  the  sons  of  the  waves  ?  " 
Nothing  can  exceed  the  rapture  of  patriotic  exultation  with  which  this  song  is  applauded  in 
the  crowded  theatres  of  London  during  a  French  war,  and  at  the  very  time  when  the  Thames 
is  covered  with  press-gangs. 


CHAP.  II.]  IMPRESSMENT  AND  TUMULT  AT  BOSTON.  187 

the  irregular  proceedings  of  his  auditors.  Several  wealthy  and  respectable 
citizens  addressed  the  populace  in  the  same  strain,  and  entreated  them  to 
disperse  and  quietly  await  the  result  of  the  dehberations  of  the  assembly. 
But  the  rioters,  it  has  been  supposed,  were  secretly  encouraged  by  some 
persons  of  consideration,  more  willing  to  impel  popular  violence  than  to  abide 
an  open  responsibility  for  its  excesses,  and  were  thus  rendered  the  tools  of 
superior  craft,  while  they  were  abandoned  at  the  same  time  to  the  unre- 
strained mastery  of  their  own  excited  passions. 

Deaf  to  the  moderate  counsels  of  the  governor  and  the  other  orators  by 
whom  he  was  supported,  they  insisted  with  obstinate  vehemence  that  the 
seizure  and  restraint  of  the  English  officers  who  were  in  the  city  w^as  the 
only  effectual  method  to  procure  the  release  of  their  fellow-townsmen. 
Shirley,  escorted  by  a  company  of  his  friends  and  certain  of  the  principal 
inhabitants,  then  retired  with  some  difficulty  to  his  own  house,  while  the 
violence  of  the  people  was  diverted  to  a  different  quarter  by  a  report  that  a 
barge  belonging  to  one  of  the  English  ships  had  just  arrived  in  the  harbour. 
Rushing  tumultuously  to  seize  it,  they  dragged  a  huge  boat  through  the  streets 
with  as  much  ease  and  expedition  as  if  it  had  been  cleaving  the  water  ; 
and,  having  exhibited  it  in  front  of  the  governor's  house,  set  fire  to  it  and 
destroyed  it.  Next  morning,  the  militia  of  the  province  were  summoned  to 
assist  the  governor  in  quelling  the  popular  commotion  ;  but  their  sympathies 
were  all  on  the  side  of  their  countrymen,  and  they  dechned  to  appear  in 
array.  The  insurgents  now  succeeded  in  securing  the  persons  of  the  Eng- 
lish officers  who  were  on  shore  ;  and  having  planted  a  guard  over  some 
of  them,  they  engaged  others  by  their  parole  not  to  return  to  their  ships 
without  leave  from  the  people.  Shirley,  finding  that  his  authority  was  sus- 
pended, took  refuge  in  the  castle,  w^hence  he  WTOte  to  Commodore  Knowles, 
representing  the  confusion  into  which  he  had  plunged  the  province,  and 
urging  the  immediate  release  of  the  persons  impressed.  But  Knowles  at 
first  refused  to  hearken  to  any  terms  of  accommodation,  until  his  officers 
were  permitted  to  rejoin  him  ;  and  even  threatened  to  bombard  the  town, 
if  they  should  be  longer  detained.  He  offered  also  to  send  a  strong  body 
of  marines  to  assist  Shirley  in  reducing  the  rioters  ;  an  offer  which  the 
governor  had  too  much  sense  and  prudence  to  accept. 

The  assembly,  meanwhile,  were  greatly  perplexed.  At  first,  they 
showed  a  disinchnation  to  interfere  in  a  controversy  in  Which  the  provocation 
received  by  the  people  and  the  vindictive  outrage  committed  by  them  were 
so  nearly  balanced  ;  and  were  probably  afraid  of  increasing  the  popular  ir- 
ritation by  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  control  it.  It  w^as  not  long,  however, 
before  they  perceived  the  impropriety  of  leaving  the  governor  unsupported 
in  a  struggle  in  which  his  conduct  was  entirely  blameless.  Some  persons 
of  high  spirit,  who  had  counselled  him  to  remain  at  his  post,  and  who,  per- 
haps, regretted  the  inculpation  which  the  popular  cause  sustained  from  the 
predicament  in  which  he  stood,  began  now  angrily  to  question  if  his  retire- 
ment should  not  be  construed  into  an  abdication  of  his  functions.  Per- 
ceiving the  danger  of  farther  indecision,  and  probably  judging  that  the  public 
fervor  was  spent,  the  assembly  passed  a  series  of  resolutions,  proclaiming 
that  the  conduct  of  the  insurgents  ^  was  repugnant  to  municipal  government 

*  From  the  terms  of  this  official  act  it  appears  that  a  part  of  the  insurgent  force  was  com- 
posed ofnp^roes.  Notwithstanding  the  language  now  employed  by  the  Massachusetts  assem- 
bly, "  there  is  reason  to  believe,"  says  Burk,  "  that  this  assembly,  like  that  of  Virginia, 
winked  at  the  popular  excesses."     It  i»  plain,  from  a  letter  of  Shirley,  quoted  by  this  writer, 


188  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

and  order  [November  19,  1747]  ;  requiring  all  officers,  civil  and  military, 
to  render  their  instant  and  utmost  aid  to  discourage  and  extinguish  the 
popular  tumult  ;  pledging  themselves  with  their  lives  and  estates  to  support 
the  authority  of  the  governor ;  and  engaging  to  adopt  every  possible  means 
of  redressing  the  injury  by  which  the  existing  disorders  were  produced. 
The  council,  at  the  same  time,  issued  a  mandate  for  the  liberation  of  the 
naval  officers  who  were  put  in  ward  by  the  insurgents,  and  declared  them 
to  be  under  the  special  protection  of  the  government.  As  soon  as  these 
proceedings  were  known,  the  popular  ferment  began  to  subside,  and  the  in- 
surgents to  disperse.  A  few  hours  after,  a  general  meeting  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Boston  was  convoked  ;  and  though  many  persons  openly  protested 
against  all  measures  opposed  to  the  present  spirit  of  the  people,  as  tending 
to  encourage  a  repetition  of  the  arbitrary  act  which  Knowles  had  commit- 
ted, yet  more  moderate  counsels  prevailed  with  the  majority  ;  and  reso- 
lutions were  adopted,  which,  while  they  expressed  an  indignant  sense  of  the 
insult  that  the  province  had  sustained  from  the  British  commodore,  con- 
demned the  lawless  and  tumultuous  violence  by  which  the  government  was 
trampled  under  the  feet  of  the  populace.  On  the  following  day,  the  tran- 
quillity of  the  town  was  completely  restored  ;  the  miHtia,  of  their  own  ac- 
cord, repaired  to  attend  the  governor  at  the  castle ;  and,  in  the  midst  of  a 
numerous  concourse  of  approving  citizens,  reconducted  him,  with  much 
parade,  to  his  own  house.  Knowles  soon  after  released  the  men  whom 
he  had  impressed,  and  departed  with  his  squadron,  to  the  great  satisfaction 
of  the  colonists.  No  attempt  was  made  by  the  provincial  authorities  to  pun- 
ish any  of  the  insurgents  ;  nor  was  any  resentment  openly  expressed  by 
the  British  government  at  the  resolute  and  successful  opposition  by  which 
its  pretensions  were  resisted  and  defeated.^ 

In  the  following  year  [April,  1748],  peace  was  restored  between  Britain, 
France,  and  Spain,  by  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  —  the  most  inglorious 
and  impolitic  compact  to  which  Britain  acceded  since  the  Revolution  oP 
168S.  It  was  stipulated  that  all  conquests  on  every  side  should  be  re- 
stored ;  and  the  effect  of  this  provision  was,  that  the  valuable  acquisition 
of  Cape  Breton  was  surrendered  to  France,^  in  return  for  territorial  restitu- 
tions, of  which  only  the  empress  queen  of  Hungary  and  the  States  General 
of  Holland  reaped  the  advantage.  This  arrangement  produced  the  most 
pamful  surprise  and  mortification  in  New  England,  where  the  people  com- 
plained that  a  possession  of  the  highest  importance  to  their  interests,  the 
acquisition  of  their  bravery,  and  the  first  conspicuous  trophy  of  American 
glory,  was  sacrificed  for  the  benefit  of  Germany  and  Holland.  But  if  the 
substance  of  the  concession  was  disadvantageous  to  America,  the  accessory 
provisions  by  which  it  was  fortified  were  no  less  dishonorable  to  Britain  ;  for, 
in  deference  to  the  jealousy  of  the  French  and  their  impatient  eagerness  to 
regain  Cape  Breton,  the  British  king  agreed  to  send  two  Englishmen  of 
rank  and  distinction  to  France  as  hostages  for  the  due  fulfilment  of  their 
sovereign's  engagements.  The  treaty,  indeed,  betrays  the  strangest  dis- 
regard of  the  interest  and  dignity  of  Britain.  The  right  of  English  ships  to 
navigate  the  American  seas  without  liability  to  search    and  detention  was 

that  the  governor  himself  believed  that  the  rioters  were  secretly  encouraged,  though  not  open- 
ly countenanced,  by  the  principal  inhabitants  of  Boston. 

'  Hutchinson.     Burk. 

2  We  have  witnessed  similar  instances  of  restitution,  on  the  part  of  the  British  court,  of 
Canada,  which  was  conquered  in  1629  by  Sir  David  Kirk,  ^nd  of  Nova  Scotia,  which  was 
subdued  in  1654  by  Cromwell. 


CHAP.  IL]  TREATY  OF  AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.  J  39 

not  even  alluded  to  ;  although  this  claim  was  the  original  source  of  the 
hostilities  between  Britain  and  Spain.  The  encroachments  of  the  French 
on  the  territory  of  the  Six  Nations,  and  their  grand  project  of  connecting, 
by  a  chain  of  mihtary  posts,  their  settlements  on  the  rivers  St.  Lawrence 
and  Mississippi,  were  passed  over  with  a  silence  which  might  be  con- 
strued as  importing  acquiescence  in  those  formidable  pretensions.  The 
limits  of  Nova  Scotia  were  left  in  the  same  state  of  uncertainty  which  had 
already  supplied  occasion  of  quarrel  ;  for  the  adjustment  of  them  was 
again  remitted  to  the  experienced  inefficacy  of  the  discussions  and  nego- 
tiations of  commissaries,  to  be  named  by  the  French  and  British  kings, — 
with  this  most  absurd  proviso  (which  might  well  seem  the  suggestion  of  a 
satirist  of  both  parties),  "  that  all  things  shall  be  replaced  on  the  footing  on 
which  they  were  or  ought  to  have  been  prior  to  the  commencement  of  hos- 
tilities." In  short,  after  a  war  which  proved  calamitous  and  distressing  to 
every  quarter  of  the  British  empire,  and  advanced  the  national  debt  of  Brit- 
ain to  the  sum  of  eighty  millions  sterling,  the  nation  concluded  a  peace  by 
which  she  parted  with  the  single  dear-bought  prize  that  her  arms  had  won, 
without  procuring  in  return  the  slightest  national  advantage,  the  redress  of 
any  part  of  the  injury  of  which  she  had  justly  complained,  or  the  recogni- 
tion or  additional  security  of  any  one  of  her  rights  which  had  been  previous- 
ly invaded.  Not  one  of  the  belligerents  was  a  gainer  by  the  war.  To  all 
of  them  the  termination  of  it  was  advantageous,  except  to  Britain,  where 
the  reasons  and  purposes  for  which  it  was  originally  undertaken  seemed  to 
have  been  entirely  forgotten. 

The  cession  of  Cape  Breton,  however  disagreeable  to  the  inhabitants 
of  New  England,  added  force  to  the  claim,  which  for  some  time  they  had 
urged  at  the  British  court,  for  reimbursement  of  the  expenses  attending  the 
enterprise  by  which  that  island  was  conquered.  Some  members  of  the 
ministerial  cabinet  for  a  while  contended  that  it  would  be  a  sufficient  in- 
demnification, if  a  sum  were  granted  adequate  to  the  redemption  of  the  bills 
issued  by  the  provincial  governments  on  account  of  the  expedition,  at 
their  depreciated  value.  But  Bollan,  one  of  the  provincial  agents,  exposed 
the  unfairness  of  this  proposition,  and  clearly  demonstrated  that  the  depre- 
ciation of  the  value  of  these  bills  was  as  effectually  a  charge  incurred  by  the 
people  as  if  a  corresponding  proportion  of  the  bills  themselves  had  been 
retired  from  circulation  by  taxes  ;  and,  strenuously  insisting  for  the  original 
value  of  the  bills,  rejected  all  proposals  of  compromise.  The  British  min- 
isters finally  acceded  to  his  demand  ;  and  the  reimbursement  of  the  New 
F/ngland  States  was  sanctioned  by  an  act  of  parliament.^  In  conformity 
with  the  desire  of  some  wise  politicians  of  Massachusetts,  the  amount  of  the 
indemnity  awarded  to  this  province  was  remitted  in  silver  and  copper  money; 
and  a  vigorous  and  successful  attempt  was  now  at  last  made  to  retire  all 
the  provincial  bills  of  credit  from  circulation,  and  to  substitute  a  metallic  in 
place  of  a  paper  currency.  [1749.]  Though  it  was  manifest  that  the 
fluctuating  value  of  paper  money  was  productive  of  great  injustice  and  in- 
convenience,^ and  that  with  its  depreciation  the  morals  of  the  people  were 

>  Stat.  21  George  II.,  Cap.  23.  There  was  accorded  bv  this  act,  to  Massachusetts,  £183,649 
2.9.7^/.;  to  New  Hampshire,  £16,35.5  135.  4d.;  to  Connecticut,  £23,863  19^.  1^/.;  and  to 
Rhode  Island,  £6,322  12.f.  10^/.  These  sums  fell  far  short  of  the  entire  expense  that  the 
colonies  had  incurred  ;  and  much  Inrger  sums  were  granted  by  the  same  act  to  indemnify  the 
expenses  of  the  empress  queen  of  Hungary,  the  king  of  Sardinia,  the  Duke  of  Brunswick, 
and  otiier  European  allies  of  the  British  court. 

*  "A  single  fact,  recorded  in  a  note  to  a  sermon  preached  on  the  fast-day,  1748,  by  the 


190  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

proportionally  corrupted,  this  change  was  not  accomplished  without  an  ob- 
stinate opposition,  in  which  a  band  of  stock-jobbers,  traders  on  borrowed 
capital,  and  other  individuals  who  extracted  a  partial  advantage  from  the 
public  detriment,  were  supported  in  their  selfish  policy  by  popular  ignorance 
and  credulity.  In  some  tumultuous  assemblies  that  took  place  in  Boston 
and  its  neighbourhood,  a  popular  cry  was  raised  that  paper  money  was  the 
only  advantageous  currency  for  the  poor,  because  it  was  not  worth  hoard- 
ing ;  and  that  silver  and  gold  would  fall  entirely  to  the  share  of  the  rich, 
and  be  either  exported  or  hoarded,  without  descending  among  the  laboring 
classes,  who  must  either  be  deprived  of  employment  or  accept  commodities 
at  an  adjusted  price  as  the  wages  of  their  labor.  A  majority  of  the  assem- 
bly, however,  persisted  in  the  necessary  measures  for  restoring  the  currency 
of  the  province  to  a  healthy  state  ;  yet  not  without  apprehensions  of  some 
formidable  commotion  of  a  deluded  populace  instigated  by  crafty  and  inter- 
ested counsellors.  It  was  the  less  difficult  at  this  time  to  excite  disturb- 
ance in  New  England,  on  account  of  the  number  of  persons  recently  dis- 
banded from  the  mihtary  force  collected  during  the  war,  and  who  did  not 
readily  resume  their  interrupted  habits  of  sobriety  and  industry.  But  the 
fears  of  the  wise  and  the  hopes  of  the  dishonest  proved,  happily,  ground- 
less. A  feeble  spark  of  insurrection  was  instantly  smothered  by  a  general 
expression  of  contempt  and  derision.  The  people  very  soon  perceived 
that  it  was  as  easy  for  a  frugal,  industrious  man  to  obtain  silver  as  it  had 
been  to  obtain  paper  ;  and,  passing  from  one  extreme  to  another,  they  ex- 
pressed ere  long  a  decided  aversion  to  paper  currency  even  on  the  most 
limited  scale.  However,  about  two  years  after,  the  British  government 
judged  it  expedient  to  secure  the  permanence  of  this  innovation,  and  prevent 
the  recurrence  of  the  relative  evil,  by  a  parliamentary  interposition,  which, 
on  account  of  its  professed  object,  seems  not  to  have  awakened  any  jeal- 
ousy in  the  colonists.  The  act  of  parhament  for  this  purpose  was  confined 
to  the  States  of  New  England,^  of  which  the  several  assemblies  were  com- 
manded to  call  in  and  discharge  all  the  bills  of  credit  they  had  issued,  and 
prohibited  from  ever  again  issuing  such  bills,  except  with  a  circulation  hm- 
ited  to  the  current  year,  and  after  sufficient  provision  for  discharging  them 
within  that  period.  Any  governor,  whether  appointed  by  the  crown  or 
elected  by  the  colonists,  who  should  ratify  an  act  of  assembly  derogating 
from  the  parliamentary  statute,  was  to  incur  the  penalty  of  a  perpetual 
incapacity  of  public  office.  An  exception  was,  however,  admitted  in 
the  case  of  extraordinary  emergencies  created  by  war  or  invasion.  But  it 
was  declared  absolutely  unlawful  for  the  provincial  assemblies  ever  after  to 
admit',  as  they  had  heretofore  done,  bills  of  credit  as  a  legal  tender  for  the 
payment  of  private  debts. ^ 

Rev.  Mr.  Appleton,  of  Cambridge,  gives  an  impressive  view  of  the  depreciation,  with  its 
baneful  effects.  An  aged  widow,  whose  husband  died  more  than  forty  years  before  that  time, 
had  three  pounds  a  year  settled  on  her  instead  of  her  dower;  and  that  sum  would  at  that 
day,  and  at  the  place  where  she  still  lived,  procure  toward  her  support  two  cords  of  wood, 
four  bushels  of  Indian  corn,  one  bushel  of  rye,  one  bushel  of  malt,  fifty  pounds  of  pork,  and 
sixty  pounds  of  beef  In  1748,  she  could  not  purchase  more  than  one  eighth  part  of  that 
amount  of  the  necessaries  of  life.  And  this,  adds  the  humane  preacher,  is,  in  a  measure,  the 
situation  of  many  widows  in  the  land."     Holmes. 

'  The  American  historians,  in  general,  have  erroneously  represented  this  act  as  extending 
its  provisions  to  all  the  colonies.  It  was  in  the  year  1763,  that  bills  of  credit  were  abolished 
in  all  the  American  provinces  by  the  act  of  parliament,  4  George  III.,  Cap.  34. 

2  Stat.  24  George  II.,  Cap  53  (A  D.  1751).  Smollett.  Millot.  Hutchinson.  Minot's 
Coniinuaiionqf  the  History  of  MacsachuseUs.     Burk.     Belknap.     Trumbull.     The  comparative 


CHAP.  II.]  BRITISH  DOMINION  IN   NOVA  SCOTIA.  |9] 

Notwithstanding  the  indifference  displayed  by  Great  Britain  for  the  wishes 
and  the  advantage  of  her  American  colonies,  in  the  treaty  of  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  yet  the  surprising  exertions  which  they  made  during  the  war 
strongly  aroused  her  attention  to  their  situation  and  prospects,  and  to  the 
interests  of  her  own  dominion  over  them  ;  and  many  important  schemes 
and  considerations  relative  to  America  were  entertained  and  pondered  about 
this  time  in  the  British  cabinet.  The  situation  of  Nova  Scotia  demanded 
immediate  attention,  which  was  additionally  invited  by  a  project  that  was 
suggested  for  combining  the  improvement  of  the  British  dominion  in  this 
province  with  the  benefit  of  a  great  number  of  English  soldiers  and  sailors, 
whom  the  peace  deprived  of  subsistence,  and  for  whose  behoof  justice  and 
policy  equally  demanded  that  some  public  provision  should  speedily  be 
made.  Even  if  the  commissaries  of  France  and  England  should  succeed 
in  preventing  a  renewal  of  disputes  between  the  two  nations,  by  a  peaceful 
and  satisfactory  adjustment  pf  the  boundaries  of  Nova  Scotia,  something 
more  was  necessary  to  render  the  British  dominion  secure  in  this  province, 
where  the  inhabitants,  it  was  well  known,  were  discontented  with  their 
subjection  to  Britain,  and  cherished  both  the  desire  and  the  hope  of  being 
reunited  to  the  French  monarchy.  Upon  every  rupture  or  dispute  be- 
tween the  two  crowns,  they  communicated  intelligence  to  their  countrymen 
in  Canada,  and  intrigued  in  behalf  of  France  with  the  adjacent  Indian  tribes  ; 
and  during  the  late  war  they  had  been  manifestly  on  the  point  of  breaking 
into  open  revolt.  A  scheme  was  now  projected  by  certain  of  the  Eng- 
lish ministers,  and  especially  by  the  Earl  of  Halifax,  president  of  the  Board 
of  Trade  and  Plantations,  of  introducing  a  British  population  into  this  ter- 
ritory, by  encouraging  a  number  of  the  disbanded  officers,  troops,  and  ships' 
crews  of  the  late  war-establishment  to  repair  thither  as  permanent  settlers. 
The  parliament  approved  this  design,  and  voted  in  the  first  instance  towards 
its  execution  the  sum  of  forty  thousand  pounds.  Advantageous  terms  of 
settlement,  being  tendered  by  the  government,  were  accepted  by  nearly  four 
thousand  adventurers,  who,  with  their  families,  were  transported  at  the  pub- 
lic expense  to  the  Bay  of  Chebucto,  where  they  built  the  town  of  Halifax. 
They  were  accompanied  by  Colonel  Edward  Cornwallis,  who  was  appointed 
governor  and  commander-in-chief  of  Nova  Scotia.  The  French  colonists 
were  allowed  peaceably  to  remain  in  the  country  ;  and  having  pledged 
themselves  to  submit,  to  the  English  government,  with  the  qualification  that 
they  should  never  be  required  to  bear  arms  against  France,  they  came  to 
be  denominated  French  Neutrals.  The  British  parliament  continued  annu- 
ally to  repeat  pecuniary  grants  for  the  support  of  this  settlement,  which,  in 
the  year  1755,  had  cost  the  nation  upwards  of  four  hundred  thousand 
pounds.  Its  establishment  was  viewed  with  much  apprehension  by  the 
French,  who,  though  they  did  not  think  proper  to  promulgate  their  displeas- 
ure, clandestinely  employed  emissaries   to  incite  the  Indians  to  harass  the 

value  of  tNf.  cuirenciesin  the  several  British  colonies,  in  the  year  1748,  appears  from  the 
following  ^uie  (extracted  from  Douglass)  of  their  exchanges  with  London. 
For  £  100  sterling,  New  Eniffland 1,100  currency. 

New  York      ......        190 

East  Jersey 190 

West  Jersey 180 

Pennsylvania 180 

Maryland        200 

Virginia 120  to  125 

North  Carolina 1,000 

South  Carolina 7.50 


192  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

British  colonists  with  hostilities  calculated  to  deter  them  from  extending  or 
improving  their  plantations.  Partly  from  this  cause,  and  doubtless  in  part 
from  the  character  of  the  first  settlers  and  the  habit  they  contracted  of  de- 
pending on  Britain  for  support,  they  made  little  progress  either  in  agriculture 
or  in  fisheries  ;  and  the  colony,  subsisting  chiefly  on  the  sums  expended  by 
the  military  and  naval  forces  maintained  there  by  the  parent  state,  almost 
entirely  failed  to  answer  the  expectations  of  its  projectors.^ 

But  the  policy  which  the  British  government  was  to  pursue  with  regard 
to  the  older  colonial  dependencies  of  the  empire  in  America  was  a  subject 
of  deeper  interest  and  nicer  care.  The  unexpected  vigor  that  New  England 
displayed  in  the  conquest  of  Cape  Breton,  the  glory  that  she  gained  by  that 
achievement  at  a  time  when  the  British  arms  were  unsuccessful  in  every  other 
quarter  of  the  world,  and  the  spirit  of  independence  which  kept  pace  whh 
her  rising  strength,  excited  some  perplexity.  The  colonies,  it  was  evident- 
ly seen,  were  rapidly  advancing  from  national  pupilage  to  manhood  ;  and  the 
inquiry  was  naturally  suggested.  Should  not  their  institutions  undergo  some 
corresponding  alteration  ?  Should  not  a  new  system  of  law,  pohcy,  and 
mutual  correspondence  be  devised,  to  supply  between  the  parent  state  and 
her  dependencies  the  fast  relaxing  bonds  of  relative  strength  and  weakness  ?^ 
From  the  measures  and  propositions  of  the  British  ministers  it  may  be 
inferred  that  their  minds  were  occupied  with  these  considerations  ;  though 
they  neither  projected  nor  executed  any  scheme  of  policy  worthy  of  the 
emergency,  and  probably  at  length  calmed  their  solicitude  by  confusedly 
trusting  to  the  influence  of  habitual  subjection  on  America,  or  by  figuring 
with  fond  hope  a  postponement  of  the  inevitable  crisis,  and  of  the  neces- 
sity of  making  provision  for  it.  Indeed,  it  is  certain  that  the  British  min- 
isters were  but  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  real  growth  and  condition 
of  the  American  provinces,  where  the  continual  formation  of  new  settle- 
ments, which  long  remained  unknown,  or  little  known,  to  the  parent  state, 
and  impervious  alike  to  her  arms  and  authority,  not  only  enlarged  the  colo- 
nial population,  but  fostered  sentiments  of  independence,  hardy  habits,  and 
enterprising  disposhions.  No  wise,  enlarged  prospective  system  in  relation  to 
America  was  ever  cultivated  in  the  British  cabinet,  where  colonial  afl^airs 
(except  in  the  emergencies  of  war  or  negotiation  with  rival  European 
powers)  were  customarily  viewed  rather  as  the  province  of  the  Board  of 
Trade,  than  as  included  within  the  higher  departments  of  state  policy  ;  and, 
however  dissatisfied  the  ministers  might  be  from  time  to  time  with  the  aspect 
of  this  important  branch  of  the  British  empire,  they  were  embarrassed  in 
the  projection  of  extensive  schemes  by  their  inexperience  in  the  conception 
and  application  of  relative  general  principles,  and  their  imperfect  acquaint- 
ance with  local  details. 

The  most  obvious  means  of  fortifying  the  British  dominion  over  the  colo- 
nies, and  rendering  their  progressive  resources  tributary  to  the  strength  of 
the  supreme  government  of  the  empire,  was  to  carry  into  practical  effect 
the  pretended  right  of  subjecting  America  to  the  direct  taxation  of  the  par- 
liament of  Great  Britain.  If  this  had  been  accomphshed,  the  resources  of 
the  American  provinces  and  the  industry  of  their  nihabitants  would  have 

^  Smollett.     Hewit.     Holmes. 

'  "  The  colonies,"  said  Lord  Chancellor  Northington,  some  years  after,  in  the  British  House 
of  Lords,  "  are  become  too  big  to  be  governed  by  the  laws  tney  at  first  set  out  with.  They 
have,  therefore,  run  into  confusion,  and  it  will  be  the  policy  of  this  country  to  form  a  phn  of 
laws  for  them  " 


CHAP.  II.]  BILL  ABOLISHING  AMERICAN  CHARTERS.  J 93 

been  mortgaged  for  ever  to  the  support  of  regal  and  aristocratical  grandeur 
and  of  European  luxury  and  wars  ;  nor  could  a  more  effectual  process  have 
been  devised  for  the  subjugation  of  liberty  in  England  itself.  We  have  seen 
a  proposition  to  tax  America  originate  in  Britain  so  early  as  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century, 1  and  the  same  project  subsequently  reproduced 
and  recommended  to  the  British  nation  by  Sir  Wilham  Keith. ^  When  the 
war  with  Spain  broke  out,  in  the  year  1739,  Keith's  scheme,  which,  among 
other  particulars,  proposed,  'Hhat  the  duties  of  stamps  upon  parchment  and 
paper  in  England  be  extended  by  act  of  parliament  to  all  the  American 
plantations j^^  was  suggested  to  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  as  a  politic  device  for 
evading  the  necessity  of  imposing  additional  taxes  on  England.  Walpole  is 
said  to  have  received  the  proposition  with  a  smile,  and  to  have  negatived  it 
by  this  memorable  reply  :  —  "I  will  leave  that  to  some  of  my  successors 
who  have  more  courage  than  I  have,  and  are  less  friends  to  commerce  than 
I  am.  It  has  been  a  maxim  with  me,  during  my  administration,  to  encourage 
the  trade  of  the  American  colonies  in  the  utmost  latitude  ;  nay,  it  has  been 
necessary  to  pass  over  some  irregularities  in  their  trade  with  Europe  ;  for, 
by  encouraging  them  to  an  extensive  growing  foreign  commerce,  if  they 
gain  five  hundred  thousand  pounds,  I  am  convinced  that  in  two  years  after- 
wards full  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds  of  their  gains  will  be  in 
his  Majesty's  exchequer,  by  the  labor  and  produce  of  this  kingdom,  as 
immense  quantities  of  every  kind  of  our  manufactures  go  thither  ;  and  as 
they  increase  in  their  foreign  trade,  more  of  our  produce  will  be  wanted. 
This  is  taxing  them  more  agreeably  to  their  own  constitution  and  ours.^' 
In  1748,  three  years  after  the  New  England  enterprise  against  Cape  Bre- 
ton, the  project  of  taxing  America  was  again  resumed,  and  so  far  enter- 
tained by  the  British  cabinet,  that  Pelham,  the  prime  minister,  communi- 
cated it  to  the  various  provincial  governments,  and  desired  to  know  their 
opmions  with  regard  to  it.  Of  the  answers  which  they  returned  no  farther 
account  has  been  preserved  than  that  they  assigned  such  reasons  as  induced 
the  ministry  to  abandon  the  design.^ 

Another  measure,  which  succeeded  the  relinquished  purpose  of  taxing 
the  American  colonies,  was  the  repetition  of  an  attempt,  of  which  we  have 
already  witnessed  several  instances,  to  invade  their  chartered  systems  of 
liberty.  A  bill  was  introduced  into  the  British  parliament,  in  the  year 
1748,  by  ''vhich  all  the  American  charters  were  abolished,  and  the  king's  in- 
structionc  to  the  provincial  governors  were  rendered  equivalent  to  legal  en- 
actments During  the  disputes  that  prevailed  between  Massachusetts  and 
the  cro^vn,  about  twenty  years  before,  this  stretch  of  arbitrary  power 
might  have  been  attempted  with  some  likelihood  of  success.  But  the  op- 
portunity was  irretrievably  lost  ;  and  now,  every  circumstance  in  the  rel- 
ative situation  of  Britain  and  America  combined  to  increase  the  odium 
of  the  project,  and  the  efficacy  of  the  resistance  which  it  was  calculated 
to  provoke.  To  the  valor  of  the  Americans  Britain  was  indebted  for  the 
principal,  and  almost  the  solitary  achievement,  by  which  her  wounded  honor 
was  avenged  and  her  mihtary  reputation  supported  in  the  late  war  ;  and  it 
was  by  the  conquest  which  the  Americans  had  won  for  her  that  she  was 
enabled  to  purchase  a  peace.  A  more  unsuitable  juncture  for  an  attempt  to 
bereave^ them  of  their  liberties    could   hardly  be   imagined.     The  bill,  as 

»  Appendix  I.,  arUe.  s  Book  VIII.,  Chap.  II.,  ante.  ' 

3  Political  Register  for  1767.     Gordon.     Burk.     Walsh's  Mppeal. 
VOL.    II.  25  Q 


194  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

might  easily  have  been  foreseen,  was  vigorously  opposed  by  the  provincial 
agents  in  England,  and  especially  by  the  agents  of  Massachusetts  ;  its  injus- 
tice to  America,  and  the  danger  which  British  liberty  would  incur  from  the 
establishment  of  such  a  precedent,  were  clearly  demonstrated ;  and  the 
ministers  of  the  crown,  after  a  protracted  discussion,  finding  the  obstruc- 
tions to  their  wishes  insurmountable,  withdrew  the  bill,  and  once  more 
desisted  from  the  impolitic  controversy  which  they  had  so  rashly  renewed. 
The  act  of  parliament  which  was  passed  shortly  after  for  the  regulation  of 
bills  of  credit  in  New  England,  and  to  which  we  have  already  had  occasion 
to  advert,  was  believed  by  some  American  politicians  to  have  been  a  device 
of  petty  pride  on  the  part  of  the  British  court  to  cover  the  disgrace  of  this 
defeat.^  In  default  of  a  parliamentary  abrogation  of  the  American  consti- 
tutions, an  attempt  was  made  by  the  British  ministers  to  effect  a  practical 
enlargement  of  the  royal  prerogative  in  several  of  the  provinces,  by  the  ar- 
bitrary strain  of  the  powers  which  they  conferred  and  of  the  policy  which 
they  dictated  in  the  commissions  and  instructions  to  the  provincial  gov- 
ernors who  were  appointed  by  the  crown.  Of  this  encroaching  policy, 
which  produced  no  other  effect  than  to  exercise  the  defensive  spirit  of  lib- 
erty in  America  and  rouse  it  to  greater  vigilance  and  jealousy,  some  in- 
stances will  present  themselves  in  the  progress  of  our  narration.^ 

The  most  politic  of  all  the  schemes  that  were  at  this  time  [1749]  pro- 
posed in  the  British  cabinet  was  a  project  of  introducing  an  ecclesiastical  es- 
tablishment, derived  from  the  model  of  the  church  of  England,  and  particu- 
larly the  order  of  bishops,  into  North  America.  The  pretext  assigned  for 
this  innovation  was,  that  many  non-juring  clergymen  of  the  Episcopal  per- 
suasion, attached  to  the  cause  of  the  Pretender,  had  recently  emigrated  from 
Britain  to  America,  and  that  it  was  desirable  to  create  a  board  of  ecclesi- 
astical dignitaries  for  the  purpose  of  controlling  their  proceedings  and  coun- 
teracting their  influence  ;  but  doubtless  it  was  intended,  in  part  at  least,  to 
answer  the  ends  of  strengthening  royal  prerogative  in  America,  —  of  giving 
to  the  state,  through  the  church  of  England,  an  accession  of  influence  over 
the  colonists,  — and  of  imparting  to  their  institutions  a  greater  degree  of  ar- 
istocratical  character  and  tendency.  The  views  of  the  statesmen  by  whom 
this  design  was  entertained  were  inspired  by  the  suggestion  of  Butler, 
Bishop  of  Durham,  and  were  confirmed  and  seconded  by  the  zealous  co- 
operation of  Seeker,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  the  society  instituted 
for  the  propagation  of  the  gospel.  This  society  had  received  very  errone- 
ous impressions  of  the  religious  character  of  the  colonists  in  general  from 
some  worthless  and  incapable  missionaries  which  it  sent  to  America  ;  and 
Seeker,  who  partook  these  impressions,  had  promulgated  them  from  the  pul- 
pit in  a  strain  of  vehement  and  presumptuous  invective.  Such  demeanour 
by  no  means  tended  to  conciliate  the  favor  of  the  Americans  to  the  pro- 
posed ecclesiastical  establishment.  From  the  intolerance  and  bitterness  of 
spirit  disclosed  by  the  chief  promoters  of  the  scheme,  it  was  natural  to  fore- 
bode a  total  absence  of  moderation  in  the  conduct  of  it. 

The  bare  announcement  of  it  provoked  accordingly  the  utmost  alarm 
and  the  strongest  expressions  of  aversion  and  opposition  in  New  England,  of 

^  Minot. 

^  "  While  the  ministers  of  kings  were  looking  into  their  laws  and  records  to  decide  what 
should  be  the  rights  of  men  in  the  colonies,  nature  was  establishing  a  system  of  freedom  in 
America,  which  they  could  neither  comprehend  nor  discern."  Williams's  History  of  Vermont^ 
Preface. 


CHAP.  II.]        SCHEME  OF  AN  EPISCOPAL  ESTABLISHMENT.  195 

which  the  popular  assemblies  and  leading  politicians  had  for  many  years 
constituted  themselves  the  guardians  of  the  general  liberties  of  America.  So 
faithfully  did  they  sustain  this  generous  part  on  the  present  occasion,  that 
iheir  opposition  was  not  relaxed  by  an  offer  to  exempt  New  England  from 
the  operation  of  the  projected  measure.  And  yet  it  was  one  of  the  New 
England  States,  and  one  of  which  the  inhabitants  in  general  were  noted  for 
the  zeal  with  which  they  continued  to  cherish  the  primitive  sentiments, 
opinions,  and  institutions  of  the  Puritans,  which  supphed  the  only  consid- 
erable party  in  America  by  which  the  project  of  the  English  ministry  was 
cordially  approved.  In  the  year  1722,  Cutler,  the  rector  of  Yale  College, 
in  Connecticut,  and  several  other  clergymen  of  this  province,  suddenly  and 
publicly  retracted  their  previous  profession  of  the  vahdity  of  Presbyterian  or 
Congregational  ordination,  proclaimed  themselves  converts  to  Episcopacy, 
and  declared  their  conviction  that  no  ordination  to  ecclesiastical  functions 
could  be  vahdly  derived  except  from  the  bishops  of  the  church  of  Eng- 
land. This  schism  excited  at  the  time  no  small  astonishment  and  mortifica- 
tion in  the  colony.  A  public  conference  and  disputation  took  place,  in 
presence  of  the  governor,  between  the  heads  of  the  provincial  clergy  who 
adhered  to  their  primitive  ordinances  and  the  seceders  to  Episcopacy ;  and 
the  issue  of  the  discussion  was,  that  about  half  of  the  votaries  of  Episco- 
pacy were  reconverted  to  their  original  opinions, — a  result  which  was 
regarded  with  disappointment  in  Connecticut,  on  account  of  its  inadequacy 
to  the  general  desire,  —  but  which  must  impart  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  and 
surprise  to  all  who  are  familiar  with  the  common  issue  of  such  polemical 
debates.  It  is  less  surprising,  that  those  of  the  dissidents,  whom  the  con- 
troversy failed  to  reduce  to  their  original  system,  clung  with  increased 
ardor  and  tenacity  to  the  novelties  they  had  embraced.  By  their  arguments 
and  example,  the  Episcopal  party  in  Connecticut  had  subsequently  gained 
an  accession  of  votaries  less  remarkable  for  their  numbers  than  their  zeal, 
and  by  whom  the  proposed  legal  establishment  of  Episcopacy  in  America 
was  now  hailed  with  the  liveliest  expressions  of  hope,  joy,  and  approbation.  1 
But  the  general  voice  of  New  England,  supported  and  reechoed  by  the 
dissenters  from  the  established  church  in  Britain,  overpowered  the  purpose 
both  of  the  British  and  the  American  partisans  of  Episcopacy.  It  v/as  in 
vain  that  the  British  court  endeavoured  to  silence  the  opposition  of  some 
of  the  most  popular  clergymen  of  New  England  by  tempting  offers  of 
ecclesiastical  preferment  ;  and  no  less  ineffectual  were  the  assurances, 
subsequently  tendered,  that  the  innovation  should  not  extend  to  New  Eng- 
land, and  that  the  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops  appointed  in  the  other  colo- 
nies should  be  strictly  limited  to  the  clergy,  and  should  not  be  permitted 
to  extend  to  the  laity.  These  propositions  —  even  backed  by  the  offer,  that, 
if  the  authority  of  the  bishops  was  recognized  in  America,  their  emoluments 
would  be  provided  (in  the  first  instance,  at  least)  by  the  British  treasury  — 
could  neither  subdue  nor  mitigate  the  fixed  aversion  with  which  the  people 
of  New  England,  and  especially  the  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  contem- 
plated a  project  of  intrusting  any  degree  of  power  to  a  body  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal  functionaries  dependent  on  the    crown.     They  regarded  with  appre- 

*  About  three  years  after  (in  1752),  there  were  in  Pennsylvania  nine  Episcopal  ministers  and 
twenty-seven  Episcopal  churches ;  in  New  Jersey,  eight  Episcopal  ministers  ;  in  New  York, 
twelve  ;  in  Connecticut,  eight  ministers  and  sixteen  churches ;  in  Rhode  Island,  five  minis- 
ters and  six  churches  ;  in  Massachusetts,  ten  ministers  and  ten  churches ;  and  in  New  Hamp- 
■hire,  one  minister  and  one  church.    Holmes. 


19G  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

hensive  jealousy  that  principle  of  increase  inherent  in  every  form  or  de- 
scription of  power  irresponsible  to  the  general  will,  and  peculiarly  incident, 
as  they  justly  imagined,  to  ecclesiastical  authority.  Some  of  the  leading 
personages  in  the  British  cabinet  were  at  length  induced  to  express  an  open 
dissent  from  the  opinions  of  their  colleagues  on  this  important  point,  — 
fearing,  perhaps,  that  Episcopal  grandeur  and  authority  in  England  would 
be  endangered  by  the  exemplification  of  a  simpler  aud  more  primitive  model 
of  Episcopacy  in  America.  After  much  passionate  discussion,  fruitlessly 
prolonged  by  Seeker  and  the  partisans  of  his  opinions,  the  cabinet  of  Britain 
finally  abandoned,  or  at  least  postponed,  the  design  of  giving  a  legal  estab- 
hshment  to  Episcopacy  in  the  colonies. ^ 

The  issue  of  all  these  discussions  and  deliberations  was,  that  the  British 
government,  instead  of  altering,  continued  to  pursue,  its  wonted  narrow, 
unimproved  colonial  policy  even  more  strictly  than  before  ;  and  the  only 
new  measure  that  was  carried  into  effect  was  one  w^hich  extended  the  op- 
eration of  that  principle  which  had  long  been  openly  avowed,  that  the  colo- 
nists were  a  dependent  people,  existing  for  the  benefit  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain,  and  that  it  was  lawful  and  expedient  that  they  should  be 
restricted  to  pursuits  tending  to  the  enrichment  of  the  parent  state,  and  ex- 
cluded from  every  branch  of  industry,  however  beneficial  to  themselves, 
which  might  render  them  the  competitors  of  British  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers. The  importation  of  iron  from  America  had  been  discouraged 
hitherto  by  heavy  duties  ;  while  a  great  part  of  the  supply  of  material  on 
which  the  manufacturers  of  iron  in  Britain  depended  was  procured  by  an 
expensive  and  disadvantageous  commerce  with  Sweden.  The  idea  was 
now  suggested  of  drawing  these  supphes  from  America,  where,  instead  of 
the  money  annually  remitted  to  Sweden,  British  goods  would  be  accepted 
in  exchange  ;  and  with  this  politic  view  there  w^as  combined  the  less  liberal 
purpose  of  checking  a  successful  attempt  which  had  recently  been  made  to 
establish  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  New  England.  [1750.]  An  act  of  par- 
liament^ was  accordingly  passed,  authorizing  the  importation  of  pig  and  bar 
iron  from  the  American  colonies,  duty-free,  into  the  port  of  London  ;  but 
the  exemption  was  strictly  confined  to  this  port ;  and  the  iron  conveyed 
thither,  in  virtue  of  the  act,  was  not  to  be  afterwards  transported  farther  than 
ten  miles  into  the  country,  except  for  the  use  of  the  royal  dock-yards.  The 
object  of  this  restriction  was  to  prevent  any  diminution  of  the  profits  which 
the  proprietors  of  mines  and  woods  in  England  derived  from  the  supplies 
of  mineral  produce  and  fuel  which  they  afforded  to  the  country  manufactur- 
ers of  iron.  In  the  metropolis  and  its  immediate  neighbourhood,  the  man- 
ufacturers depended  entirely  on  foreign  supplies.  In  concurrence  with 
provisions  so  cautiously  adapted  to  the  protection  of  every  British  interest, 
it  was  ordained,  for  the  farther  advantage  of  the  iron  manufacture  in  Britain, 
that  no  mill  or  other  engine  for  slitting  or  rolling  of  iron,  nor  any  plating 
forge,  nor  any  furnace  for  making  steel,  should  be  erected  or  continued  in 
any  of  the  American  colonies,  under  the  penalty  of  a  heavy  fine,  and  of 
the  destruction  of  the  machine  as  a  public  nuisance.^  Four  of  the  machines 
prohibited  by  this  arbitrary  law  were  already  established  in  Massachusetts.'* 

'  Trumbull.     Minot.     Holmes.     Gordon.     J^nnual  Register  for  1766. 
«  Stat.  23  George  II.,  Cap.  29.     See  Note  IX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
'  The  other  commercial  statutes  passed  about  this  time  in  relation  to  America  are  noticed  in 
the  close  of  Book  IX.,  ante. 

*  Smollett.     Minot.     "  Our  nailers,"  says  an  American  writer,  in  reference  to  this  period, 


CHAP.  II.]    POLICY  OF  IMPORTING  SLAVES  INTO  AMERICA.  197 

There  was  one  class  of  reasoners  in  the  parent  state,  whose  views  seem 
to  have  been  not  ineffectually  pressed  upon  the  ministers  of  the  crown, 
and  who  predicted  the  continued  submission  of  the  colonies,  as  the  result 
of  a  constant  and  ample  importation  of  negro  slaves  into  America.  We 
have  seen  under  what  conditions  Queen  Ehzabeth  permitted  the  rise  of 
the  British  slave-trade,  with  what  fatal  vigor  it  increased,  and  how  soon 
the  mask  of  benevolence  to  the  negroes  was  discarded.  Britain  had  since 
become  the  greatest  slave-trading  state  in  the  world,  and  was  as  desirous 
to  obtain  a  monopoly  of  this  as  of  other  branches  of  commerce.  In  the 
year  1745,  there  was  published  at  London  a  treatise,  entitled.  The  African 
Slave  Trade,  the  Great  Pillar  and  Support  of  the  British  Plantation  Trade 
in  America.  "  If  the  negro  trade,"  says  the  author  of  this  treatise,  "be 
thrown  into  the  hands  of  our  rivals,  and  our  colonies  are  to  depend  on 
the  labor  of  white  men,  they  will  either  soon  be  undone,  or  shake  off  their 
dependence  on  the  crown  of  England.  For  white  men  cannot  be  obtained 
so  cheaply,  nor  the  labor  of  a  sufficient  number  be  had  for  the  expense  of 
their  maintenance  only,  as  we  have  of  the  Africans."  "  Were  it  possi- 
ble," he  continues,  "  for  white  men  to  answer  the  end  of  negroes  in  plant- 
ing, must  we  not  drain  our  own  country  of  husbandmen,  manufacturers,  and 
mechanics  ?  Might  not  the  consequence  be,  that  our  colonies  would  inter- 
fere with  the  manufactures  of  these  kingdoms,  as  the  Palatines  attempted 
in  Pennsylvania  ?  In  such  case,  indeed,  we  might  have  just  reason  to  dread 
the  prosperity  of  our  colonies  ;  but  while  we  can  supply  them  abundantly 
with  negroes,  we  need  be  under  no  such  apprehensions."  ^ 

It  was  not  in  the  parent  state  alone  and  her  ministerial  cabinet  that  an 
increased  attention  was  now  directed  to  the  political  relations  between  Brit- 
ain and  America,  and  to  the  manifest  truth,  that  a  change  in  these  relations 
was  inevitably  portended  by  the  great  alteration  which  had  already  taken 
place,  and  which  every  year  was  enlarging,  in  the  relative  strength  and 
weakness  of  the  two  countries.  Superior  power  and  fancied  expediency, 
instead  of  the  everlasting  principles  of  justice,  had  been  the  basis  of  a 
great  part  of  the  colonial  policy  of  the  parent  state  ;  and  while  this  basis 
was  continually  becoming  more  narrow  and  insecure,  ihe  policy  to  which 
it  administered  support  was  rendered  more,  instead  of  less,  burdensome  and 
illiberal.  These  important  facts,  and  their  consequences,  were  perceived 
and  pondered  by  the  Americans  ;  and  views  and  speculations  corresponding 
to  their  altered  condition  and  prospects  exercised  the  thoughts  of  some  of 
their  leading  pohticians.  We  have  seen  how  early  the  idea  of  independence 
was  suggested  to  the  colonists  by  the  jealous  suspicions  or  interested  artifice 
which  prompted  Nicholson,  Quarry,  and  other  partisans  -of  royal  preroga- 
tive in  America,  as  well  as  the  members  of  the  Board  of  Trade  in  Eng- 
land, to  impute  to  them  the  design  of  realizing  this  idea  ;  and  how  uni- 
formly the  policy  of  the  British  government  was  calculated  to  recommend 

"can  now  afford  spikes  and  large  nails  cheaper  than  from  England."  Douglass.  It  is  re- 
markable that  Hutchinson  invariably  refrains  from  noticing  the  introduction  of  laws  discred- 
itable to  the  justice  and  liberality  of  British  policy.  He  alludes  in  general  terms  to  the  ex- 
isting commercial  restrictions,  in  the  close  of  his  second  volume,  and  exhorts  his  countrymen 
to  patience  and  filial  resignation  to  the  will  of  the  parent  state,  whose  protection  they  enjoyed. 
*  This  is  an  anonymous  work  ;  the  author  merely  styling  himself  .41  British  Merchant.  There 
is  a  copy  of  it  in  the  British  Museum.  It  was  probably  in  answer  to  it  that  there  was  pub- 
lished, a  few  jrears  after,  a  pamphlet  (noticed  in  Clarkson's  History  of  the  Molition  of  the 
Slave-trade)  entitled  j3n  Essay  in  Vindication  of  the  Colonies  of  America.,  and  containing  the 
most  indignant  reprobation  of  slavery,  and  of  the  pretence  that  necessity  or  sound  policy 
could  ever  be  opposed  to  the  dictates  of  Christianity. 


198  HISTORY  cm  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X* 

independence  to  the  Americans,  by  associating  it  with  the  strongest  impres- 
sions of  dignity  and  interest.  The  grand  poHtical  error  of  that  selfish  and 
harshly  domineering  system,  first  disclosed  by  the  JsTavigation  Act^  was, 
that,  in  proportion  to  its  endurance,  it  became  no  less  dangerous  to  pursue 
than  to  abandon  it.  To  pursue  it  was  to  increase  an  offensive  burden  on 
the  colonists,  in  proportion  to  their  capacity  of  resisting  its  imposition  ;  — 
and  this  was  the  course  which  the  parent  state  actually  embraced.  To 
abandon  it  was  to  make  a  humiliating  avowal  of  injustice,  or  a  dangerous 
concession  to  the  strength  of  a  people  whose  weakness  had  been  abused  ;  — 
a  stretch  of  magnanimity  unexampled  in  the  conduct  of  any  sovereign  state. 
It  was  wittily  and  argumentatively  replied  to  the  American  complaints  of  the 
increasing  exactions  of  Britain,  about  twenty  years  after  this  period,  by  a 
distinguished  champion  ^  of  the  British  poHcy,  that  the  ox  has  no  reason  to 
complain  of  the  aggravation  of  the  burdens  that  were  imposed  on  the  calf. 
Of  this  similitude,  which  was  much  admired  at  the  time,  the  most  signifi- 
cant feature  consists  in  the  frank  avowal  that  the  Americans  were  regarded 
by  the  politicians  of  Great  Britain  as  an  inferior  and  dependent  race  of 
beings.^  The  hypothetical  complaint  of  the  ox  would  be  well  deserving  of 
attention,  if  time  had  developed  in  him  a  faculty  superior  to  brutal  strength  ; 
and  the  increased  pressure  of  the  yoke  of  servitude  upon  him  would  be 
equally  unjust  and  impolitic,  if  his  ability  and  inclination  to  resist  were  pro- 
portioned to  his  capacity  of  enduring  it. 

In  the  actual  condition  of  North  America,  at  this  period,  there  were 
two  circumstances  unfavorable  to  national  independence,  or  at  least  to  its 
speedy  attainment.  One  of  these  w^as  the  defect  of  harmony,  union,  and 
concert  among  the  several  provincial  governments  ;  the  other  was  the 
vicinity  of  the  French  settlements,  where  there  existed  at  once  a  people 
unfriendly  to  the  British  colonists,  and  a  government  hostile,  for  its  own  sake, 
to  American  liberty.  The  diminution  of  religious  bigotry,  and  the  increas- 
ing sense  of  common  interest,  had  for  many  years  contributed  to  foster  a 
principle  of  union  and  mutual  dependence  among  the  respective  provinces, 
which  the  languor  and  seeming  indifference  of  Britain  toward  all  that  related 
to  the  defence  and  security  of  her  colonies  tended  farther  to  promote. 
Frequently  had  she  disappointed  them  of  her  promised  succour,  and  taught 
them  first  to  indulge  hopes  of  safety  and  glory,  and  then  to  refer  the  accom- 
plishment of  these  hopes  to  their  own  unaided  valor  and  force.  As  early 
as  the  year  1643,  we  have  seen^  a  federal  league  established  among  the 
States  of  New  England,  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  the  vigor  and  efficien- 
cy of  their  national  strength.  About  a  century  afterwards,  the  project  of 
a  kindred  institution,  embracing  all  the  American  colonies,  was  suggested 
by  a  writer,  whose  work,  entitled  "  A  Description  of  the  English  Province 
of  Carolana,  by  the  Spaniards  called  Florida^  and  by  the  French,  La  Louis- 
iane^^^  was  pubhshed  in  the  year  1741.  Daniel  Coxe,  the  author  of  this 
tract,  was  the  son  of  Dr.  Coxe  who  in  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
speculated  largely  in  colonial  property,  and  acquired  a  considerable  share 
of  the  proprietary  interest  in  New  Jersey,  as  well  as  of  some  more  dubious 
claims  to   the   territory   comprehended  within  the  colonial    establishments 

'  Dr.  Johnson. 

*  Doan  Swift,  in  one  of  his  works,  describing  the  contemptuous  treatment  of  Ireland  by 
some  of  its  British  rulers,  says,  "  They  looked  down  upon  that  kingdom  as  if  it  had  been  one 
of  thrir  colonies  of  outcasts  in  America.^' 

3  Book  II.,  Chap.  III.,  ante. 


CHAPv  II.]  SCHEME  OF  A  FEDERAL  LEAGUE.  ]99 

of  the  Spaniards  in  North  America.^  In  the  preface  to  his  work,  he  pro- 
posed, for  the  more  effectual  defence  of  the  British  settlements  against  the 
hostile  vicinity  of  the  French  and  the  Indians,  ''  that  all  the  colonies  ap- 
pertaining to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain  on  the  northern  continent  of  Amer- 
ica be  united  under  a  legal,  regular,  and  firm  estabhshment  ;  over  which  a 
lieutenant  or  supreme  governor  may  be  constituted  and  appointed  to  preside 
on  the  spot,  to  whom  the  governors  of  each  colony  shall  be  subordinate." 
"  It  is  farther  humbly  proposed,"  this  writer  continued,  "  that  two  deputies 
shall  be  annually  elected  by  the  council  and  assembly  of  each  province,  who 
are  to  be  in  the  nature  of  a  great  council  or  general  convention  of  the  estates 
of  the  colonies  ;  and  by  the  order,  consent,  or  approbation  of  the  lieutenant 
or  governor-general,  shall  meet  together,  consult  and  advise  for  the  good 
of  the  whole,  settle  and  appoint  particular  quotas  or  proportions  of  money, 
men,  provisions,  &,c.,  that  each  respective  government  is  to  raise  for  their 
mutual  defence  and  safety,  as  well  as,  if  necessary,  for  offence  and  inva- 
sion of  their  enemies  ;  in  all  which  cases  the  governor-general,  or  lieuten- 
ant, is  to  have  a  negative,  but  not  to  enact  any  thing  without  their  concur- 
rence or  that  of  the  majority  of  them." 

In  this  plan  (which  is  developed  at  considerable  length  and  supported 
with  great  force  of  argument  by  its  author)^  we  behold  the  germ  of  that 
more  celebrated,  though  less  original  project,  which  was  again  ineffectually 
recommended  by  an  American  statesman  in  the  year  1754  ;  and  which,  not 
many  years  after,  was  actually  embraced  by  his  countrj  men  and  rendered 
instrumental  to  the  achievement  of  their  independence.  It  was  only  some 
of  the  more  enterprising  politicians  of  America  that  were  favorable  to  the 
scheme  of  a  federal  imion  of  the  several  provinces.  The  people  in  general 
were  disinclined  to  this  change,  from  which  they  apprehended  an  increase 
of  the  efficacy  of  royal  prerogative,  and  an  encroachment  on  their  separate 
and  peculiar  provincial  usages  and  insthutions.  They  reasonably  concluded 
that  the  authority  of  the  crown  would  be  invigorated  by  an  arrangement 
which  must  render  its  administration  more  simple  and  compact  ;  and  they 
naturally  regarded  with  suspicion  a  project  which  had  been  supported  by 
Nicholson  and  other  pohticians  devoted  to  the  interests  of  arbitrarj^  power. 
A  remarkable  instance  occurred,  about  this  time,  of  the  keen  and  even  morbid 
jealousy  of  British  aggression,  which  prevailed  in  New  England.  The  as- 
sembly of  Virginia  having  undertaken  a  general  revision  of  its  legislative 
code,  a  similar  proceeding  was  recommended  by  the  king  to  the  assembly 
of  Massachusetts  [1751],  where  all  parties  united  in  acknowledging  that  it 
might  be  productive  of  results  the  most  advantageous  and  desirable.  Many 
of  the  old  and  yet  subsisting  laws  of  Massachusetts  contained  provisions 
which  were  now  universally  admitted  to  be  injudicious  and  inconvenient, 
and  which  every  body  would  have  been  glad  to  have  subjected  to  legislatori- 
al expurgation,  if  a  satisfactory  assurance  could  have  been  obtained  that  no 
attempt  would  be  made  to  give  a  further  extension  or  insidious  bias  to  the 
application  of  this  principle.  But  the  majority  of  the  assembly  entertained 
a  rooted  jealousy  of  the  designs  of  the  crown,  and  finally  refused  to  comply 
with  the  king's  suggestion,  from  the  apprehension  that  some  latent  purpose 
of  encroachment  was  couched  beneath  it.^ 

The  subjugation  of  the  French  settlements  in  America  was  an  object  to 

which  the  most  ardent  wishes  of  the  British  colonists  were  directed  ;  and 

^  See  a  note  to  Book  IV.,  Chap.  I.,  ante.  *  Coxe's  Carolana,  Preface. 

^  Hatchinson. 


200  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

when  we  consider  the  scenes  of  danger  and  calamity  to  which  they  had  been 
exposed  by  the  vicinity  of  this  rival  power  and  people,  it  seems  almost  su- 
perfluous to  inquire  for  any  farther  cause  of  the  wishes  which  they  cherished. 
But  when  we  find  that  the  Americans  firmly  entertained  the  conviction  that 
Britain  was  restrained,  by  regard  to  the  stabihty  of  her  own  colonial  domin- 
ion, and  by  apprehensions  of  i^Lmerican  independence,  from  attempting  the 
reduction  of  the  French  settlements,  —  it  seems  not  unreasonable  to  con- 
clude that  their  own  wishes  and  views  were  secretly  flowing  towards  the 
same  object  which  they  figured  to  themselves  as  the  source  of  contemplative 
alarm  to  the  parent  state.  More  than  forty  years  before  the  present  period, 
there  prevailed,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in  the  minds  of  some  of  the  colo- 
nists of  New  England,  a  violent  jealousy  and  mistrust  of  the  real  designs  and 
pohcy  of  Great  Britain  with  respect  to  the  French  empire  in  America. 
The  sentiments  of  these  persons,  indeed,  were  doubtless  in  part  the  passion- 
ate suggestions  of  irritation  and  disappointment.  But  they  had  subsequently 
been  propagated  in  the  other  American  provinces,  and  embraced  as  the 
result  of  deliberate  reflection  by  many  intelhgent  men.  Some  insight  into 
the  opinions  of  the  Americans  on  this  point  is  alForded  by  the  interesting 
work  of  Peter  Kalm,  a  sensible  and  accomplished  Swede,  and  the  friend  of 
his  illustrious  countryman,  Linnaeus,  who  visited  North  America  in  1748, 
and  for  two  years  after  continued  to  reside  and  travel  in  several  of  the  prov- 
inces, and  to  explore  and  record  the  most  interesting  particulars  of  their 
condition.  In  the  various  States  which  he  visited,  he  conversed  with  the 
persons  most  distinguished  in  the  walks  of  science,  Hterature,  and  pohtics  ;  ^ 
and  the  views  which  he  has  expressed  in  the  following  curious  passage  rep- 
resent the  impressions  he  derived  from  the  communications  of  those  indi- 
viduals. 

"It  is  of  great  advantage  to  the  crown  of  England,"  says  this  writer, 
"that  the  North  American  colonies  are  near  a  country  under  the  govern- 
ment of  the  French,  like  Canada.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  king 
never  was  earnest  in  his  attempts  to  expel  the  French  from  their  possessions 
there^  though  it  might  have  been  done  with  Httle  difficulty  ;  for  the  English 
colonies  in  this  part  of  the  world  have  increased  so  much  in  their  number 
of  inhabitants  and  in  their  riches,  that  they  almost  vie  with  Old  England. 
Now,  in  order  to  keep  up  the  authority  and  trade  of  the  mother  country,  and 
to  answer  several  other  purposes,  they  are  forbidden  to  establish  new  manu- 
factures, which  would  turn  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  British  commerce  ; 
they  are  not  allowed  to  dig  for  any  gold  or  silver,  unless  they  send  it  to 
England  immediately  ;  they  have  not  the  liberty  of  trading  to  any  parts  that 
do  not  belong  to  the  British  dominions,  excepting  some  settled  places  ;  and 
foreign  traders  are  not  allowed  to  send  their  ships  to  them.  These  and 
some  other  restrictions  occasion  the  inhabitants  of  the  English  colonies  to 
grow  less  tender  for  their  mother  country.  This  coldness  is  kept  up  by 
the  many  foreigners,  such  as  Germans,  Dutch,  and  French,  settled  here, 
and  living  among  the  English,  who  commonly  have  no  particular  attachment 
to  Old  England.  Add  to  this,  likewise,  that  many  people  can  never  be  con- 
tented with  their  possessions,  though  they  be  ever  so  great,  and  will  always 

^  Among  others,  he  conversed  intimatoiy  with  Dr.  Frankhn  (Kalm's  Travels^  passim,  and 
Franklin's  Correspondence) y  —  a  circumstance,  which,  coupled  with  the  strain  of  the  passage 
c^uoted  in  the  text,  may  be  thought  to  justify  the  surmise  that  has  been  entertained,  that  Frank- 
lin, in  subsequently  recommending  the  conquest  of  Canada  to  the  British  nation,  foresaw  con- 
sequences from  this  measure  very  different  from  those  which  he  argumentatively  predicted. 


CHAP.  II.]  STATE  OF  PENNSYLVANIA.  201 

be  desirous  of  getting  more,  and  of  enjoying  the  pleasure  which  arises  from 
change  ;  and  their  over  great  Hberty  and  their  prosperity  often  lead  them  to 
licentiousness.  I  have  been  told  by  English  subjects,  and  not  only  by  such 
as  were  natives  of  America.^  but  even  by  those  who  had  emigrated  from  Eu- 
rope, that  the  English  colonies  in  J^orth  America,  within  the  space  of  thirty 
or  fifty  years  hence,  would  be  able  to  form  a  state  by  themselves,  entirely  in- 
dependent of  Old  England.  But  as  the  whole  country  which  lies  along  the 
seashore  is  unguarded,  while  on  the  land  side  it  is  harassed  by  the  French 
in  time  of  war,  these  dangerous  neighbours  are  sufficient  to  prevent  the  con- 
nection of  the  colonies  with  their  mother  country  from  being  quite  broken 
off ;  the  English  government  has,  therefore,  sufficient  reason  to  consider  the 
French  in  J^orth  America  as  the  best  guardians  of  the  submission  of  their 
colonies.'''*  ^ 

(From  the  work  of  this  philosophic  traveller,  and  other  sources  of  infor- 
mation, we  are  enabled  to  glean  some  interesting  particulars  illustrative  of 
the  internal  condition  of  the  North  American  provinces  in  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Population  had  of  late  years  advanced  with  a  vig- 
orous pace  in  all  the  States,  but  with  peculiar  and  astonishing  rapidity  in 
Pennsylvania,  which  in  the  year  1749  contained  two  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand,  and  four  years  afterwards  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  inhabit- 
ants. In  1755,  the  population  of  this  province  amounted  to  two  hundred 
and  eighty  thousand.^  A  considerable  part  of  this  increase  was  derived  from 
Germany,  from  which  in  the  summer  of  1749  no  fewer  than  twelve  thou- 
sand emigrants  arrived  at  Philadelphia.  In  the  year  1751,  there  emigrated  to 
Pennsylvania  four  thousand  three  hundred  and  seventeen  Germans,  and 
one  thousand  persons  from  England  and  Ireland.  The  greater  number  of 
these  emigrants  consisted  of  people  who  sold  their  service  for  a  term  of 
years,  in  order  to  defray  the  expense  of  their  transportation.  Sometimes 
aged  parents  pledged  the  labor  of  their  children  for  this  purpose,  —  con- 
verting thereby  what  proved  a  burden  in  Europe  into  a  means  of  inde- 
pendence in  America  ;  and  in  many  instances,  German  emigrants,  who 
brought  with  them  a  competent  stock  of  money,  chose  to  commence  their 
American  career  as  indented  servants,  in  order  to  acquire  cheaply  some 
experience  of  the  country  and  acquaintance  with  its  language.  A  penalty 
was  inflicted  on  any  clergyman  celebrating  the  marriage  of  an  indented  ser- 
vant without  the  consent  of  his  master,  or  of  a  negro  with  an  inhabitant  of 
European  extraction.  The  Quakers,  in  general  (so  Kalm  says),  had  be- 
come rather  less  than  more  scrupulous  than  at  first  with  regard  to  the  em- 
ployment of  negro  slaves  ;  "  and  now,"  he  adds,  "  they  have  as  many  ne- 
groes as  other  people."  ^     Yet  many  of  the  inhabitants  condemned  slavery 

*  Kalm.  This  was  published  in  Sweden  several  years  before  the  British  conquest  of 
Canada. 

^  In  Moheau's  admirable  work,  Recherckes  sur  la  Population,  &c.,  it  is  stated,  that  Dr. 
Franklin  described  the  population  of  Pennsylvania  as  amounting  to  one  million  in  the  year 
1751.  If  Franklin  ever  gave  any  such  exaggerated  description,  it  must  have  been  done  to 
serve  some  political  purpose. 

^  Thomas  Chalkley,  a  minister  highly  and  justly  renowned  among  the  Quakers  for  his 
active  and  unwearied  zeal  and  his  profound  and  ardent  piety,  published  a  journal  of  his  nu- 
merous travels  and  ministerial  labors,  from  the  beginning  till  about  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  in  all  the  American  States,  and  in  several  of  the  West  India  Islands,  where 
he  appears  to  have  accurately  noted  and  conscientiously  rebuked  every  existing  evil,  except 
ncerro  slavery.  It  is  curious  to  contrast  his  steady,  resentful  retrospect  to  the  ancient  persecu- 
tion of  the  Quakers  in  New  England,  with  his  blindness  to  the  actual  oppression  inflicted  by 
the  institution  of  negro  slavery,  and  the  existing  support  which  this  institution  derived  from 
the  accession  of  his  fellow-sectaries. 
VOL.    11.  26 


202  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X 

as  repugnant  to  Christianity  ;  and  some  peculiarly  zealous  Quakers  in  Phil- 
adelphia had  set  the  example  of  liberating  their  slaves,  after  the  enjoyment 
of  their  service  for  a  certain  time. 

The  comparatively  gentle  treatment  of  slaves  in  this  part  of  America 
may  be  inferred  from  the  facts,  that  very  few  were  now  imported  from 
abroad,  and  that  great  numbers  were  reared  on  the  plantations  of  the  colo- 
nists. A  planter  killing  his  negro  was  declared  by  law  guilty  of  a  capital 
felony  ;  but  no  instance  had  ever  occurred  of  the  actual  execution  of  this 
dictate  of  even-handed  justice.  A  few  years  before,  a  master  who  had 
murdered  his  slave  was  persuaded  by  the  magistrates  to  depart  from  the  prov- 
ince, that  they  might  not  be  compelled  to  afford  the  negroes  the  triumph  of 
witnessing  his  punishment.  A  strong  though  silent  testimony  against  negro 
slavery,  and  against  every  principle  hostile  to  the  interest  and  happiness  of 
the  human  race,  was  afforded  by  the  members  of  the  Moravian  brotherhood, 
who  for  many  years  had  resorted  in  large  and  increasing  numbers  to  Penn- 
sylvania. Count  Zinzendorf,  the  president  or  bishop  of  this  religious  society, 
visited  America  in  1742.  "  His  behaviour,"  says  Kalm,  "  led  many  of  the 
Pennsylvanians  to  beheve  that  he  was  disordered  in  his  intellects,"  —  a  re- 
proach which  the  apostoHc  zeal  of  the  first  Christian  pastors  attracted,  and 
which  the  count  seems  to  have  equally  merited  by  the  rare  elevation  of  his 
views,  the  fervor  of  his  piety,  and  the  energy  of  his  labors.  By  him  and 
his  associates  were  founded  the  Moravian  missions  among  the  Indians,  which 
were  afterwards  pursued  with  the  most  admirable  virtue  and  success.^  In 
their  neatness,  and  the  excellence  of  their  general  economy,  the  settlements 
of  the  Moravians  are  allowed  by  a  Quaker  writer  to  have  surpassed  those 
of  all  the  other  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania.  Philadelphia,  in  the  year 
1749,  contained  eleven  places  of  worship  ;^  and  two  years  after,  its  popula- 
tion was  estimated  at  seventeen  thousand  persons,  of  whom  six  thousand 
were  negroes.  Three  printers  were  established  in  this  town  ;  and  three 
newspapers,  two  in  the  Enghsh,  and  one  in  the  German  tongue,  were  pub- 
lished there  every  week.  Governor  Thomas,  having  resigned  the  presidency 
of  Pennsylvania,  was  succeeded  in  1748  by  James  Hamilton,  a  native  of 
the  province,  and  son  of  the  celebrated  lawyer  and  patriot,  Andrew  Ham- 
ilton. ^ 

New  Jersey,  in  the  year  1738,  contained,  as  we  have  seen,  47,637  in- 
habitants, of  whom  3,981  were  slaves.  In  1745,  the  population  of  this 
State  amounted  to  61,403,  including  6,079  Quakers  and  4,606  slaves. 
We  have  already  remarked  the  pecuHar  usage  by  which  the  practice  of  the 
medical  art  among  this  people  was  confined  almost  entirely  to  women.  Of 
another  strange  peculiarity  in  their  manners  the  following  account  has  been 
preserved  by  Kalm.  The  widow  of  a  bankrupt  was  held  (whether  by  legal 
ordinance  or  merely  by  popular  opinion  does  not  appear)  to  be  liable  for  the 
debts  of  her  deceased  husband,  and  to  retain  that  Hability  even  after  contract- 
ing another  matrimonial  engagement,  unless  she  were  married  to  her  second 
husband  with  no  other  habihment  on  her  person   than  her  shift. "^     "  The 

^  See  Note  X.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

*  Namely,  —  one  Church  of  England,  two  Presbyterian,  two  Quaker,  one  Baptist,  one 
Swedish,  one  Dutch  Lutlieran,  one  Dutch  Calvinist,  one  Moravian,  and  one  Roman  Catholic. 

3  Douglass.     Kalm.     Proud.     Loskiel.     Warden.     Holmes. 

*  From  the  words  of  Kalm,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  this  absurdity  was  imported  into 
New  Jersey  from  Sweden  or  from  England  That  the  notion,  and  its  relative  usage,  though 
totally  unsupported  by  law,  has  prevailed  till  a  very  late  period  in  some  parts  of  England  is 
certain.  In  the  end  of  the  year  1827,  a  widow  was  married  in  her  shift  to  a  respectable 
tradesman  or  shopkeeper  in  a  country  church  in  England. 


CHAP.  II.]  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK.  203 

Swedish  clergymen  here,"  says  Kalra,  "  have  often  been  obhged  to  marry 
women  in  this  hght  and  unexpensive  dress.  This  appears  from  the  regis- 
ters kept  in  the  churches  and  from  the  accounts  given  by  the  clergymen 
themselves.  I  have  likewise  often  seen  accounts  of  such  marriages  in  the 
English  newspapers  which  are  printed  in  these  colonies."^ 

The  population  of  the  province  of  New  York,  which,  in  the  year  1732, 
amounted  to  somewhat  more  than  sixty  thousand  persons,  had  advanced 
in  1749  to  one  hundred  thousand.  In  1756,  it  amounted  to  110,317  per- 
sons, including  13,542  slaves.  Kalm  celebrates  the  handsome  and  substan- 
tial architecture  of  the  houses  in  the  town  of  New  York  ;  and  describes  the 
walls  of  the  apartments  as  "  quite  covered  with  all  sorts  of  drawings  and 
pictures  in  small  frames."  In  the  year  1754,  and  in  imitation  of  a  similar 
institution  at  Philadelphia,  a  classical  and  philosophical  academy  was  es- 
tablished at  New  York.  The  language  and  habits  of  the  primitive  colonists 
of  this  province  subsisted  in  the  most  entire  preservation  at  Albany,  where 
the  great  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  were  Dutchmen  by  birth  or  descent.  They 
were  noted  in  particular  for  extreme  attention  to  niceness  and  cleanhness  of 
domestic  accommodation,  for  diligence  in  business,  a  close  frugality,  and  the 
consequent  accumulation  of  wealth.  But  their  enrichment  did  not  exclu- 
sively flow  from  sources  so  respectable.  The  temptations  incident  to  the 
Indian  trade,  in  which  they  w^ere  deeply  engaged,  depraved  their  characters 
and  manners  with  sentiments  and  practices  the  most  sordid  and  disgraceful.^ 
In  no  other  quarter  of  British  or  French  America  were  the  frauds  with 
which  the  Indians  reproached  the  Europeans  so  extensively  and  systematic- 
ally practised.  The  merchants  of  Albany  gloried  in  the  success  and  dex- 
terity of  their  commercial  chicane  ;  and  as  they  practised  equal  dishonesty 
and  displayed  equal  selfishness  in  their  intercourse  with  their  fellow-subjects 
'both  in  New  York  and  the  other  provinces,  they  were  the  objects  of  general 
aversion  and  disdain.  This  representation  of  the  character  of  the  Albanians 
was  repeated  to  Kalm,  the  traveller,  in  every  part  of  America  that  he  visit- 
ed, and  was  confirmed  by  his  own  personal  observation  of  that  people. 
"We  have  already  remarked  their  dishonorable  conduct  towards  the  inhab- 
itants of  New  England  in  the  war  which  preceded  the  treaty  of  Utrecht. 
They  had  pursued  the  same  policy  during  the  late  war  ;  and  not  only  pur- 
chased the  plunder  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  from  the  Indian 
alhes  of  the  French,  but  encouraged  these  marauders,  by  the  most  tempting 
offers,  to  persevere  in  their  depredations.  The  people  of  New  England 
were  so  incensed  at  these  transactions,  which  the  Indians  were  at  no  pains 
to  conceal,  that  they  threatened,  in  case  a  new  war  should  break  out,  that 
their  first  enterprise  would  be  the  sack  and  destruction  of  Albany.  It  must 
be  remembered,  however,  that  these  charges,  though  generally,  were  not 
universally,  applicable  to  the  population  of  Albany,  where  some  of  the 
principal  inhabitants,  untainted  by  the  prevailing  depravation  of  principle 
and  manners,  were  distinguished  by  a  rare  and  therefore  more  notable 
superiority  in  equity,  politeness,  benevolence,  and  pubHc  spirit.  "  Outside 
the  doors  of  houses  here,"  says  Kalm,  "  are  seats,  which  in  the  evening 
are  covered  with  people  of  both  sexes  ;  but  this  is  rather  troublesome,  as 
those  who  pass  by  are  obliged  to  greet  every  body,  unless  they  will  shock 
the  politeness  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  town."^ 

i  S.  Smith.     Kalm.  "  ~~~~ 

'  A  great  deal  of  hazard  was  incurred  by  the  European  traders,  who  were  often  defrauded 

'k\      and  sometimes  murdered  by  the  Indians.     Loskiel. 

^  2  Warden.     Kalm.    Holmes. 


204  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

Whether  from  a  settled  design  of  encroachment  on  American  liberty,  or 
from  mere  carelessness  or  arrogance  on  the  part  of  the  British  government, 
it  had  been  the  invariable  practice  of  the  court  since  the  Revolution  to 
invest  the  governors  of  New  York  with  an  extraordinary,  and  indeed  un- 
constitutional, plenitude  of  official  power.  Nay,  the  practice  was  still  con- 
tinued of  delegating  to  them  in  their  commissions  the  command  of  the  militia 
of  Connecticut.  The  governors  were  in  this  manner  led  to  entertain  very 
erroneous  ideas  of  their  actual  authority,  and  were  continually  engaged  in 
disputes  with  the  provincial  assembly.  "  Our  representatives,"  says  the 
historian  of  New  York,  "  agreeably  to  the  general  sense  of  their  constitu- 
ents, are  tenacious  in  the  opinion,  that  the  inhabitants  of  this  colony  are  en- 
titled to  all  the  privileges  of  Englishmen  ;  that  they  have  a  right  to  partici- 
pate in  the  legislative  power  ;  and  that  the  session  of  assemblies  here  is 
wisely  substituted  instead  of  a  representation  in  parliament^  which,  all  things 
considered,  would  at  this  remote  distance  be  extremely  inconvenient  and 
dangerous.  The  governors,  on  the  other  hand,  in  general  entertain  political 
sentiments  of  a  quite  different  nature.  All  the  immunities  we  enjoy,  accord- 
ing to  them,  not  only  flow  from,  but  absolutely  depend  upon,  the  mere 
grace  and  will  of  the  crown.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  that  contentions  must 
naturally  attend  such  a  contradiction  of  sentiments."^ 

New  York  at  this  time  possessed  a  greater  share  of  commerce  than  any 
other  town  in  North  America.  [1751.]  Boston  and  Philadelphia  approached 
in  this  respect  the  most  nearly,  and,  indeed,  very  closely  to  it.  The  mer- 
chants of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  were  continually  in  debt  to  their  cor- 
respondents in  England.  No  discovery  of  coal  seems  yet  to  have  been  made 
in  any  of  the  provinces  ;  but,  during  the  short  possession  that  the  British 
enjoyed  of  Cape  Breton,  it  was  ascertained  that  an  abundant  supply  of  this 
mineral  existed  in  the  bowels  of  that  island.  It  was  customary  for  ships  re- 
turning without  any  other  freight  from  England  to  America,  to  repair  first 
to  Newcastle,  and  take  in  cargoes  of  coals,  which  served  as  ballast  during 
the  voyage,  and  afterwards  fetched  some  profit  in  the  colonies  ;  especially 
at  New  York  and  in  South  Carolina.^ 

Kalm  has  dwelt  with  benevolent  satisfaction,  and  the  surprise  of  a  Euro- 
pean, on  the  comfort  and  plenty  that  prevailed  universally  among  the  agri- 
cultural population  of  Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  New  Jersey,  and  New 
York,  —  the  only  British  colonies,  unfortunately,  to  which  *his  personal  ob- 
servation extended.  There,  every  inhabitant  of  the  country,  even  the  hum- 
blest peasant,  possessed  an  orchard  stocked  with  a  profusion  of  the  richest 
fruit.  The  lively  relish  with  which  these  strong,  healthy  people  must  have 
enjoyed  such  natural  luxuries  was  far  from  restraining  the  liberality  of  dis- 
position which  the  bounty  of  their  soil  was  fitted  to  inspire  ;  and  passengers 
were  everywhere,  by  common  consent,  entitled  to  a  gratuitous  and  unstinted 
indulgence  in  the  produce  of  gardens  which  they  might  happen  or  choose  to 
approach.  So  sacred  was  the  right,  that  the  most  churlish  and  sordid 
owner  dared  not  question  it  ;    and  so  common  was  its  exercise,  that  it  at- 

*  W.  Smith.  This  author  quotes  the  following  censure  of  the  notions  of  the  New  York 
assemblies,  from  a  pamphlet  published  in  England  in  1752,  and  entitled  ^n  Essay  on  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  Colonies :  —  "I  would  advise  these  gentlemci;  for  the  future  to  drop  those  parlia- 
mentary airs  and  style  about  liberty  and  property,  and  keep  within  their  sphere.  The  king's 
commission  and  instructions  are  their  charter.  If  they  abuse  his  Majesty's  favors,  they  are 
but  tenants  at  will." 

^  "  We  have  known  coals,  salt,  and  other  articles,  brought  by  way  of  ballast,  sold  cheaper 
in  Charleston  than  in  London."     He  wit. 


CHAP.  II.]  AGRICULTURE  IN  THE   MIDDLE  STATES.  205 

tracted  remark  from  nobody  but  strangers.  Thus  a  table  of  hospitality  was 
spread  over  all  the  face  of  the  land  ;  and  the  sense  of  property  was  ren- 
dered a  less  selfish  and  exclusive  principle  in  America  than  in  Europe. i  But 
the  cheapness  and  fertility  of  the  land  was  everywhere  productive  of  a 
careless  and  slovenly  system  of  husbandry. 

It  was  the  universal  practice  of  farmers  to  cultivate  a  portion  of  their 
ground  as  long  as  it  would  produce  a  crop  without  manuring  ;  and  then  to 
leave  it  fallow,  or  convert  it  into  pasture,  while  they  transferred  their  cul- 
ture to  new  spots  which  had  been  covered  with  woods  from  time  imme- 
morial. "  In  a  word,"  says  the  Swedish  traveller,  "  the  corn-fields,  the 
meadows,  the  forests,  the  cattle,  &c.,  are  treated  with  equal  carelessness  ; 
and  the  English  nation,  so  well  skilled  in  these  branches  of  husbandry,  is 
with  difficulty  recognized.  We  can  hardly  be  more  lavish  of  our  woods 
in  Sweden  and  Finland,  than  they  are  here  ;  their  eyes  are  fixed  upon  the 
present,  and  they  are  blind  to  futurity.  I  was  astonished,  when  1  heard 
the  country  people  complaining  of  the  badness  of  their  pastures  ;  but  I 
likewise  perceived  their  negligence,  and  often  saw  excellent  plants  growing 
on  their  own  grounds,  which  only  required  a  little  more  attention  and  as- 
sistance from  their  unexperienced  owners.  I  found  everywhere  the  wisdom 
and  goodness  of  the  Creator  ;  but  too  seldom  saw  any  acknowledgment  or 
adequate  estimation  of  it  among  men."  The  cattle  and  the  crops  of  the 
American  farmers  sustained  frequent  and  considerable  damage  from  wild 
beasts  and  vermin.  Laws  still  continued  to  be  passed  by  the  assembly  of 
New  York,  offering  rewards  for  the  destruction  of  panthers,  wolves,  and 
wild-cats.  In  Pennsylvania,  such  devastation  was  committed  on  the  crops 
of  maize  by  the  squirrels,  that  a  premium  of  threepence  was  offered  by 
the  provincial  government  for  every  squirrel's  head  ;  and  in  one  year  alone 
the  sum  of  eight  thousand  pounds  was  expended  by  the  treasury  of  Penn- 
sylvania on  this  account.  The  other  provinces  were  not  exempt  from  the 
inconvenience  occasioned  by  the  multitude  and  the  ravages  of  squirrels, 
of  which  no  fewer  than  eleven  thousand  five  hundred  and  eighty-eight  were 
destroyed  within  ten  days  by  a  party  of  hunters  at  Providence,  in  the  year 
1759.  But  the  most  formidable  obstructions  which  American  husbandry 
has  ever  encountered  must  be  referred  to  the  instrumentality  of  the  insect 
creation.  The  extensive  and  irresistible  ravage  inflicted  by  various  tribes 
of  flies  compelled  the  farmers,  in  several  of  the  provinces,  to  abandon  the 
cultivation  of  pease,  and  in  others  the  culture  of  wheat.  In  some  parts  of 
North  America,  by  the  operations  of  a  particular  description  of  caterpillar, 
whole  forests  have  been  utterly  destroyed.^ 

Massachusetts,  which  in  the  year  1731  contained  one  hundred  and 
twenty- two  thousand  six  hundred  inhabitants,  had  increased  the  number  of 
its  people  in  1742  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-four  thousand,  and  in  1753  to 

*  A  similar  practice  was  prescribed  to  the  ancient  Jews.  Deut.  xxiii.  24.  "  We  wondered, 
at  first,  very  much,"  says  Kalm,  "  when  our  guide  leaped  over  the  hedge  into  the  orchards, 
and  gathered  some  agreeable  fruit  for  us.  But  our  astonishment  was  still  greater,  when  we 
saw  that  the  people  in  the  garden  were  so  little  concerned  at  it  as  not  even  to  look  at  us. 
We  aftervyards  found  very  frequently,  that  the  country  people  in  Sweden  and  Finland  guarded 
their  turnips  more  carefully  than  the  people  here  do  the  most  exquisite  fruits."  Thislearned 
Swede  has  omitted  to  remark  a  notable  distinction  between  the  condition  of  the  peasantry  in 
America  and  those  of  his  own  country,  where  no  person  in  the  rank  of  a  peasant  was  then 

fjermitted  to  acquire  landed  property  or  transmit  it  to  his  children.     These  rights,  which  the 
aws  of  Sweden  confined  to  the  order  of  nobility,  were  enjoyed  by  every  Swedish  farmer 
who  emigrated  to  America. 
2  Laws  ofMw  York  from  1691  to  1751.     Kalm.    Annual  Register  for  1759. 

R 


206  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

two  hundred  and  twenty  thousand.  The  population  of  the  province  of 
Maine,  which  was  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts,  has  been 
estimated  by  one  statistical  writer  at  ten  thousand  in  the  year  1750.  The 
population  of  Rhode  Island,  which  in  1730  amounted  to  17,935  persons,  of 
whom  ]  ,648  were  slaves,  had  increased  in  the  year  1748  to  32,773,  in- 
cluding 4,373  slaves.  In  1753,  the  total  population  of  Rhode  Island  was 
thirty-five  thousand.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Connecticut 
contained  thirty  thousand,  and  New  Hampshire  ten  thousand  inhabitants. 
In  the  year  1749,  the  population  of  New  Hampshire  was  thirty  thousand  ; 
and  in  the  year  1753,  that  of  Connecticut  one  hundred  thousand.  In  1756, 
the  population  of  Connecticut  amounted  to  131,805,  including  3,587  slaves. ^ 

A  strong  ebullition  of  religious  zeal  and  fervor  had  been  excited,  of 
late  years,  in  many  parts  of  New  England,  by  the  instrumentality  of  some 
remarkable  preachers,  of  whom  the  most  celebrated  were  Jonathan  Edwards, 
whom  we  have  already  noticed,  and  George  Whitefield,  the  Methodist.  The 
labors  and  success  of  these  great  men  and  their  associates  are  related  with 
much  minuteness  of  detail  by  several  of  the  provincial  historians.  The 
warmth  of  religious  sentiment  and  dihgence  in  religious  duty,  which  their 
ministry  promoted  in  a  surprising  degree,  were  decried,  as  the  impulse  of 
frenzy  and  delusion,  by  a  numerous  party  of  the  clergy  and  laity  in  New 
England,  as  well  as  in  the  other  American  States  ;  and,  unfortunately,  in 
some  instances,  these  charges  derived  support  from  the  weakness  and  im- 
prudence, the  disorderly  demeanour  and  enthusiastic  extravagance  of  senti- 
ment, betrayed  by  various  individuals  who  professed  to  have  undergone  a 
spiritual  renovation.^  Probably  some  fraud  and  hypocrisy,  and  doubtless 
much  error  and  delusion,  contributed  to  obstruct  and  discredit  the  propaga- 
tion of  an  influence  which  no  candid  and  well  informed  Christian  will  other- 
wise denominate  than  a  signal  dispensation  of  divine  grace  to  North  America. 
The  controversies  and  dissensions  occasioned  by  this  religious  Revival^  as 
it  was  termed,  were  prolonged  for  a  great  many  years  in  New  England  ; 
but  a  consequence  at  once  more  lasting  and  beneficial  was  visible  in  the 
general  animation  of  piety  and  virtue  among  a  considerable  body  of  the 
people.^ 

Various  causes,  however,  contributed  to  promote  impressions  of  a  differ- 
ent tendency  among  the  inhabitants  of  New  England.  To  some  of  these 
causes,  and  especially  to  the  pernicious  influence  of  an  unstable  currency, 
we  have  already  had  frequent  occasion  to  advert.  The  peace  which  fol- 
lowed the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  was  attended  with  evils  as  well  as  ad- 
vantages ;  or  rather,  it  gave  scope  to  evils  which  the  war  had  prepared.  The 
disbanded  officers  and  soldiers  formed  in  every  province  a  class  of  men,  who, 
having  been  for  a  time  released  from  steady  industry  and  trained  to  the  pa- 
rade and  bustle  of  military  life,  were  averse  to  return  to  more  humbly  la- 

^  Adams's  Twenty-six  Letters  on  Important  Subjects.     Warden. 

2  "  Satan,  upon  this  occasion,"  says  a  New  England  writer,  "  acted  a  double  part.  He  first 
attempted  to  stop  the  good  work  by  open  opposition  ;  and  afterwards,  transfbrmmg  himself  in- 
to an  angel  of  light,  produced  a  flood  of  entnusiasm  and  false  religion  under  various  names." 
Eliot's  JVew  England  Biography. 

3  Jonathan  Edwards's  J^arrative  of  the  Surprising  Work  of  God  in  the  Conversion  of  many  hun- 
dred Souls.,  &c.  Trumbull,  Vol.  II.,  Chap.  VIII.  This  chapter  of  Trumbull's  work  contains 
the  most  candid  and  sensible  account  I  have  ever  seen  of  an  interesting  portion  of  the  eccle- 
siastical history  of  New  England. 

A  similar  revival  of  religious  zeal  occurred  about  the  same  period  in  various  parts  of  Scot- 
land ;  and  much  correspondence  on  the  subject  took  place  between  the  Scottish  and  the 
American  ministers.     Gillies'  Life  of  M' Laurin. 


CHAP.  II.]  STATE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  207 

borious  occupations.  To  the  officers  of  the  provincial  regiments  the  change 
was  rendered  the  more  unacceptable,  from  their  not  enjoying  the  advantage 
of  half-pay.  Their  reluctance  to  embrace  the  sober  habits  and  toils  of 
civil  life  was  increased  by  the  hopes  they  indulged,  and  which  were  too  soon 
fulfilled,  of  resuming  their  military  occupation.  The  late  war  had  not  been 
conducted  to  a  decisive  issue,  and  the  causes  by  which  it  was  kindled  were 
evidently  not  removed.  As  an  antidote  to  the  loose  and  idle  manners  of 
which  those  persons  set  the  example,  some  benevolent  citizens  of  Boston, 
with  the  aid  of  the  provincial  government,  estabhshed,  in  1749,  a  society 
for  the  promotion  of  industry  and  frugality  ;  ^  and  to  repair  the  loss  of 
people  occasioned  by  the  war,  the  assembly  at  the  same  time  granted  four 
townships  of  land  for  the  use  of  such  foreign  Protestants  as  might  be  dis- 
posed to  emigrate  to  Massachusetts,  and  offered  to  transport  them  gratui- 
tously in  a  frigate  that  belonged  to  the  province.  It  has  been  recorded,  as 
a  proof  of  the  altered  tastes  and  manners  of  some  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Massachusetts,  that  in  the  year  1750  there  occurred  the  first  instance  of 
a  dramatic  entertainment  in  New  England.  A  tragedy  was  performed  at  a 
coffee-house  in  Boston  by  two  young  Englishmen,  assisted  by  some  of 
their  American  comrades.  The  revel  its  participators  intended  to  have  kept 
secret  from  the  public  ;  but,  in  the  pressure  which  occurred  at  the  door  to 
gain  admittance  to  the  spectacle,  a  disturbance  was  created  which  rendered 
the  affair  notorious.  The  legislature,  in  consequence,  promptly  interfered 
to  forbid  the  repetition  of  such  practices  ;  and  for  the  preservation  of  that 
system  of  economy  and  sobriety  which  had  been  transmitted  to  the  presenc 
generation  from  their  forefathers,  a  law  was  passed  prohibiting  all  theatrical 
performances.  The  reasons  assigned  in  the  preamble  of  the  act  are  "  the 
prevention  and  avoidance  of  the  many  great  mischiefs  which  arise  from  public 
stage-plays,  interludes,  and  other  theatrical  entertainments,  which  not  only 
occasion  great  and  unnecessary  expenses,  and  discourage  industry  and  fru- 
gality, but  Hkewise  tend  greatly  to  increase  impiety  and  a  contempt  for 
religion."  ^ 

A  discovery  was  made,  several  years  before  this  period,  in  New  England, 
by  Josiah  Franklin,  father  of  the  American  Pythagoras,  of  a  method  of 
attracting  the  resort  of  herrings  from  the  sea  to  a  river  which  they  had  never 
visited  before.  Observing,  that,  of  two  rivers  whose  mouths  w^ere  not  far 
asunder,  one  was  regularly  frequented  at  the  spawning  season  by  the  fish,  of 
which  none  were  found  in  the  other,  he  was  struck  with  the  notion  that 
the  herrings  were  directed  by  some  secret  instinct  to  spawTi  in  the  same 
channel  where  they  were  originally  hatched  ;  and  verified  this  conjecture  by 
catching  some  of  them,  and  depositing  their  spawn,  which  he  extracted,  in 

*  "-The  anniversary  of  the  establishment  of  this  society  was  celebrated  with  much  solemnity 
in  the  year  1753.  In  the  afternoon,  about  three  hundred  young  female  spinsters,  decently 
dressed,  appeared  on  the  common  at  their  spinning-wheels.  The  weavers  also  appeared 
cleanly  dressed  in  garments  of  their  own  weaving.  One  of  them,  working  at  a  loom  on  a 
stage,  was  carried  on  men's  shoulders,  attended  with  music.  An  immense  number  of  specta- 
tors was  present."  Holmes.  A  spectacle  far  more  interesting  to  a  benevolent  and  philosophic 
mind  than  a  tilt  or  tournament. 

2  Belknap.  Minot.  Holmes.  A  theatre  was  at  last  established  in  Boston  in  the  year  1794, 
Holmes.  But  the'ancient  spirit  and  manners  of  New  England,  though  expelled  from  this  sanc- 
tuary, still  continued  to  flourish  among  the  sober  and  prosperous  citizens  of  Salem  ;  and  when 
the  manager  of  the  Boston  theatre  applied  to  the  proprietors  of  the  market-house  of  Salem  for 
leave  to  exhibit  a  dramatic  entertainment  in  the  upper  story  of  this  building,  he  was  informed 
by  them  in  reply,  that  they  would  sooner  set  it  on  fire.  Dwight.  In  Connecticut,  perhaps  the 
most  moral  and  happy  of  the  North  American  States,  theatrical  performances  continued  to  be 
prohibited  by  law  m  the  commencement  of  the  nineteenth  century.     Ibid. 


208  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

the  bed  of  the  neglected  river,  which  from  thence  afforded  a  plentiful  sup- 
ply of  fish.i  In  this  simple,  ingenious,  and  useful  experiment  we  recognize 
the  parentage  of  Benjamin  Franklin's  understanding,  the  qualities  by  whose 
early  impress  the  foundations  of  his  mind  were  laid  and  the  bent  of  his 
genius  imparted. 

In  the  New  England  States,  as  well  as  in  the  other  provinces  of  America, 
the  general  simplicity  of  manners,  and  the  facility  of  supporting  a  family, 
rendered  celibacy  exceedingly  rare,  and  promoted  early  marriages.^  The 
value  of  life  was  increased,  and  sentiments  of  patriotism  were  cherished,  by 
the  general  diffusion  of  a  substantial  and  respectable  happiness.  A  numerous 
offspring  was  prized  as  a  treasure,  not  dreaded  as  an  incumbrance  ;  and  re- 
gard for  the  public  welfare  combined  with  motives  of  domestic  felicity  in 
prompting  to  the  multiplication  of  a  happy  race.  Kalm  has  preserved  a 
list,  extracted  from  American  newspapers,  of  cases  that  occurred  in  Penn- 
sylvania, New  Jersey,  and  New  England,  illustrative  of  the  most  obvious 
and  interesting  effect  of  this  state  of  society,  • —  the  great  number  of  their 
own  descendants  by  which  many  of  the  colonists  beheld  themselves  sur- 
rounded. From  this  and  from  other  accounts  it  appears  to  have  been  not 
uncommon  for  parents  to  see  their  progeny  amount  to  sixty,  seventy,  or 
eighty  persons.  Sometimes  a  hundred  persons  vvere  assembled  in  the  house, 
and  entertained  at  the  table  of  their  common  pregenitor.  Various  cases  oc- 
curred of  individuals  who  beheld  their  children,  grandchildren,  great- 
grandchildren, and  also  the  offspring  of  these  last,  to  the  number  of  two, 
three,  and   sometimes  more  than  five,  hundred  souls. ^ 

Doubtless,  a  beneficial  effect  on  human  character  and  disposition  was  pro- 
duced by  this  great  extension  of  parental  feeling  and  family  ties.  An  aged 
New  England er,  living  in  a  small  town  or  in  the  country,  could  hardly  cast 
his  eyes  on  a  group  of  persons  in  which  he  would  not  recognize  a  kinsman. 
It  was  common  in  New  Hampshire,  says  Belknap,  to  see  three  generations 
tilling  the  ground  in  the  same  field.  Whenever  the  son  of  a  New  Hamp- 
shire farmer  could  build  a  log-house,  he  bethought  himself  of  marrying  ; 
and  the  young  women  of  the  province  willingly  embraced  the  early  offers 
of  these  swains  to  promote  them  to  the  management  of  a  household  and  a 
dairy.  A  frugal  and  industrious  farmer  was  easily  able  to  provide  set- 
tlements for  his  elder  sons,  and  furnish  them  with  the  means  of  supporting 
themselves  ;  he  commonly  bequeathed  the  paternal  farm  to  the  youngest 
son,  who  continued  to  reside  with  him  and  support  his  declining  years.  A 
great  deal  of  fellow-feeling  and  cordial  warmth  of  neighbourly  regard  prevailed 

in  all  quarters  of  New  England.  When  a  farmer's  house  was  burned,  it 
______ 

^  The  general  effect  produced  by  the  early  marriages  of  the  Americans  on  human  manners, 
character,  and  constitution  is  a  very  curious,  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  unexplored,  subject  of  in- 
quiry. Franklin  wrote  a  well  known  essay  on  early  marriages ;  but  it  contains  no  observations 
on  the  experience  of  his  own  country,  and  is  entirely  speculative  and  conjectural.  Some  ob- 
servations far  more  valuable  and  interesting  upon  this  subject  occur  in  Moheau's  Recherches 
sur  la  Population  de  la  France.  Williams,  the  historian  of  Vermont,  asserts  that  the  early  mar- 
riages of  the  Americans  prove  remarkably  conducive  to  domestic  happiness  and  the  general 
welfare  of  society.  Young  people  marry,  not  because  they  possess  a  competent  estate,  but 
because  they  know  that  they  can  procure  it ;  and  their  choice,  undepraved  by  pride  or  ambi- 
tion, is  determined  solely  by  love  and  esteem.  Other  writers  have  maintained  that  the  early 
marriages  of  the  Americans  are  prejudicial  to  the  growth  and  improvement,  bodily  and  mental, 
of  the  human  frame. 

^  Kalm.  Belknap.  Dwight's  Travels.  Hutchinson,  Jinnuol  Register  for  1761  and  for 
1763.  In  the  commencement  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Dwight  met  with  a  New  Englander 
who  had  seen  his  descendants  amount  in  number  to  more  than  1,500. 


CHAP.  II.]  ORIGIN  OF  VERMONT.  ^  209 

was  a  sacred  and  inviolable  law  of  kindness  among  his  neighbours,  that  they 
should  unite  to  assist  him  in  building  and  stocking  a  new  one. 

A  less  amiable,  though  very  natural  sentiment,  that  generally  prevailed 
at  this  time  among  the  people  of  New  England,  was  a  strong  detestation 
of  the  Indian  race,  whose  ravage  and  cruelty  in  war  they  had  so  often  ex- 
perienced. The  comparative  humanity  which  the  Indians  displayed  in  the 
late  war  conduced  very  little,  if  at  all,  to  soften  the  animosity  with  which 
they  were  regarded  by  the  colonists.  In  New  Hampshire  and  the  eastern 
parts  of  Massachusetts,  many  persons  openly  protested,  that  these  savages, 
having  conducted  their  hostilities  after  the  example  of  wild  beasts  or  robbers, 
were  not  entitled  to  the  common  privileges  of  humanity,  and  ought  not  to  be 
suffered  to  shelter  themselves  from  the  punishment  of  their  crimes  by  treaties 
which  they  never  observed  any  farther  than  accorded  with  their  own  con- 
venience, interest,  or  caprice.  Several  Indians  were  killed  and  wounded 
after  the  peace  ;  and  the  provincial  governments,  having  vainly  endeavoured 
to  bring  the  perpetrators  of  these  outrages  to  justice,  exerted  themselves 
more  successfully  to  pacify  the  injured  tribes  by  liberal  presents  and  profes- 
sions of  regret. 

Soon  after  the  termination  of  the  late  war,  many  persons  applied  to  Ben- 
ning  Wentworth,  the  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  for  grants  of  land  in  the 
western  part  of  this  province.  Wentworth,  presuming  that  New  Hampshire 
ought  to  extend  as  far  westward  as  Massachusetts,  assigned  to  these  appli- 
cants, in  the  year  1749,  a  township,  six  miles  square,  which  received  the 
name  of  Bennington,  and  was  situated  twenty-four  miles  eastward  of  Hud- 
son's River,  and  six  miles  northward  of  the  line  of  Massachusetts.  For  sev- 
eral years  after,  he  continued,  under  the  same  supposition,  to  confer  grants 
of  land  on  the  western  side  of  Connecticut  River.  The  settlements  which 
afterwards  ensued  from  these  transactions  gave  rise  to  much  controversy  be- 
tween New  Hampshire  and  New  York,  — by  which  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
territory  was  disputed,  —  and  to  the  most  violent  disputes  between  the 
planters  of  the  territory  and  the  government  of  New  York.  These  settle- 
ments were  for  several  years  distinguished  by  the  name  of  The  JSTew  Hamp- 
shire Grants,  and  in  process  of  time  expanded  into  that  flourishing  com- 
munity which  was  subsequently  formed  into  the  separate  province  of  Ver- 
mont.^ 

A  dissension  which  arose  in  Massachusetts  in  the  year  1749  resembled  in 
its  commencement,  though  not  in  its  issue,  the  more  famous  controversy 
that  occurred  some  time  after  in  the  parent  state  between  the  British  House 
of  Commons  and  the  electors  of  Middlesex  in  relation  to  the  celebrated 
demagogue,  John  Wilkes.  Allen,  a  member  of  the  provincial  assembly, 
having  vented  some  coarse  disrespect  against  Governor  Shirley,  in  one  of  his 
speeches,  and  decHned  to  make  what  the  house  considered  a  proper  apol- 
ogy, was  expelled  from  his  seat  for  this  instance  of  contumacy.  His  con- 
stituents, who  were  satisfied  with  the  apology  which  he  had  tendered,  in- 
stantly reelected  him  ;  but  the  house  declared  that  he  was  incapable  of  being 
chosen,  and  that  the  election  was  void.  The  people,  however,  were  not  dis- 
posed to  sanction  this  assumed  power  of  a  single  branch  of  the  legislature 
to  divest  a  citizen  of  his  political  rights.  Allen  was  again  elected  ;  and 
the  house,  though  it  had  attempted  to  control,  no  longer  presumed  to  resist, 

'  Belknap.     Williams's  History  of  Vermont.     See  Note  XL,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

VOL.    II.  27  R* 


210  HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

the  general  determination,  but  admitted  him  without  farther  demur  J  The 
Massachusetts  assembly  so  truly  and  substantially  represented  the  sentiments 
and  interests  of  the  provincial  population,  that  it  could  never  regard  the 
prevalence  of  deliberate  popular  will  as  a  triumph  over  itself. 

In  the  year  1750,  we  remark  a  transaction  in  which  the  government  of 
Connecticut  betrayed  a  notable  departure  from  those  principles  of  justice  and 
moderation  by  which  the  usual  course  of  its  policy  was  characterized.  The 
boundary  line  between  this  province  and  Massachusetts  had  been  finally  as- 
certained in  the  year  1713  ;  and  on  this  occasion  it  was  arranged,  by  general 
consent,  that  the  towns  of  Woodstock,  Somers,  Suffield,  and  Enfield, 
though  included  by  the  course  of  the  line  within  the  territory  of  Connecti- 
cut, should  yet  remain  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts,  by  whose 
people  they  were  founded  and  reared  ;  and  an  equivalent  was  given  for  the 
soil,  by  an  assignment  of  unoccupied  lands  within  the  province  of  Massa- 
chusetts. The  government  of  Connecticut  accepted  this  equivalent,  and  af- 
terwards sold  the  lands  of  which  it  consisted,  and  applied  the  price  of  them 
to  the  use  of  the  colony.  The  inhabitants  of  the  towns  above  mentioned 
were  content  to  remain  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts,  till,  in  the 
course  of  the  late  war,  they  perceived  that  their  taxes  were  much  heavier 
than  the  corresponding  burdens  imposed  on  the  people  of  Connecticut.  At 
the  close  of  the  war,  they  conceived  the  idea  of  bettering  their  situation  and 
evading  their  share  of  the  contribution  for  liquidating  the  public  debt  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, by  transferring  their  allegiance  to  Connecticut  ;  and  with  this 
view  petitioned  the  assembly  of  Connecticut  to  admit  them  within  its  juris- 
diction. Their  apphcation  was  communicated  to  the  government  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, which,  remembering  the  unfortunate  issue  of  its  previous  dis- 
putes with  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode  Island,  betrayed  no  small  perplexity 
and  hesitation,  and,  instead  of  vigorously  asserting  its  rights,  proposed  a 
compromise.  Encouraged  by  these  symptoms  of  timidity,  the  inhabitants 
of  Woodstock  and  the  three  other  towns  openly  disclaimed  submission  to 
Massachusetts,  and  resisted  the  collectors  of  its  provincial  taxes.  The 
assembly  of  Connecticut,  perceiv^ing  that  Massachusetts  was  employing  in- 
efficient and  indecisive  measures  to  reduce  the  towns  to  obedience,  now 
openly  countenanced  their  revolt,  and  at  length,  by  a  formal  act,  declared 
them  united  to  the  colony  of  Connecticut.  It  was  urged,  in  defence  of  this 
proceeding,  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  four  towns  derived  from  the  original 
provincial  charter  an  indefeasible  right  to  the  jurisdiction  of  Connecticut,  of 
which  the  legislature  of  this  province  was  incompetent  to  deprive  them,  and 
of  which  the  race  of  inhabitants  in  1750  could  not  be  divested  by  the  act 
of  their  predecessors  in  1713.  Upon  this  specious  pretext  Connecticut 
supported  her  claim  ;  and  yielding,  without  reserve,  to  the  suggestions  of 
that  interested  policy  to  which  she  had  unworthily  listened,  retained  her 
usurped  jurisdiction,  without  even  offering  to  restore  the  equivalent  formerly 
accepted  for  its  renunciation,  or  making  the  slightest  compensation  of  any 
kind  to  Massachusetts.^ 

'  Minot. 

'  Trumbull.  Hutchinson.  "  I  may  very  justly  repeat,"  says  Hutchinson,  "  the  observation 
formerly  made  in  a  controversy  between  these  two  colonies,  that  communities  or  bodies  of  men 
are  capable  jointly  of  such  acts  as,  being  the  act  of  any  one  member  separately,  would  cause 
him  to  be  ashamed."  This  is  a  favorite  sentiment  of  Hutchinson,  whose  own  most  interest- 
ing experience  was  that  of  an  individual  opposed  to  communities  or  bodies  of  men. 

Trumbull's  account  of  this  matter  is  very  unsatisfactory.  The  patriotic  partiality  of  this  wor- 
thy man  seems  to  have  rendered  it  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  him  to  believe  that  the 


CHAP.   II.]  GERMAN  EMIGRANTS  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  211 

The  invitation  tendered  to  foreign  Protestants,  in  1749,  by  the  assembly 
of  Massachusetts,  having  induced  a  number  of  Germans  to  repair  to  this 
province,  some  popular  and  enterprising  colonists  were  led  to  conceive  the 
hope  of  enriching  themselves  and  benefiting  their  country  by  transporting  an 
additional  number  of  German  emigrants,  and  with  their  assistance  laying 
the  foundation  of  manufacturing  establishments  in  New  England.  The  pro- 
jection of  this  scheme  was  by  no  means  creditable  to  the  sagacity  of  its 
authors  ;  and  the  measures  which  ensued  on  it  left  a  stain  on  their  own  and 
their  country's  honor.  Instead  of  undertaking  the  enterprise  simply  as  indi- 
viduals, they  proposed  to  render  the  assembly  a  party  to  it,  and  by  their 
influence  were  unfortunately  successful  in  inducing  this  body  to  entertain  a 
correspondence  with  one  Luther,  a  counsellor  at  law  and  a  purveyor  of  em- 
igrants in  Germany.  This  correspondence,  which  commenced  in  mutual 
misapprehension,  was  productive  of  disappointment  and  disgrace.  The  as- 
sembly had  intended  to  take  no  farther  part  in  the  project  than  might  serve 
to  forward  the  views  of  the  individuals  by  whom  the  experiment  was  planned  ; 
but  Luther,  and  his  countrymen,  whom  he  persuaded  to  emigrate  to  Mas- 
sachusetts, were  induced  to  consider  the  assembly  as  principals  in  the 
negotiation,  and  pledged  to  insure  the  full  measure  of  recompense  and  ad- 
vantage by  the  proposition  of  which  the  emigrants  were  attracted.  The 
private  undertakers  of  the  scheme  made  an  attempt,  with  the  assistance  of 
these  emigrants,  to  found  a  manufacturing  town  at  Braintree,  near  Boston  ; 
but  finding  the  experiment  not  likely  to  succeed,  they  yielded  to  the  first 
discouragement,  abandoned  their  views  and  their  German  associates,  and  de- 
clined to  fulfil  engagements,  w^hich,  though  equitably  due  from  themselves 
alone,  their  artifice  or  timidity  had  contrived,  in  appearance,  to  fasten  upon 
the  representative  assembly  of  their  country.  But  the  assembly  was  not 
disposed  to  acknowledge  such  liability,  and  entirely  repudiated  the  trans- 
action thus  unexpectedly  deserted  by  its  original  promoters. 

Governor  Shirley,  at  this  time,  was  in  Europe  ;  having  been  appointed  to 
act  as  one  of  the  commissaries  on  the  part  of  Britain,  for  arranging  with 
France  the  limits  of  Nova  Scotia  ;  but  Phips,  the  lieutenant-governor,  and 
several  of  the  provincial  counsellors  and  representatives,  who  regarded  the 
honor  of  their  country  as  inseparable  from  its  interests,  strenuously  urged 
the  assembly  to  pay  the  penalty  of  its  negligence,  and  to  fulfil  the  obligations, 
in  which,  whether  dehberately  or  unadvisedly,  it  had  been  unfortunately  in- 
volved. Their  urgency  was  ineffectual.  The  assembly  neither  recognized 
its  own  responsibility  to  the  claims  of  the  emigrants,  nor  enforced  satisfac- 
tion of  them  from  the  individuals  by  whom  it  had  been  entrapped  into  this  dis- 
agreeable predicament.  Luther,  who  had  incurred  a  considerable  expense, 
was  unable  to  obtain  the  slightest  indemnification  ;  and  the  emigrants,  bitterly 
lamenting  their  disappointment,  were  left  to  shift  as  they  best  could  for 
themselves.^  This  faulty  passage  in  the  history  of  Massachusetts  (to  which 
a  parallel  has  already  appeared  in  the  annals  of  New  York,  in  1737)  sug- 
gests to  the  citizens  and  politicians  of  a  republic  the  propriety  of  cultivating 
with  peculiar  care  a  nice  sense  of  strict  and  continuous  responsibility  to  the 

people  of  Connecticut,  in  a  dispute  with  their  neighbours,  could  ever  be  in  the  wrong.  But 
the  great  end  of  history  can  never  be  answered  by  disguising  or  suppressing  the  errors  into 
which  exemplary  men  and  virtuous  communities  may  have  been  betrayed.  The  caution 
suggested  by  the  frailties,  no  less  than  the  emulation  inspired  by  the  virtues,  of  their  forefathers 
is  a  valuable  part  of  the  inheritance  of  a  nation  ;  and  history,  which  is  the  testament  of  time, 
should  record  with  fidelity  every  particular  of  his  bequest.  ' 
'  Hutchinson. 


212  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

-principles  of  honor  ;  without  which,  absohite  power  is  divested  of  an  impor- 
tant and  salutary  restraint,  and  regard  to  national  interest  is  but  selfishness 
exerted  on  an  extended  scale.  When  the  indissoluble  connection  between 
the  moraHty  and  the  happiness  of  nations,  as  well  as  of  individuals,  shall  be 
generally  recognized,  politics  will  become  a  generous  science,  and  institu- 
tions of  government  the  schools  of  every  virtue. 

Few  particulars  have  been  transmitted  of  the  condition  of  Virginia  and 
Maryland  at  this  period.  Of  the  entire  population  of  Virginia,  the  only  ac- 
counts, or  rather  estimates,  that  have  been  preserved,  are  manifestly  and 
absurdly  erroneous.  Warden,  for  instance,  asserts  that  it  amounted,  in  the 
year  1749,  to  eighty -five  thousand  persons.  And  yet,  from  Jefferson's 
lists,  it  appears  that  the  tithable  inhabitants  alone  (that  is,  the  white  men 
above  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  the  negro  slaves,  male  and  female,  above  the 
same  age)  amounted,  in  the  year  1748,  to  82,100.  The  population  of 
Maryland,  which,  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  amounted  to 
about  thirty  thousand  persons,  was  found,  in  the  year  1755,  to  have  ad- 
vanced to  153,564,  including  42,764  negro  slaves,  3,592  mulattoes,  6,870 
voluntary  indented  servants,  and  1,981  transported  felons.  More  than  two 
thousand  negro  slaves  were  annually  imported  into  Maryland  alone.  In 
these,  and  the  other  Southern  States  where  slaves  abounded,  much  greater 
inequalities  of  condition  were  now  visible  among  the  planters,  than  in  the 
more  northern  States,  where,  though  slavery  was  tolerated,  its  actual  prev- 
alence was  not  extensive.  Some  of  the  planters  of  Virginia  and  Mary- 
land possessed,  each,  no  fewer  than  five  hundred  slaves  ;  and  one  Maryland 
planter  possessed  as  many  as  thirteen  hundred.  Inequality  of  condition,  pro- 
moted by  the  institution  of  entails,  which  had  prevailed  for  some  time  in  Vir- 
ginia, generated  in  this  province  a  class  of  aristocrats  or  patricians,  who  were 
regarded  with  considerable  jealousy  by  the  humbler  but  more  numerous 
order  of  farmers  or  yeomen.  The  wealthy  planters  were  generally  unac- 
quainted with  business,  which  they  disdained  to  study  or  pursue,  and  devoted 
to  amusement ;  and  the  greater  part  of  the  commerce  of  Virginia  was  con- 
ducted by  adventurers  from  Scotland,^  who,  in  many  instances,  found  it  easy 
to  acquire  considerable  fortunes. 

It  was  in  the  Southern  States  that  Toryism,  w^hich,  in  America,  signified 
a  predilection  for  royal  prerogative  and  an  admiration  of  aristocracy  and 
hereditary  distinctions,  possessed  the  most  numerous  votaries.  There  was 
none  of  the  States,  however,  in  which  a  party,  more  or  less  numerous,  of 
this  class  of  thinkers  was  not  to  be  found.  Probably  there  has  never  ex- 
isted a  single  community  of  men,  in  the  world,  entirely  pervaded  by  the 
love  of  liberty  ;  a  sentiment  which  can  never  prevail  in  its  highest  force, 
or  merit  the  name  of  a  generous  passion,  except  when  united  with  the 
virtues  of  self-denial,  humanity,  moderation,  and  justice.  In  servile  senti- 
ments and  practices  there  is  much  to  flatter  the  natural  inclinations  of 
mankind  ;  to  obey  accommodates  the  indolence  —  to  corrupt,  and  be  cor- 
rupted, the  avarice  and  ambition  —  of  human  nature.  To  regard  with  pecu- 
liar veneration  one  or  a  few  individuals,  lifted  up  by  general  consent   and 

'  I  have  been  informed  by  my  lather,  a  native  of  Glasgow,  in  Scotland,  that  in  his  boyhood, 
which  was  prior  to  the  American  Revolution,  it  was  common  to  hear  adventurous  lads  in 
Glasgow  say,  "  I  will  go  out  to  Virginia."  Many  did  actually  go  as  storekeepers  for  mercan- 
tile houses  m  Glasgow,  and  in  time  became  partners  in  these  houses.  Every  planter  bought 
his  foreign  commodities  at  one  particular  store,  and  consigned  the  produce  of  his  plantation  to 
the  mercantile  house  in  the  parent  state  connected  with  this  store.  Glasgow  engrossed  at  least 
a  half  of  the  North  American  trade,  prior  to  the  Revolution. 


CHAP.  II.]  THE  OHIO  COMPANY.  213 

homage  to  a  vast,  though  fanciful,  superiority  over  the  rest  of  mankind, 
ministers  gratification  to  every  shade  and  intermixture  of  human  pride,  vanity, 
and  idolatry.  Even  in  Pennsylvania,  and  in  the  bosom  of  a  humble  Qua- 
ker family,  we  find  about  this  time  the  most  ardent  admiration  of  royalty 
expressed  by  the  celebrated  Benjamin  West,  then  a  young  lad,  and  for 
many  years  after  a  Quaker,  who  declared,  as  a  reason  for  choosing  the 
occupation  of  a  painter,  "  that  a  painter  was  a  companion  for  kings  and  em- 
perors ;  and  that,  although  none  of  these  dignitaries  were  to  be  found  in 
America,  there  were  plenty  of  them  in  other  parts  of  the  world."  Nay, 
we  are  told  that  the  grave,  sagacious,  Puritan  father  of  Dr.  Franklin,  who 
had  himself  emigrated  from  the  hemisphere  of  royalty,  used  to  stimulate 
the  industry  of  his  son  by  reminding  him  (with  literal  application  of  the 
words  of  Scripture) ,  that  a  man  who  is  diligent  in  his  calling  may  hope  to 
stand  before  kings,  and  to  outgrow  the  gross  fellowship  of  men  of  low  de- 
gree.i 

In  1749,  General  Gooch  resigned  the  government  of  Virginia,  and  re- 
turned to  England,  honored  with  the  regret  and  benediction  of  a  people 
over  whom  he  had  presided  for  twenty-two  years.  He  received  the  dig- 
nity of  a  baronet  from  the  crown  in  recompense  of  his  services  ;  and,  till 
the  end  of  his  fife,  preserved  a  friendly  correspondence  with  the  Virginians. 
There  was  formed  in  the  same  year  an  association,  composed  of  certain 
London  merchants  trading  to  Virginia  and  Maryland,  and  of  a  number  of 
wealthy  Virginian  planters,  which  assumed  the  name  of  the  Ohio  Company, 
and  obtained  from  the  crown  a  grant  of  six  hundred  thousand  acres  of  land 
adjacent  to  the  river  Ohio,  together  with  a  patent  conferring  the  privilege 
of  exclusive  trade  with  the  Indian  tribes  on  the  banks  of  that  river.  One 
object  of  this  association  was  to  undertake  the  execution  of  the  politic 
scheme  that  had  been  suggested  by  Governor  Spottiswoode,  and  to  form 
settlements  beyond  the  Appalachian  Mountains,  and  connections  of  com- 
merce with  the  Indians,  which  might  stem  the  progress  of  the  French  occu- 
pations. Various  grants  of  land  in  the  same  quarter  were  made  soon  after 
by  the  Virginian  government  to  private  adventurers,  who  were  required  to 
abstain  from  all  encroachment  on  the  privileges  and  possessions  of  the  Ohio 
Company.  The  measures  adopted  by  this  company,  in  furtherance  of  the 
great  designs  which  it  undertook,  were  conducted  with  extreme  impru- 
dence. The  Indian  tribes  adjacent  to  the  scene  of  its  projected  settle- 
ments were  so  unfavorably  disposed  towards  the  French,  that  a  very  little 
attention  to  justice  and  courtesy  on  the  part  of  the  directors  of  the  company 
might  have  secured  to  it  their  friendship  and  assistance.  But  the  directors, 
without  ever  soliciting  the  permission  of  the  Indians  or  ofi^ering  to  purchase 
their  rights  to  the  soil,  despatched  agents  to  survey  and  assume  possession 
of  stations  that  might  appear  to  them  suitable  to  the  company's  purposes. 
These  agents,  too,  whether  of  their  own  accord  or  in  compliance  with  in- 
structions from  their  superiors,  dechned  at  first  to  specify  the  purpose  of 
their  operations,  and  answered  the  inquiries  of  the  Indians  in  a  dark,  myste- 
rious manner,  which  excited  the  deepest  alarm  in  their  inquisitive  and  sus- 
picious minds.  The  private  traders  of  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  who  had 
begun  to  penetrate  into  this  region  and  obtain  a  share  of  its  commerce, 
were  disgusted  when   they   learned   the    exclusive    privileges  which  „\ere 

'  History  of  the  British  Dominions  in  America.  Jefferson's  Notes  on  Virginia.  Warden. 
Win's  Life  of  Henry.    Winterbotham.     GslIVs  Life  of  tVest.     Franklin's  jlfemoirs.     Holmes. 


214  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

conferred  on  the  company,  and  studiously  fomented  the  jealousy  which  the 
Indians  had  already  conceived.^  Thus  inauspiciously  commenced  the  first 
systematic  attempt  of  the  English  to  check  the  rapid  strides  of  the  French 
dominion  in  America.  That  the  French  would  take  umbrage  at  the  estab- 
lishment and  projects  of  the  Ohio  Company  was  easily  foreseen  ;  and  with 
such  a  prospect,  nothing  could  be  more  imprudent  than  the  policy  which 
aroused  so  much  additional  enmity  and  opposition. 

We  have  already  adverted^  to  the  condition  which  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  had  attained  at  this  period.  The  population  of  North  Carolina, 
w^hich  in  the  year  1710  amounted  to  six  thousand  persons,  had  in  1749 
advanced  to  forty-three  thousand.  In  this  year  a  circumstance  occurred, 
which  was  the  means  of  introducing  shortly  after  into  North  Carolina  a 
considerable  number  of  the  most  pious  and  industrious  emigrants  who 
had  resorted  to  America  since  the  first  colonization  of  New  England.  The 
Moravian  brethren  had  now  formed  large  and  flourishing  settlements  in 
Pennsylvania,  where  they  pursued  their  secular  occupations  and  their  mis- 
sionary enterprises  with  a  success  which  kindled  the  emulation  and  attracted 
the  resort  of  increasing  numbers  of  their  fellow-sectaries  from  Europe.  A 
troop  of  these  intending  emigrants,  admonished  by  the  experience  of  their 
friends  in  Georgia,  and  informed,  perhaps,  of  the  controversy  that  prevailed 
in  Pennsylvania  respecting  a  military  establishment,  petitioned  the  British 
government  for  some  pledge  that  a  departure  from  their  principles  would  not 
be  required  from  them  in  America.  An  act  of  parliament^  was  accordingly 
passed  in  1749,  admitting  the  affirmation  of  Moravians  in  America  as  equiv- 
alent to  an  oath,  and  discharging  them  from  liability  to  perform  military 
service.  This  transaction,  in  which  the  Earl  of  Granville,  who  was  then 
president  of  the  council,  took  a  share  as  a  minister  of  state,  naturally  at- 
tracted his  consideration  as  a  proprietor  of  American  territory.  He  con- 
ceived the  hope  of  inducing  a  body  of  these  peaceable  and  industrious  men 
to  colonize  the  large  and  almost  vacant  domain  which  was  reserved  to  his 
family  on  the  dissolution  of  the  proprietary  system  in  Carolina  ;  and  so  suc- 
cessful were  his  negotiations  for  this  purpose  with  the  Moravian  deputies  who 
came  to  England  to  solicit  the  pledge  of  the  British  government,  that  very 
soon  after  a  detachment  of  Moravians  repaired  from  the  principal  station 
of  the  society  at  Bethlehem,  in  Pennsylvania,  to  North  Carolina,  where 
they  founded  a  settlement  to  which  they  gave  the  name  of  Bethabara.  They 
were  subsequently  joined  by  accessions  of  their  sectarian  associates,  both 
from  other  parts  of  America  and  from  Europe;  and  formed  a  society 
(says  the  historian  of  this  province)  which  set  an  excellent  example  of 
the  virtues  of  industry  and  terhperance,  and  seemed,  in  spite  of  Indian  wars 
and  other  adverse  circumstances,  to  enjoy  as  much  happiness  as  the  lot  of 
humanity  admits.  From  North  Carolina  there  were  exported  in  the  year 
1753  upwards  of  sixty  thousand  barrels  of  tar,  twelve  thousand  barrels  of 
pitch,  ten  thousand  barrels  of  turpentine,  and  about  thirty  thousand  deer- 
skins, besides  lumber  and  other  commodities.^ 

'  Smollett.  Holmes.  Burk.  "  This  project,"  says  Biirk,  "  afforded  the  justesl  uneasiness 
and  offence  to  the  natives,  who  saw  that  even  the  wilderness,  whither  they  had  retired,  did 
not  save  them  from  the  rapacity  of  their  invaders.  Their  right  to  the  lands  might  have 
been  purchased  for  a  small  sum,  prudently  expended  in  nails,  paints,  blankets,  and  hatchets." 
The  occupations  of  the  French,  consisting  of  bounded  military  positions,  instead  of  spreading 
settlements,  excited  less  jealousy  in  the  Indians. 

«  Pook  IX.,  ante.  3  22  George  II.,  Cap.  30.  *  Warden.    Williamson.  Holmes. 


CHAP.  II.]  SCIENCE  AND  LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA.  215 

There  assembled  in  1751,  at  Albany,  a  convention  consisting  of  Clinton, 
the  governor  of  New  York,  commissioners  appointed  by  the  governments 
of  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  Carolina,  and  deputies  who  represented 
the  Indian  confederacy  of  the  Six  Nations.  Bull,  the  commissioner  from 
South  Carolina,  was  attended  to  this  congress  by  the  king  and  other  chiefs 
of  the  Catawba  tribe  or  nation  of  Indians,  between  whom  and  the  Six 
Nations  a  long  and  bloody  war  had  prevailed.  A  peace  was  now  concluded 
between  these  savage  beUigerents,  by  the  mediation  of  their  civilized  allies.^ 

In  conformity  with  an  act  of  parliament  adjudging  the  correction  of  the 
existing  calendar,  the  new  style  of  chronological  computation  was  introduced 
in  the  year  1752  into  the  American  provinces  and  every  other  part  of  the 
British  dominions.  From  this  time,  the  year,  instead  of  beginning  on  the 
25th  of  March,  was  computed  from  the  first  day  of  January.  The  third 
day  of  September  was  now  dated  the  fourteenth  ;  and  a  consistent  change 
harmonized  the  reckoning  of  all  the  other  days  of  the  year.  This  refor- 
mation of  the  calendar,  rendered  necessary  by  the  precession  of  the  equi- 
nox, was  decreed  by  Pope  Gregory  the  Thirteenth  in  1582  ;  but  though 
his  decretal  was  readily  obeyed  in  all  countries  where  the  Catholic  faith 
prevailed,  the  Protestants  had  hitherto  indulged  an  aversion  to  admit  so  im- 
portant an  innovation,  which  seemed  to  reflect  credit  on  the  wisdom  and 
authority  of  the  Roman  pontiff.^ 

It  was  in  the  same  year,  that  Dr.  Frankhn,  having  discovered  the  analogy 
between  lightning  and  electricity,  verified  this  grand  conjecture  by  an  ex- 
periment which  excited  the  applause  and  admiration  of  the  civilized  w^orld, 
and  shed  a  brilliant  ray  of  philosophic  glory  on  his  name,  his  country, 
and  his  age.^  The  metaphysical  and- theological  writings  of  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards contributed  about  the  same  time  to  elevate  the  reputation  of  Ameri- 
can genius,  and  convinced  the  scholars  of  Europe  that  America  had  already 
given  birth  to  philosophers  worthy  to  be  acknowledged  as  the  instructors  of 
the  old  world,  as  well  as  the  new.  Symptoms  of  a  rising  or  increasmg 
regard  for  science  and  literature  now  began  to  appear  in  almost  all  the 
American  provinces.  The  colleges  of  New  England  continued  to  flourish, 
and  were  enlarged  ;  libraries,  academies,  and  philosophical  societies  arose 
in  these  States,  and  in  Pennsylvania,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Virginia, 
and  South  Carolina.  The  progress  of  scientific  research  in  America  was 
facilitated  by  the  friendly  counsel  and  aid  which  its  votaries  received  from 
the  most  distinguished  philosophers  in  Europe,  —  among  whom  Linnaeus, 
Sir  Hans  Sloane,  and  Peter  Collinson^  deserve  an  especial  and  honorable 
commemoration. 

A  taste  for  the  study  of  botany  and  zoology  was  awakened  in  America 
by  Mark  Catesby,  the  English  naturalist,  who  visited  South  Carolina  in  1722, 
and,  nine  years  after,  published  at  London  his  J^atural  History  of  Carolina 
and  Florida.  These  walks  of  science,  than  which  none  are  more  closely 
allied  with  moral  virtue  and  temperate  use  of  life,  were  now  cultivated  with 
ardor  and  success  by  Colden,  an  inhabitant,  and  afterwards  lieutenant 
governor,  of  New  York,  Glover  and  Clayton,  Virginian  planters.  Garden, 
a  physician  in  South  Carolina,  and  other  learned  and  intelligent  men  ;  but  by 
none  with  greater  genius  and  celebrity  than  John  Bartram,  a  Pennsylvanian 

'  Drayton.     Holmes.  s  Smollett.     Holmes. 

^  Franklin's  Memmrs. 

"  With  Franklin,  grasp  the  lightning's  fiery  wing."  —  Campbell. 
*  See  Note  XH.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


216  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

Quaker  and  farmer,  whom  Linnaeus  pronounced  to  be  "the  greatest  natural 
botanist  in  the  world."  Bartram  established  the  first  botanical  garden  in 
iVmerica,  and,  in  pursuit  of  his  favorite  study,  performed  numerous  jour- 
neys with  unwearied  vigor  and  dauntless  courage,  among  the  fiercest  and 
most  jealous  of  the  Indian  tribes.  At  the  age  of  seventy  he  travelled 
through  East  Florida,  in  order  to  explore  its  natural  productions,  and  af- 
terwards pubhshed  a  journal  of  his  observations.  And  yet  withal,  he  sup- 
ported a  numerous  family  by  his  own  personal  labor  as  a  farmer.  He 
was  a  pious  and  benevolent  man,  and  gave  liberty  to  the  only  slave  he  pos- 
sessed, and  who  gratefully  remained  with  him  as  a  voluntary  servant.  He 
was  elected  a  member  of  the  most  illustrious  societies  and  academies  in 
Europe  ;  and,  before  his  death,  received  the  appointment  of  American 
botanist  to  the  British  king.^ 

Some  proficiency  in  mathematics  and  astronomy  ^  had  already  been  evinced 
by  the  Americans.  John  Winthrop,  a  native  of  Boston,  and  now  professor 
of  mathematics  in  Harvard  College,  was  a  man  of  profound  research  and 
extensive  learning.  He  was  highly  respected  by  the  philosophers  of  Europe, 
and  published  a  treatise  upon  comets,  which  gained  him  much  celebrity. 
Thomas  Godfrey,  of  Philadelphia,  a  self-taught  mathematician,  the  Pascal 
of  America,  invented  about  this  time  the  instrument  which,  by  a  misnomer 
mjurious  to  his  fame,  passes  under  the  name  of  Hadley's  quadrant.  David 
Rittenhouse,  of  Pennsylvania,  with  no  preceptor  but  his  genius,  and  no  as- 
sistant but  his  labor,  had  now  begun  those  philosophical  researches,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  was  led  for  a  time  to  believe  himself  the  first  author  of 
the  sublime  invention  of  fluxions,  and  subsequently  gained  high  repute  as  an 
astronomer,  and  the  inventor  of  the  American  orrery.  This  remarkable 
man  occupied  originally  a  very  humble  station  ;  and  in  his  youth,  while 
conducting  a  plough,  usually  traced  on  its  handles  his  mathematical  calcula- 
tions. William  Douglass,  a  physician  in  Boston,  was  celebrated  for  his  pro- 
ficiency in  mathematics,  and,  in  1744,  published  an  ingenious  almanac  enti- 
tled JVIercurius  Anglicanus.  He  is  more  generally  known  as  the  author  of 
the  historical  and  statistical  work  published  a  few  years  after  under  the  title 
of  A  Summary  of  the  British  Settlements  in  America,  and  which,  together 
with  many  faults,  contains  a  great  deal  of  valuable  information.  He  was  a 
Scotchman  by  birth,  and  had  emigrated  to  New  England,  where  he  died  in 
1753.  Thomas  Prince,  a  native  and  minister  of  Boston,  published,  in 
1736,  the  first  volume  of  a  work  which  he  entitled  The  Chronological  His- 
tory of  J^ew  England.  He  was  a  man  of  superior  genius,  and  by  intensely 
laborious  study  had  accumulated  a  vast  stock  of  knowledge  ;  but  by  under- 
taking too  much,  he  fell  short  of  the  execution  of  his  design  in  this  work, 
which  was  never  completed.  His  introductory  epitome,  which  cost  him  im- 
mense labor,  begins  at  the  creation  of  the  world.     He  died  in  1758. 

*  His  taste  and  genius  were  inherited  by  his  son,  William  Bartram,  author  of  the  interest- 
ing Travels  in  Carolina^  Georgia.,  and  Florida. 

Some  prospect  appeared,  at  one  time,  of  a  diligent  and  successful  cultivation  of  natural  his- 
tory in  Canada,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Marquis  de  la  Galissoniere,  who  for  a  short  period 
was  governor  of  this  province.  "  Galissoniere,"  says  Kalm,  who  visited  him  in  1749,  "re- 
minded me  of  our  own  Linnaeus.  When  he  spoke  of  the  use  of  natural  history,  and  of  its 
subservience  to  national  greatness,  I  was  astonished  to  hear  him  deduce  his  reasons  from 
politics,  as  well  as  science  and  philosophy."  Kalm.  The  third  volume  of  Kalm's  work  con- 
tains many  curious  particulars  illustrative  of  the  state  of  society  and  manners  in  Canada. 

*  America  will  probably  be  distinguished  hereafter  by  the  pursuit  of  astronomical  observa- 
tion. A  letter  which  I  have  seen  from  Benjamin  Franklin  to  Dr.  (Sir  William)  Herschel  af- 
firms, that,  from  the  superior  clearness  of  its  atmosphere,  the  climate  of  America  is  more  fa- 
vorable to  this  pursuit  than  the  climate  of  Europe. 


CHAP.  II.]  SCIENCE  AND  LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA.  217 

Stith,  a  professor  in  William  and  Mary  College,  published,  in  1747,  his 
History  of  Virginia,  —  a  work  to  which  we  have  already  adverted.^  Tim- 
othy Cutler,  Elisha  Williams,  and  Thomas  Clap,  successively  presidents  of 
Yale  College,  in  Connecticut,  distinguished  themselves  by  their  attainments 
in  classical  and  Oriental  literature.  Many  other  professors  in  the  colleges 
of  New  England  have  been  celebrated  for  their  genius,  taste,  and  superior 
erudition  ;  but  the  fame  even  of  the  most  distinguished  of  these  men  rests 
more  upon  the  testimony  of  their  contemporaries,  than  on  any  literary  mon- 
uments they  have  left  behind  them.  Neither  lay  nor  clerical  teachers,  in 
this  country,  possessed  the  leisure  which  the  institutions  of  England  have 
so  long  placed  within  the  reach  of  a  numerous  body  of  studious  men. 
Their  lives  were  more  active  than  speculative  ;  their  chief  business  was  not 
the  replenishment  of  their  own  minds  with  a  ceaseless  accumulation  of  learn- 
ing, but  the  personal  administration  of  the  functions  of  tuition  ;  and  they 
were  expected  to  make  proof  of  their  superiority,  rather  by  the  moral  and 
intellectual  improvement  of  their  pupils  and  congregations,  than  by  sohtary 
compositions  attesting  their  own  pecuhar  and  transcendent  attainments,  — 
rather  by  enlarging  the  empire  and  influence,  than  by  aggrandizing  the  bulk 
and  advancing  the  boundaries  of  science.  The  growing  appetite  for  knowl- 
edge, doubtless,  created  an  increased  demand  for  books  on  every  subject ; 
but  this  demand  was  easily  and  copiously  supplied  from  Europe.  Theology 
and  ecclesiastical  controversy  still  continued  to  be  the  chief  themes  which 
the  native  literature  of  New  England  was  employed  to  illustrate.  Between 
the  beginning  and  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  great  number  of 
well  educated  men,  and  some  persons  of  very  high  attainments  in  science 
and  literature,  repaired,  among  other  emigrants,  from  Britain  to  America. 
It  was  a  happy  and  memorable  feature  in  the  character  of  the  American  col- 
onists, and  especially  of  the  people  of  New  England,  that  the  work  of  tu- 
ition in  all  its  branches  was  greatly  honored  among  them,  and  that  no 
civil  functionary  was  regarded  with  more  respect  or  crowned  with  more 
distinguished  praise  than  a  diligent  and  conscientious  schoolmaster.^ 

We  have  already  remarked  the  rise  of  newspapers  in  Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,  New  York,  Rhode  Island,  and  South  Carolina.  These  pow- 
erful engines  for  the  circulation  of  sentiment  and  opinion  were  established  in 
the  year  1745  in  Maryland,  and  in  1755  in  Connecticut.^ 

In  the  year  1753,  there  was  published  at  Dublin,  by  Dr.  James 
M'Sparran,  who  had  (by  appointment  of  the  Bishop  of  London  and  a  mis- 
sionary society  in  England)  officiated  for  several  years  as  a  minister  of  the 
gospel  in  North  America,  a  work  bearing  this  unwieldy  title  :  —  America 
Dissected  :  being  a  full  and  true  Account  of  all  the  American  Colonies ; 
shewing  the  Intemperance  of  the  Climates,  excessive  Heat  and  Cold,  and 
sudden  violent  Changes  of  Weather,  terrible  and  mischievous  Thunder  and 
Lightning,  bad  and  unwholesome  Air,  destructive  to  human  Bodies  ;  Bad- 
ness of  Money,  Danger  from  Enemies,  but,  above  all.  Danger  to  the  Souls 

1  Book  I.,  Chap.  III.,  ante. 

'  Kalm.  Campbc'll.  Miller's  Retrospect  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Eliot's  JVew  England 
Biography.  Burk.  Dwight's  Travels.  I  was  informed  by  an  elegant  and  accomplished  Vir- 
ginian lady,  that,  even  so  late  as  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  was  customary  for  the 
daughters  of  the  wealthiest  planters  in  the  province  to  be  educated  at  day-schools  taught  by 
male  preceptors,  generally  clergymen  in  years.  She  herself  was  educated  in  this  manner. 
From  the  memoirs  of  Anthony  Benezet,  the  Quaker  philanthropist,  it  appears,  that,  after  teach- 
ing boys  during  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  he  became  the  schoolmaster  of  girls,  in  nis  old 
age,  in  Pennsylvania. 

3  Dwight. 

VOL.  II.  28  » 


218  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

of  the  poor  People  that  remove  thither.^  from  the  multifarious  wicked  and 
pestilent  Heresies  that  prevail  in  those  Parts.  In  several  Letters  from  a 
Reverend  Divine  of  the  Church  of  England,  Missionary  to  America  and 
Doctor  of  Divinity  ;  published  as  a  Caution  to  unsteady  People  who  may 
be  tempted  to  leave  their  native  Country.  The  caution  intended  by  this 
splenetic  and  intolerant  partisan  of  the  church  of  England  must  have  operated 
beneficially  to  America,  if  it  deterred  persons  of  temper  and  understanding 
similar  to  his  own  from  resorting  to  her  soil.  He  decries  the  religious 
estate  of  all  the  provinces,  but  especially  of  Rhode  Island,  where  he  had 
chiefly  resided,  and  where  he  represents  the  Quakers  as  then  forming  by 
far  the  most  powerful  class  of  the  people,  and  engrossing  all  the  functions 
of  government.  The  only  objects  in  America  that  obtain  his  praise,  or,  in- 
deed, escape  his  disapprobation,  are  the  ecclesiastical  assemblies  on  the 
model  of  the  church  of  England,  and  the  fine  breed  of  horses  for  which 
Rhode  Island  was  renowned.  He  reproaches  the  Rhode  Islanders  with 
an  extreme  addiction  to  lawsuits,  —  which,  nevertheless,  appear  to  have 
formed  a  principal  part  of  his  own  occupation  during  his  stay  in  the  country. ^ 


CHAPTER    III. 


View  of  the  colonial  Dominion  and  Policy  of  Britain  and  France  in  America.  —  Renewal  of 
Disputes  between  the  French  and  English  Colonists.  —  Hostilities  on  the  Virginian  Fron- 
tier. —  Benjamin  Franklin  —  his  Plan  for  a  Federal  -Union  of  the  American  Provinces.  — 
Discontents  in  Virginia  —  North  Carolina  —  and  New  York.  —  Preparations  of  France  and 
Britain  for  W^ar. 

We  have  seen  the  American  colonies  of  France  and  England  repeat- 
edly involved  in  wars  which  originated  between  their  respective  parent  states, 
and  of  which  the  causes  were  ministered  by  European  interests  and  quarrels. 
It  seemed,  on  these  occasions,  that  the  colonial  hostilities  were  but  secondary 
movements,  accessory  and  subordinate  to  the  main  current  of  affairs  in  a 
distant  channel  ;  and  that  the  repose  of  America  depended  chiefly  on  the 
temper  and  relations  subsisting  between  the  governments  and  the  nations 
of  Europe.  We  are  now  to  enter  upon  a  different  scene,  representing  a 
war  which  was  kindled  by  collisions  arising  in  America,  and  of  which  the 
flames,  first  breaking  forth  in  this  region,  progressively  extended  to  Europe, 
and  were  not  quenched  till  their  devouring  rage  had  been  felt  in  every  quar- 
ter of  the  globe.  [1752.]  Even  in  the  previous  scenes  of  warfare  which 
occurred  in  North  America,  it  was  manifest  that  the  French  and  British 
colonists  were  animated  by  stronger  passion  than  mere  dutiful  sympathy 
with  the  contemporary  quarrels  of  the  distant  empires  to  which  they  were 
politically  attached.  Both  the  last  war,  and  the  preceding  one  in  the  reign 
of  Queen  Anne,  though  in  formal  semblance  but  the  extensions  of  European 
strife,  were  preceded  and  prepared  by  disputes  of  American  birth  ;  and  the 
intervening  contest  between  New  England  and  the  Indian  allies  of  France 

*  Collections  of  the  Rhode  Island  Historical  Society.  Britain  has  furnished  numerous  suc- 
cessors to  Dr.  M'Sparran  in  the  task,  so  grateful  to  royalist  and  patrician  predilections,  of 
heaping  censure  and  detraction  on  America  and  her  people.  Oi  the  calumnies  vented  by 
these  writers  an  admirable  exposition  and  refutation  may  be  found  in  Mr.  Walsh's  Jipjpeal 
from  the  Judgments  of  Great  Britain  respecting  the  United  States  of  .America. 


CHAP.  Ill]        COLLISIONS  OF  THE  FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH.  219 

was  substantially  a  war  carried  on  between  the  French  and  English  col- 
onists, at  a  time  when  peace  subsisted  between  their  respective  parent 
states.  The  causes  of  enmity,  dispute,  and  collision,  which  had  been  mul- 
tiplying for  many  years  between  the  two  European  races  by  which  the 
colonization  of  North  America  was  principally  shared,  were  now  hastening 
to  a  complete  maturity,  and  threatened  this  great  continent  with  a  signal  rev- 
olution of  empire,  as  the  result  of  a  decisive  struggle  of  France  and  Eng- 
land for  its  sole  dominion.  Of  this  struggle  the  power  which  had  introduced 
despotic  monarchy  and  hereditary  nobility  into  America  was  fated  to  be 
the  victim.  But  had  the  rival  state  been  gifted  with  more  political  fore- 
sight, she  would  hardly  have  suffered  either  ambition  or  resentment  to 
precipitate  her  upon  a  conquest,  of  which  the  manifest  effect  was  to  con- 
vert France  from  the  interested  supporter  of  the  ascendency  of  Europe  over 
America,  into  the  vindictive  patron  of  American  independence.  Had  either 
or  both  of  the  contending  monarchs  perceived  how  injurious  their  collision 
must  prove  to  the  interests  of  royalty,  surely  the  war  which  we  are  now 
approaching  would  never  have  broken  out,  and  human  prudence  would  have 
intercepted  that  mighty  stream  of  events,  which,  commencing  with  the  con- 
quest of  Canada,  and  issuing  in  the  independence  of  North  America,  and 
the  impulse  thereby  communicated  to  the  spirit  of  liberty  and  revolution 
throughout  all  the  world,  has  so  wonderfully  displayed  the  dominion  of  Su- 
preme Wisdom  and  Beneficence  over  the  senseless,  selfish,  and  malignant 
passions  of  men. 

When  we  consider  the  vast  extent  of  the  North  American  continent, 
even  now  ^  but  partially  replenished  with  inhabitants  and  subdued  by  culti- 
vation, we  are  led  to  inquire  with  surprise  how  it  was  possible  that  so  early 
as  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  a  practical  collision  should  have 
arisen  between  the  pretensions  of  the  French  and  English  colonists.  That 
two  colonial  societies,  which  had  not  yet  existed  a  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
—  which  formed  but  an  inconsiderable  fraction  of  the  total  population  of 
the  empires  to  which  they  respectively  belonged,  and  yet  possessed  terri- 
tories far  exceeding  the  dimensions  of  the  parent  states,  and  utterly  dis- 
proportioned  to  any  power  of  cultivation  which  for  centuries  they  could 
hope  to  exert,  —  that  these  colonies,  I  say,  during  the  course  of  their 
brief  existence,  should  have  been  repeatedly  engaged  in  sanguinary  wars, 
and  should  already,  from  conflicting  schemes  of  poHcy,  have  reached  a  crisis 
at  which  the  conquest  of  the  one  was  deemed  requisite  to  the  security  of 
the  other,  is  not  the  least  remarkable  instance  recorded  in  history  of  the 
boundless  range  of  human  ambition,  and  of  the  total  inadequacy  of  the 
largest  possessions  to  impart  contentment  or  satiate  cupidity.  Another  in- 
stance, illustrative  of  these  considerations,  has  been  already  exhibited  to 
our  view  in  the  history  of  the  Dutch  and  Swedish  colonists  of  New  York 
and  Delaware.  While  these  territories  respectively  possessed  but  a  hand- 
ful of  inhabitants,  and  afforded  an  almost  boundless  scope  to  the  peaceful 
and  profitable  labors  of  colonization,  the  two  infant  communities  regarded 
each  other  with  jealous  hatred  and  fear,  and  plunged  into  hostilities  of 
which  the  aggressor  was  the  victim.  But  in  addition  to  considerations  ap- 
plicable to  every  portion  and  community  of  the  human  race,  there  are  others 
derived  from  the  national  character,  sentiments,  and  temper  of  the  French 
and  English,  which  contribute  to  account  for  the  early  and  violent  col- 
lision between  their  colonial  establishments  in  America. 
'  This  was  written  in  the  year  1828. 


220  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

The  claim  preferred  by  Edward  the  Third  of  England  to  the  throne  of 
France,  in  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century,  seems  to  have  given  the 
first  occasion  to  that  mutual  animosity  between  the  French  and  English 
people,  which,  nourished  by  a  succession  of  national  disputes,  broke  forth 
into  numberless  wars,  and  produced  a  greater  effusion  of  blood  than  attended 
the  rivalry  of  the  Greeks  and  Persians,  or  of  the  Romans  and  Carthaginians. 
It  has  been  affirmed  by  a  great  philosophic  historian  ^  that  this  antipathy  was 
cherished  in  a  far  stronger  degree  by  the  English  than  by  the  French,  whose 
position  in  the  middle  of  Europe  involved  them  in  a  greater  variety  of  hos- 
tile relations  than  the  English,  and  mitigated  the  force  of  national  hatred  by 
multiplying  the  channels  in  which  it  flowed.  Perhaps  a  juster  consideration 
will  account  that  the  reciprocal  animosities  of  the  two  nations  were  substan- 
tially much  less  disproportioned  than  this  writer  has  been  willing  to  suppose. 
More  sincerity  and  consistent  principle  mingled  with  the  sentiments  of  the 
Enghsh  ;  more  politic  address  and  artifice  regulated  the  passions  of  the 
French.  The  English  were  the  most  apt  to  suspect  and  to  threaten  injury  ; 
the  French  were  the  least  prompt  to  profess  enmity,  and  the  least  re- 
strained by  honor  and  good  faith  from  indulging  in  it.^  But  even  supposing 
this  estimate  erroneous,  as  perhaps  it  is,  and  that  an  unequal  degree  of  ani- 
mosity subsisted  between  the  subjects  of  France  and  England  in  Europe, 
their  relative  position  in  America  was  calculated  to  restore  at  once  the 
balance  of  mutual  dislike,  and  to  fortify  every  unfriendly  sentiment  which 
they  imported  from  their  respective  parent  states.^  The  English  now  be- 
came the  nearest  and  the  most  formidable  neighbours  of  the  French,  whose 
passions,  discharged  from  participation  in  the  pohtics  of  Europe,  had  leisure 
to  unite  their  strength  in  a  single  channel  ;  while,  to  the  British  colonists  in 
general,  and  especially  to  the  people  of  New  England,  who  were  most  ap- 
proximated to  Canada  and  Nova  Scotia,  the  religious  faith  and  civil  policy 
of  the  French  were  objects  of  greater  aversion  than  to  any  class  of  the 
domestic  population  of  Great  Britain. 

Institutions  more  purely  democratical  subsisted,  and  liberty  flourished 
with  greater  vigor,  in  the  British  colonies  than  in  Britain  ;  while  a  stricter 
system  of  despotism  prevailed  in  the  French  colonies  than  in  France.  The 
Enghsh  colonists  stigmatized  the  French  as  idolaters,  and  the  French  de- 
nounced the  English  as  heretics.  The  English  despised  the  French  as 
slaves  ;  while  the  French,  attached  to  arbitrary  power,  and  sharing  all  its 
prejudices,  regarded  with  aversion  the  rival  principle  of  liberty  which  was 
cherished  by  the  Enghsh.'*  The  mutual  enmity  of  the  French  and  Enghsh 
colonists  was  farther  promoted  by  their  competitions  to  gain  a  monopoly  of 
the  trade  and  good- will  of  a  variety  of  Indian  tribes,  all  of  which  were  en- 
gaged in  frequent  wars,  and  expected  that  their  quarrels  should  be  espoused 
by  their  friends  ;  and  some  of  which  had  the  sagacity  to  perceive  that  the 

*  Hume. 

2  France,  even  when  her  councils  were  guided  by  Richelieu,  aided  and  encouraged  the 
Scottish  Covenanters,  the  most  determined  enemies  of  the  Catholic  faith  and  of  unlimited 
monarchy,  to  resist  Charles  the  First.  Louis  the  Fourteenth,  even  while  he  was  oppressing 
the  Protestants  in  France,  and  encouraging  Charles  the  Second  to  pursue  arbitrary  power  in 
England,  maintained  a  correspondence  with  the  English  politicians  who  were  opposed  to 
Charles's  tyrannical  designs,  and  who  abetted  the  prosecutions  for  the  Popish  Plot. 

3  We  might  suppose  that  Kalm,  the  traveller,  was  describing  the  provincial  manners  of  Eng- 
land, when  he  relates  that  he  was  followed  and  hooted  by  the  children  in  the  streets  of  Alba- 
ny, because  his  hair  was  dressed  in  a  style  which  was  reckoned  characteristic  of  a  Frenchman. 

*  "  We  are  well  aware,"  said  Demosthenes  to  the  Thebans,  "  of  that  inextinguishable 
hatred  which  kings  and  the  slaves  of  kings  have  ever  felt  towards  nations  which  have  plumed 
themselves  on  being  free."     Freinshemius's  Supplement  to  Quintus  CurtiuSj  Book  I. 


CHAP.  III.]        COLLISIONS  OF  THE  FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH.  221 

mutual  jealousy  and  estrangement  of  the  two  European  races  would  be  fa- 
vorable to  the  independence  and  authority  of  the  Indians.  The  seeds  of 
controversy  between  the  French  and  English  colonists  were  thus  sown  with 
the  earliest  settlements  which  they  formed  in  America ;  and  between  two 
nations  so  strongly  prepossessed  against  each  other  the  actual  collision  was 
rather  hastened  than  retarded  by  the  prodigious  extent  of  vacant  territory 
which  sui^^unded  their  settlements,  and  naturally  prevented  an  early  and 
amicable  adjustment  of  boundaries.  Conflicting  pretensions  and  territorial 
disputes  were  prepared  from  the  first  by  the  indefinite  and  extravagant 
charters  or  grants  of  land,  which  the  French  and  English  monarchs,  ignorant 
or  regardless  of  each  other's  proceedings,  severally  conferred  on  their  sub- 
jects ;  and  these  disagreements,  which  various  occasions  had  already  par- 
tially developed,  were  now  brought  to  an  early  but  full  maturity  by  the 
progress  of  that  ambitious  system  of  colonial  enterprise  which  for  many 
years  the  French  had  actually  pursued. 

The  models  of  conduct  and  policy  exhibited  in  the  settlements  of  the 
two  races  of  colonists  differed  as  widely  as  their  local  positions  in  America, 
and  strikingly  illustrated  the  distinctive  traits  in  the  characters  of  the  parent 
nations  from  which  they  were  respectively  derived.  The  English  were  in 
possession  of  the  seacoast  of  North  America,  of  the  harbours  and  the  mouths 
of  rivers  ;  and  some,  but  only  a  very  few,  of  their  settlements  were  actually 
extended  as  far  as  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  into  the  interior 
of  the  country.  The  French  were  not  in  possession  of  any  part  of  the  sea- 
coast  or  of  any  harbours  on  the  continent,  but  had  made  settlements  on  the 
banks  of  the  two  great  rivers  St.  Lawrence  and  Mississippi,  of  which  the 
sources  are  not  far  apart,  and  which,  running  respectively  northeast  and 
south,  formed  a  line  almost  parallel  to  the  seaward  position  of  the  English. 
These  settlements  of  the  two  nations  afforded  an  extent  of  territory  suffi- 
cient to  absorb  for  centuries  the  most  copious  emigrations  from  France  and 
England  ;  and  if  the  two  races  of  planters  had  confined  their  enterprises  to 
the  avowed  purpose  and  reasonable  process  of  colonization,  —  to  the  cul 
ture  and  subjugation  of  those  uncultivated  wastes  and  forests  which  they 
either  appropriated  as  vacant,  forcibly  seized,  or  fairly  purchased  from  the 
savage  proprietors,  —  we  should  still  have  been  separated  by  a  long  interval 
from  the  time  when  their  interests  could  possibly  have  clashed  or  interfered 
with  each  other.  The  natural  employment  of  the  colonists  of  America  was 
agriculture,  with  the  addition  of  a  confined  range  of  commerce  ;  and  this 
was  the  line  of  action  which  the  English  pursued.  Their  main  object  was 
to  plant  and  cultivate,  to  subdue  the  land  by  the  axe,  to  rule  it  by  the  plough, 
and  to  clothe  it  with  flocks  ;  and  they  never  removed  from  the  seacoasts 
to  the  interior  of  the  country,  but  when  they  were  straitened  for  room  in 
the  situations  which  they  had  primarily  adopted.  They  occupied  no  remote 
or  distant  posts,  and  made  no  settlements  but  such  as  were  capable  of  being 
maintained  and  supported  by  the  natural  condition  of  their  affairs  and  inter- 
course of  their  people.  Adhering  to  this  policy,  it  was  impossible  that  they 
could  ever  be  justly  charged  with  encroachments  on  the  possessions  of  the 
French  ;  and  had  the  conduct  of  the  latter  people  been  regulated  by  the 
same  maxims,  many  centuries  must  have  elapsed  before  the  two  nations  could 
have  been,  properly  speaking,  even  neighbours  to  each  other  in  these  vast 
and  desert  regions. 

But  quite  the  reverse  of  this  was  the  procedure  of  the  French.     The  fa- 


222  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

vorite  object  of  their  policy  was  rather  extended  dominion  than  industrious 
settlement  and  improved  plantation  ;  and  they  were  less  attentive  to  the 
erection  of  agricultural  or  mercantile  habitations  than  of  military  forts.  With 
an  ambitious  latitude  of  grasp,  they  occupied  and  fortified  posts  at  a  prodigious 
distance  from  each  other,  as  well  as  from  the  two  provincial  capitals,  and 
in  situations  where  they  could  be  maintained  only  by  elaborate  and  unnatural 
exertions  of  power  and  policy,  and  were  but  little  subservient§to  the  pur- 
poses of  commerce,  and  still  less  of  agriculture.  The  British  colonists 
were  peaceable  farmers  and  traders  ;  and  the  progress  of  their  settlements 
was  the  natural  growth  of  diligent  and  continuous  cultivation.  The  French 
conducted  themselves  rather  as  roving  and  ambitious  adventurers  than  as 
industrious  settlers  ;  and  the  aggrandizement  of  their  domains  was  the 
effect  of  aspiring,  irregular,  and  impetuous  enterprise.  Beholding  with 
alarmed  rivalry  the  slow  but  sure  and  steady  progress  of  the  British  col- 
onies in  culture,  population,  and  commerce,  and  instigated  by  envy  and  am- 
bition to  dread  already  the  increase  of  a  power  which  was  likely  to  be  the 
more  confirmed  and  stable  because  it  employed  no  violent  or  irregular  means 
of  accelerating  its  advancement,  the  French  had  long  pursued  measures  of 
which  the  object  was  to  intercept  the  farther  growth  of  the  British  settle- 
ments, and  to  confine  them  within  a  narrow  range,  extending  only  a  few 
leagues  from  the  seacoast.  With  this  object  they  combined  the  design  of 
gaining  possession  of  one  of  the  English  harbours  on  the  Atlantic  ocean, ^  for 
the  commercial  benefit  of  the  vast  interior  districts  to  which  they  laid  claim, 
and  which  possessed  no  other  maritime  communication  but  the  mouths  of 
two  rivers,  neither  of  which  afforded  a  convenient  navigation.  In  prosecu- 
tion of  their  poHtic  views,  they  studied  to  connect  their  two  colonies  of  Can- 
ada and  Louisiana  by  a  chain  of  forts  from  Quebec  to  New  Orleans,  — an 
operation,  which,  though  quite  inappropriate  to  the  ends  of  colonization, 
might  yet  have  been  accounted  justifiable,  had  the  new  positions  they  as- 
sumed been  restricted  to  the  banks  of  the  two  great  rivers,  or  the  territory 
immediately  adjacent  to  them.  But,  not  contented  with  this,  they  advanced 
their  military  settlements  so  near  the  English  frontier,  and  (with  still  more 
significant  indication  of  their  purpose)  to  so  great  a  distance  from  any  of 
their  own  colonies,  with  such  vast  tracts  of  land,  either  desert  or  inhabited  by 
hostile  savages,  intervening  between  them,  that  a  bare  inspection  of  the  map 
of  America  is  sufficient  to  demonstrate  the  aggrandizing  aim  of  this  people, 
and  the  spirit  of  hostile  encroachment  by  which  they  were  actuated. 

The  design  of  the  French  to  restrict  the  growth  of  the  British  settle- 
ments was  penetrated,  as  we  have  seen,  by  Spottiswoode,  the  governor  of 
Virginia,  as  early  as  the  year  1715  ;  and  but  a  few  years  later  was  distinctly 
perceived  by  Burnet,  the  governor  of  New  York.  But  the  representations 
of  these  politicians  were  disregarded  by  their  countrymen,  till  experience  de- 
monstrated what  sagacity  had  anticipated  in  vain.  The  purpose  of  deliberate 
encroachment  on  the  British  settlements  was  manifested,  in  the  year  1731, 
by  the  decisive  measure  of  erecting  the  fort  of  Crown  Point  upon  Lake 
Champlain,  at  a  great  distance  from  any  other  French  estabhshment,  and 
within  the  territory  of  the  Six  Nations,  who  were  recognized  by  treaty  as  the 
alHes  and  under  the  protection  of  Britain.  This  daring  intrusion  upon  the 
province  of  New  York  excited  hardly  any  attention  at  the  time,  except  from 

^  Even  as  early  as  the  reign  of  James  the  Second,  and  during  the  subsistence  of  peace  be- 
tween France  and  England,  De  Callieres,  a  French  officer,  recommended  to  his  countrymen 
the  conquest  of  New  York,  which  he  insisted  was  "  legitime  par  la  necessite."     W.  Smith. 


CHAP.  Ill]       COLLISIONS  OF  THE  FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH.  223 

the  government  of  Massachusetts,  whose  jealousy  had  been  sharpened  by 
many  previous  collisions  with  the  French,  and  was  kept  alive  by  the  nearer 
danger  with  which  New  England  was  menaced,  of  encroachment  in  the 
quarter  of  Nova  Scotia.  Before  this  province  was  finally  conquered  by 
Britain,  or  rather  by  the  British  colonists,  during  Queen  Anne's  War,  the 
French  endeavoured,  by  the  extension  of  its  boundaries,  to  check  the  ad- 
vance of  the  settlements  of  New  England  ;  and  even  after  it  was  surren- 
dered to  Britain,  at  the  peace  of  Utrecht,  they  pursued  the  same  pohcy,  by 
instigating  the  neighbouring  Indians  to  assert  pretensions  opposed  to  the 
claims  of  the  English,  and  by  raising  disputes  with  regard  to  the  real  mean- 
ing and  extent  of  the  cession  which  had  been  extorted  from  themselves. 
They  still  pretended  right  to  a  part  of  that  territory  of  which  the  English 
reasonably  understood  that  the  whole  was  ceded  ;  and  these  pretensions 
were  rendered  the  more  dangerous  by  their  concurrence  with  the  sentiments 
of  the  French  inhabitants  of  the  territory  confessedly  ceded,  and  of  the 
neighbouring  Indians,  as  well  as  by  the  establishment  which  France  was 
permitted  to  retain  in  the  island  of  Cape  Breton. 

The  hostile  attitude  which  the  French  force  in  America  thus  progressively 
assumed  would  long  before  the  present  period  have  provoked  a  decisive 
struggle  for  the  sole  dominion  of  this  continent,  if  a  corresponding  spirit  had 
been  manifested  by  the  rival  power  and  people.  But  the  British  colonists, 
devoted  to  the  pursuits  of  peaceful  industry,  were  not  easily  aroused  to 
military  enterprise  ;  and  their  political  views  and  solicitudes,  as  well  as  those 
of  the  parent  state,  were  divided  by  the  jealousies  which  they  reciprocally 
entertained,  —  on  the  one  hand,  of  encroaching  sovereignty,  —  on  the  other, 
of  relaxing  submission  and  dependence.  If  the  French,  from  the  unready 
resistance  and  languid  retorts  which  they  experienced,  reaped  the  political 
advantage  of  improving  their  military  positions,  they  incurred  the  moral  dis- 
advantage of  rendering  themselves  more  palpably  the  aggressors  in  an  inevi- 
table quarrel  ;  while  the  British  colonists  derived  all  the  benefit  arising  from 
the  increase  of  their  resources  in  peace,  and  from  a  sense  of  justice  in  the 
final  appeal  to  arms.  The  British  settlements  far  exceeded  those  of  France 
in  wealth  and  population  ;  and  if  the  two  races  of  colonists  had  engaged  with 
equal  vigor  and  determination  in  general  hostilities,  unaided  by  their  respect- 
ive parent  states,  the  issue  of  the  contest  could  not  long  have  been  doubtful. 
But  various  circumstances  tended  to  equalize  the  martial  force  which  these 
rival  colonies  were  capable  of  exerting,  or,  rather,  to  transfer  the  prepon- 
derance of  active  power  to  the  French.  The  British  were  divided  into  a  va- 
riety of  commonwealths,  separated  from  each  other  by  religious  diversities, 
as  well  as  by  distinct  political  constitutions,  of  which  the  independence  was 
guarded  with  a  vigilance  of  apprehension  incident  to  the  spirit  of  liberty  ;  and 
the  only  principle  of  union  among  them  was  their  common  jealousy  of  the 
parent  state,  —  a  sentiment  which  perplexed  their  politics,  and  tended  rather 
to  make  the  subjugation  of  their  French  neighbours  appear  additionally 
desirable,  than  to  induce  them  to  expend  their  own  strength  and  resources 
upon  this  object.  It  was  difficult  to  collect  the  force  and  energy  of  a  peo- 
ple so  circumstanced  into  one  compact  mass.  In  the  French  settlements 
no  such  principles  of  disunion  had  existence  ;  but  a  vigorous  concert  and 
simpHcity  of  purpose  and  action  prevailed,  — the  result  of  a  despotic  regi- 
men congenial  to  the  temper  and  sentiments  of  the  people. 

No  religious  or  political  distinctions  divided  the  several  portions  of  the 


224  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

French  provincial  commonwealth  from  each  other  ;  and  no  encroachments 
upon  charter  privilegesj  nor  opposition  to  the  exercise  of  disputed  prerog- 
ative, relaxed  the  protecting  and  auxiliary  energy  of  the  sovereign,  or  the 
common  ardor  of  the  colonists  for  the  promotion  of  his  wishes  and  the  en- 
largement of  his  empire  and  renown.^  The  French  colonists  relied  on,  and 
received,  much  more  Hberal  aid  from  their  parent  state  than  did  the  English; 
and  at  the  same  time  were  more  ready  (generally  speaking)  to  make  ad- 
venturous exertions  of  their  own  unaided  force  in  the  national  cause,  with 
which  all  their  pohtical  ideas  and  sentiments  were  blended.  Accustomed 
to  prompt  and  implicit  obedience  to  despotic  power,  the  conformity  between 
their  civil  habits  and  the  system  of  military  discipline  rendered  them  always 
capable  of  being  easily  moulded  into  armies  and  employed  as  efficient  in- 
struments of  war  and  conquest.  Undistracted  either  by  internal  jealousies 
and  emulations,  or  by  the  nurture  and  defence  of  domestic  liberty,  their 
political  ambition  was  confined  to  the  single  object  of  French  glory  and 
aggrandizement  ;  while,  from  their  local  situation,  opposition  to  the  colonial 
empire  of  England  was  the  only  sphere  of  action  in  which  the  pohtical  en- 
mity and  national  prejudice  of  which  they  were  susceptible  could  be  ex- 
erted. The  governors  of  Canada  were  generally  soldiers  of  reputation,  and 
were  intrusted  with  the  absolute  regulation  and  superintendence  of  Indian 
affairs  ;  whereas  the  English  governors  frequently  owed  their  appointments 
to  court  favor,  parliamentary  interest,  or  aristocratical  patronage,  and  aban- 
doned the  province  of  Indian  affairs  to  private  traders,  who  were  indifferent 
to  the  public  welfare,  and  actuated  only  by  the  most  sordid  motives  and 
considerations.  With  the  exception  of  the  Six  Nations  and  their  tributa- 
ries, the  French,  from  their  first  settlement  in  America,  had  been  remarka- 
bly successful  in  conciliating  the  affections  and  gaining  the  adherence  of 
the  Indian  tribes ;  and,  in  this  respect,  their  priests  proved  far  more  useful 
political  instruments  than  the  clergymen  and  missionaries  of  the  English. 
While  unity  of  design  and  promptitude  of  decision  invigorated  the  councils 
and  conduct  of  the  French,  the  most  judicious  projects  entertained  by  the 
English  were  often  endangered  or  rendered  abortive  by  the  jealous  caution 
and  protracted  deliberations  of  their  numerous  representative  assemblies. 
Governor  Shirley,  we  have  seen,  when  he  undertook  the  conquest  of  Louis- 
burg,  found  it  more  difficult  to  overcome  the  doubt  and  hesitation  of  his 
people  than  to  overpower  the  resistance  of  their  enemy  ;  and  lost  the  time 
in  defending  his  measure,  which  a  French  governor  would  have  employed 
in  improving  its  chances  of  success.  Hence,  though  the  actual  force  of  the 
French  settlements  was  indisputably  inferior  to  that  of  the  English,  it  was 
in  artificial  structure  more  nimble,  compact,  and  disposable,  and  was  capable 
of  being  directed  with  more  celerity  upon  any  given  point,  —  an  advantage 
that  has  often  counterpoised,  and  even  outweighed,  disparity  of  bulk  and 
numerical  superiority. 

Of  the  various  points  in  dispute  between  France  and  England,  not  one 
was  adjusted  by  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle.  The  boundaries  of  the 
British  empire  in  North  America,  and  the  disputed  property  of  Tobago  and 
other  islands  in  the  West  Indies,  were  left  to  be  settled  by  the  negotiation 
of  commissaries,  —  a  procedure  in  which  it  is  easy  for  either  party,  by  cun- 

*  The  effect  of  such  an  entire  and  unquahfied  despotism  as  characterized  the  policy  of 
France  towards  Canada  in  repressing  tliose  discontents  which  are  nourished  by  a  system  so 
checkered  as  that  which  was  applied  to  the  colonies  of  Britain  is  well  unfolded  in  the 
speech  (preserved  by  Thucydides,  Book  I.)  of  the  Athenian  ambassador  at  Sparta. 


CHAP.  HI]       COLLISIONS  OF  THE  FRENCH  AND  ENGLISH.  225 

ning  and  chicanery,  to  perplex  the  discussion,  and  indefinitely  to  protract  its 
issue.  This  policy  the  French  were  fully  prepared  to  pursue  ;  and,  in 
unison  with  it,  they  pushed  with  redoubled  vigor  their  system  of  territorial 
encroachment.  Even  previous  to  the  appointment  of  commissaries  on  either 
side,  and  very  soon  after  the  conclusion  of  the  peace,  they  attempted  to 
make  an  establishment  in  Tobago  ;  but,  warned  by  the  violent  expression 
of  indignation  which  was  provoked  from  the  merchants  of  Britain  by  this 
measure,  they  receded  from  a  pretension  which  seemed  likely  too  soon  to 
precipitate  matters  to  an  extremity,  and,  on  the  first  complaint  of  the  British 
government,  consented  to  abandon  the  undertaking.  Their  conduct  on  this 
occasion,  which  admits  of  no  cavil  or  disguise,  justifies  a  presumption  very 
unfavorable  to  their  good  faith  in  the  other  contemporary  collisions  and 
disputes,  of  which  the  merits,  whether  by  artifice  or  accident,  have  been 
involved  in  greater  doubt  and  obscurity.  Eagerly  resuming*  possession 
of  Cape  Breton,  restored  to  them  by  the  treaty  of  peace,  the  French 
speedily  perceived  that  some  of  the  advantages  which  they  might  hope  to 
derive  from  this  possession  were  likely  to  be  counteracted  by  the  establish- 
ment of  the  colonists  despatched  from  Britain  under  Cornwallis  to  Nova 
Scotia  ;  and  though  they  had  no  pretence  for  disputing  the  legitimacy  of  this 
enterprise,  they  employed  the  most  active  endeavours  to  render  it  inef- 
fectual. Their  Indian  allies  attacked  the  English  settlements  in  Nova 
Scotia  ;  and,  in  the  commencement  of  the  year  1750,  a  band  of  two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  French  troops,  detached  by  the  governor  of  Canada,  and 
reinforced  by  Indian  auxiliaries,  took  possession  of  the  whole  tract  of  coun- 
try from  Chignecto,  along  the  north  side  of  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  to  Kennebec 
River,  which  they  declared  to  be  still  the  property  of  the  Most  Christian 
King,  and  to  which  they  invited  all  the  French  Neutrals,  as  they  were 
called,  to  repair  from  the  district  confessedly  ceded  to  Britain.  Various 
skirmishes  ensued  between  the  forces  of  Cornwalhs  and  the  French  and  In- 
dians ;  a  number  of  forts  were  built,  and  some  were  taken  and  destroyed  on 
both  sides  ;  but  the  French  continued  to  maintain  their  position  and  fortify 
their  interest.  Cornwallis  urgently  solicited  assistance  from  the  government 
of  Massachusetts,  and  would  probably  have  obtained  it,  but  for  the  absence 
of  the  popular  and  enterprising  Shirley,  who  had  repaired  to  Europe  in 
order  to  act  as  one  of  the  commissaries  of  Britain  in  the  approaching  discus- 
sions with  France.  Spencer  Phips,  the  heutenant-governor,  whose  influ- 
ence was  not  proportioned  to  his  merit,  recommended  an  expedition  to 
Nova  Scotia  ;  but  the  assembly  declared  that  their  own  province  was 
likely  to  need  all  its  forces  for  its  own  protection.  They  had  just  received 
intelligence  of  an  encroachment  on  the  territory  of  Massachusetts,  by  a 
settlement  which  the  French  were  reported  to  have  commenced  on  the 
river  Lechock,  about  five  leagues  eastward  of  Penobscot  ;  and  Clinton,  the 
governor  of  New  York,  had  communicated  to  them  the  alarming  tidings, 
that  the  French  authorities  in  Canada  were  diligently  endeavouring  to  se- 
duce the  Six  Nations  from  the  British  interest,  and  had  urged  the  New 
England  governments  to  unite  their  counsels  with  his,  in  opposition  to  these 
dangerous  intrigues.  Thus,  before  the  peace  announced  by  the  treaty  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle  was  fully  established,  the  French  engaged  in  measures 
which  plainly  tended  to  a  renewal  of  the  war. 

These  collisions  demonstrated  the  necessity  of  an  immediate  change  in  the 
relative  posture  of  the  two  nations,  and  hastened  the  appointment  of  the 

VOL.   II.  29 


226  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X 

commissaries,  whose  conferences  accordingly  commenced  at  Paris  in  the 
close  of  the  year  1750,  but,  as  rrwght  easily  have  been  foreseen,  produced 
only  increased  disagreement,  perplexity,  and  irritation.  Memorials  and 
documents  were  compiled  on  both  .sides,  till  they  attained  a  bulk  more  fitted 
to  confuse  than  elucidate  the  points  and  merits  of  the  controversy  ;  and 
not  the  slightest  approach  had  laeen  made  to  the  adjustment  of  any  one 
article  of  dispute,  when  the  negotiation  was  finally  abandoned  in  despair  of 
an  amicable  issue.  From  the  voluminous  length  of  the  discussion,  the  vari- 
ety and  intricacy  of  the  details  which  it  embraced,  and  the  opposite  views 
which  the  commissaries  entertained  of  the  state  of  facts  and  the  authority 
of  documents,  it  was  not  difficult  for  either  party,  in  its  report  of  the  pro- 
ceedings, to  fix  a  plausible  imputation  of  blame  upon  the  other  ;  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  a  controversy  which  issued  in  such  memorable  events  and 
signal  revolutions  of  empire  should  have  been  regarded  ever  since  through 
the  medium  of  the  strongest  national  prejudice  and  partiality.  Doubtless 
some  part,  and  probably  no  inconsiderable  part,  of  the  difficulties  by  which 
a  conventional  adjustment  of  the  pretensions  of  the  two  parties  was  ob- 
structed arose  from  the  conflicting  terms  of  titulary  writs  on  which  they 
respectively  reposed  a  fair  and  entire  reliance.  And,  indeed,  this  appears 
no  less  a  concession  due  to  candor  and  liberality,  than  a  conclusion  una- 
voidably suggested  by  the  nature  of  the  object  in  dispute,  which  was  a  vast 
extent  of  country  to  which  two  nations  preferred  claims  founded  on  grants 
and  charters  of  their  respective  monarchs,  who,  at  the  very  time  when  they 
executed  these  deeds,  were  ignorant  of  the  dimensions  and  boundaries  of 
the  region  which  they  pretended  to  describe  and  bestow.  It  was  impossible 
that  such  charters  should  not  frequently  clash  and  contradict  each  other  ; 
and  while  both  parties  referred  to  them,  reasoned  from  them,  and  accounted 
them  of  equal  force  and  validity,  an  amicable  adjustment  of  the  differences 
to  which  they  administered  support  was  rendered  a  matter  of  the  greatest 
difficulty.  Even  the  most  sincere  and  zealously  Christian  politicians  have 
accounted  themselves  exempted,  as  the  representatives  of  their  countrymen, 
from  the  obligations  of  generous  concession  and  magnanimous  forbearance, 
which,  as  individuals,  they  would  have  readily  acknowledged. 

We  have  remarked  various  disputes  that  were  engendered  between  the 
several  English  provinces  by  the  vague  and  inconsistent  definitions  of  territo- 
ry contained  in  their  charters  ;  and  when  such  collisions  occurred  between 
members  of  the  same  common  empire,  it  is  not' wonderful  that  they  sprung 
up  and  were  maintained  with  greater  keenness  and  obstinacy  between  two 
nations  long  accustomed  to  regard  each  other  with  sentiments  of  rivalry  and 
dislike.  Yet,  with  the  amplest  allowance  for  these  considerations,  we  should 
postpone  substantial  truth  to  fanciful  candor  and  affected  impartiality,  iij 
hesitating  to  pronounce  that  the  obstructions  to  an  amicable  issue  of  the 
controversy  were  not  only  magnified,  but  rendered  absolutely  insuperable, 
by  the  disregard  of  honor,  good  faith,  and  moderation,  with  which  the  pre- 
tensions of  France  were  advocated.  The  policy  which  had  been  exempli- 
fied by  the  French  colonists  in  America  was  now  espoused  and  defended 
by  the  French  politicians  in  Europe.  Not  only  did  the  commissaries  on  be- 
half of  France  reject  the  authority  of  maps  which  had  been  published  and 
revised  by  the  ministers  of  their  own  country, ^  but  they  refused  to  abide  by 

'  "  M.  Bellin,"  says  W.  Smith,  "  published  a  new  set  of  maps  ;  the  first  plate  being  thought 
too  favorable  to  our  claims.     Shirley  took  occasion  to  speak  of  this  alteration  to  Bellin  at 


CHAP.  III.]     FRENCH  PRETENSIONS  IN  THE  OHIO  VALLEY.  227 

the  definition  of  the  boundaries  of  Nova  Scotia  for  which  the  French  cab- 
inet formerly  contended,  when  the  region  designated  by  this  name  was  ac- 
knowledged to  form  a  part  of  the  dominion  of  France.^  Governer  Shirley, 
one  of  the  British  commissaries,  during  the  progress  of  the  negotiation, 
committed  the  folly  of  marrying,  at  the  age  of  sixty,  a  yoimg  and  lovely 
French  girl,  the  daughter  of  his  landlord  at  Paris,  —  a  circumstance  which 
exposed  him  to  ridicule  in  England,  and  aroused  in  America  some  angry 
suspicions  of  his  defection  to  the  interests,  or,  at  least,  of  his  relaxed  op- 
position to  the  pretensions  of  France.  But  the  injustice  of  these  suspicions 
was  demonstrated  on  his  return  to  Massachusetts  [1753],  when  he  plainly 
showed  that  neither  the  endearments  of  conjugal  affection  nor  the  arts  of  the 
French  commissaries  had  been  able  to  bias  his  sentiments  or  baffle  his  pene- 
tration ;  and  openly  proclaimed  that  an  accommodation  with  France  was 
hopeless,  that  only  martial  arbitrament  could  now  terminate  the  controversy, 
and  that  the  interest  of  Britain  demanded  that  this  inevitable  appeal  should 
be  no  longer  deferred.^ 

Meanwhile,  in  addition  to  the  previous  controversies  and  the  increasing 
hopelessness  of  a  peaceful  adjustment  of  them,  new  subjects  of  dispute  arose 
between  the  two  nations.  The  extension  of  the  Virginian  settlements  to  the 
banks  of  the  river  Ohio,  and  especially  the  occupation  of  a  part  of  this  re- 
gion by  the  English  Ohio  Company,  were  calculated  to  bring  to  a  decisive 
test  the  long  prevalent  suspicion  of  the  purpose  of  the  French  to  render  the 
line  of  forts  which  they .  had  been  erecting  subservient  not  merely  to  the 
communication  between  their  own  colonies,  but  to  the  confinement  of  the 
British  settlements,  and  the  obstruction  of  their  advances  into  the  interior 
of  the  country.  Nor  did  the  French  hesitate  a  moment  to  afford  une- 
quivocal proof  of  their  entire  purpose,  and  to  resist  the  first  attempt  of  their 
rivals  to  overleap  the  boundaries  within  which  they  were  resolved  to  inclose 
them.  A  menace  of  the  governor  of  Canada,  that  he  would  treat  as  ene- 
mies any  of  the  subjects  of  Britain  who  should  settle  near  the  Ohio,  or 
presume  even  to  trade  with  the  Indian  inhabitants  of  this  region,  having 
been  disregarded,  was  promptly  enforced  by  the  seizure  of  a  number  of  Brit- 
ish traders,  who  were  carried  as  prisoners  to  a  fort  which  the  French  were 
erecting  at  Presque  Isle,  on  Lake  Erie.  Other  British  traders,  and  servants 
of  the  Ohio  Company,  retreated  in  alarm  from  the  stations  which  they  had 
begun  to  occupy  ;  and  the  French,  perceiving  that  the  critical  juncture  was 
come,  when  their  ambitious  system  of  policy,  now  plainly  disclosed,  must  be 
either  defended  by  force  or  completely  abandoned,  proceeded  with  aug- 
mented diligence  to  supply  whatever  was  yet  defective  in  its  subsidiary 
arrangements  and  preparations.  A  fort  was  built  at  Niagara,  within  the  do- 
minions of  the  Indian  allies  of  Britain  ;  and,  in  addition  to  the  fort  on  Lake 
Erie,  two  others  were  built  at  commanding  positions  on  the  banks  of  the 

Paris,  and  informed  him  that  one  hundred  copies  of  his  first  maps  were  dispersed  in  London  ; 
upon  which  he  discovered  some  surprise ;  but,  instead  of  urging  any  thing  in  support  of  the 
variation  in  liis  new  draft,  said,  smiling,  We  in  France  must  follow  the  commands  of  the  kiv^." 

1  "The  conferences,"  says  Smollett,  " were  rendered  abortive  by  every  art  of  cavilling, 
chicanery,  and  procrastination,  which  the  French  commissioners  opposed  to  the  justice  and 
perspicuity  of  the  English  claims.  They  not  only  misinterpreted  treaties,  though  expressed 
with  the  utmost  precision,  and  perplexed  the  conferences  with  difficulties  and  matter  foreign 
to  the  subject,  but  they  carried  the  finesse  of  perfidy  so  far,  as  to  produce  false  charts  and  maps 
of  the  country,  in  which  the  rivers  and  boundaries  were  misplaced  and  misrepresented." 

2  Smollett.  Hewit.  VV.  Smith.  Wynne.  Trumbull.  Burk.  Hutchinson.  Minot. 
Belknap.  Yet  this  ye.ir  the  British  parliament,  in^their  address  to  the  king,  with  strange  de- 
lusion or  insincerity,  congratulated  him  on  the  manifest  stability  of  the  peace. 


228  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

Ohio.  Thus,  at  length,  the  French  succeeded  in  completing  their  long- 
projected  communication  between  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  and  the 
river  St.  Lawrence. 

The  complaints  against  these  measures  transmitted  from  America  to 
Britain,  concurring  with  the  failure  of  the  negotiations  at  Paris,  and  seconded 
by  the  influence  and  activity  of  the  British  merchants  who  were  interested 
in  the  scheme  of  the  Ohio  Company,  excited  more  attention  in  the  parent 
state  than  colonial  wrongs  and  quarrels  had  usually  obtained  ;  and  a  memori- 
al was  accordingly  presented  this  year  by  Lord  Albemarle,  the  British  am- 
bassador to  the  court  of  France,  requiring,  in  peremptory  terms,  that  satis- 
faction should  be  aftbrded  to  the  injured  subjects  of  Britain  ;  that  the  fort 
erected  at  Niagara  shodld  be  evacuated  and  destroyed  ;  and  that  positive 
orders  should  be  issued  to  the  French  commanders  in  America  to  desist 
from  farther  encroachments  and  attacks  upon  the  British  settlements  and 
colonists.  The  French  court,  not  yet  prepared  for  an  open  rupture,  or  at 
least  willing  to  defer  it  as  long  as  possible,  returned  to  this  application  an 
answer,  of  which  the  tone  was  compliant,  though  the  terms  were  evasive. 
Some  Englishmen,  who  had  been  sent  prisoners  from  America  to  France, 
were  instantly  set  at  liberty  ;  and  assurances  were  given  of  the  transmission 
of  such  orders  to  the  governor  of  Canada  as  would  infallibly  prevent  all 
future  cause  of  complaint.  These  assurances  produced  the  effect  of  amus- 
ing the  British  government  a  litde  longer  ;  but,  although  public  orders  in 
conformity  with  them  were  actually  sent  to  America,  it  is  probable  that  they 
were  nullified  by  private  instructions  ;  for  they  were  violated  without  scruple 
by  the  French  provincial  authorities.  Jonquiere,  the  governor  of  Canada, 
not  only  continued  to  multiply  and  strengthen  the  fortifications  along  the 
line  which  his  countrymen  now  pretended  right  to  regard  as  the  limit  of  the 
English  territory,  but  openly  encouraged  the  Indians,  and  permitted  the 
French,  to  attack  the  English  settlers  and  traders,  both  in  Nova  Scotia  and 
on  the  Ohio.  The  pretensions  of  France  to  withstand  the  British  settle- 
ments on  the  Ohio  indicated  such  a  devouring  ambition,  and  disclosed  a 
policy  so  manifestly  calculated  to  arrest  the  growth  and  diminish  the  security 
of  the  colonial  dominions  of  Britain,  that  they  would  probably  have  provoked 
more  general  and  efficient  opposition  in  America,  but  for  the  indiscretion 
and  rapacity  which  we  have  already  remarked  in  the  conduct  of  the  Ohio 
Company.  Hamilton,  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  strongly  represented 
to  the  assembly  of  this  province  the  expediency  of  erecting  forts  as  well 
as  barter-houses  for  the  use  of  the  Pennsylvanian  traders  with  the  Indians 
on  the  Ohio  ;  but  though  a  majority  of  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly  relished 
the  proposal  and  passed  a  resolution  in  conformity  with  it,  yet  the  interests 
of  individuals,  who  regarded  the  monopoly  of  the  Ohio  Company  with  jeal- 
ous aversion,  prevailed  so  far,  as  to  prevent  either  this,  or  any  other  de- 
fensive measure,  from  being  carried  into  execution.^ 

An  attempt,  which  was  made  in  the  same  year,  by  the  governor  of  Vir- 
ginia, to  resist  the  encroachments  of  France,  led  to  the  first  appearance  of 
the  illustrious  George  Washington  on  the  scene  of  American  affairs.  It 
is  interesting  to  mark  the  earliest  dawn  of  a  career  of  such  exalted  and  un- 
sullied glory.  Robert  Dinwiddie,  who  now  arrived  in  Virginia  with  the  ap- 
pointment of  governor  of  this  province,  w^as  quickly  made  sensible  of  the 
critical  state  that  the  relations  between  the  French  and  English  had  attained 
^Smollett!    Wynnev     Bur£  '■  ~ 


CHAP.  HI.]        MISSION  OF  WASHINGTON  TO  THE  FRENCH.  229 

on  its  frontiers.  Perceiving  the  necessity  of  instant  and  resolute  interfer- 
ence in  behalf  of  his  countrymen  who  were  expelled  from  their  settlements, 
and  desirous  to  gain  more  distinct  information  with  regard  to  the  region 
which  was  the  subject  of  these  conflicting  pretensions,  he  was  induced  to 
commit  this  important  task,  which  the  approach  of  a  rigorous  winter  render- 
ed still  more  arduous,  to  Washington,  a  young  Virginian  planter,  only  twen- 
ty-one years  of  age.  This  remarkable  youth  had  conceived  a  strong  predi- 
lection for  the  British  naval  service,  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  was  prevented 
only  by  the  entreaties  of  his  mother  from  accepting  the  situation,  which 
was  obtained  for  him,  of  midshipman  in  an  English  ship  of  war.  He  was 
already  distinguished  as  a  surveyor  and  civil  engineer  in  his  native  province, 
and  held  the  rank  of  major  as  well  as  the  office  of  adjutant-general  of  its 
mihtia.  Undaunted  by  the  toil  and  danger  of  a  winter  journey,  of  which 
two  hundred  miles  lay  through  a  trackless  desert  inhabited  by  Indians,  some 
of  whom  were  open  enemies  and  others  doubtful  friends,  the  youthful  envoy 
cheerfully  undertook  the  mission  ;  and,  with  a  single  attendant,  surmounted 
all  the  peril  and  foulness  of  the  way,  and  succeeded  in  penetrating  to  a 
French  fort  erected  on  the  river  Le  Bmuf^  which  falls  into  the  Ohio.  To 
the  commander  of  this  fort  he  carried  a  letter  from  Governor  Dinwiddle, 
requiring  the  evacuation  of  the  place,  and  a  relinquishment  of  the  other  re- 
cent encroachments  on  the  British  dominion  in  the  same  quarter.  St.  Pierre, 
the  French  commandant  on  the  Ohio,  returned  for  answer  to  this  apphca- 
tion,  that  it  belonged  not  to  him  to  arbitrate  the  conflicting  claims  of  France 
and  England,  and  that  he  had  acted  and  must  still  continue  to  act  in  implicit 
obedience  to  the  directions  of  the  governor  of  Canada.  Washington  per- 
formed the  duties  of  his  mission  with  vigor  and  ability  ;  and  after  a  painful 
and  laborious  expedition,  which  occupied  more  than  two  months,  regained 
in  safety  the  capital  of  Virginia.  [January  16,  1754.]  A  journal,  in  which 
he  recorded  the  particulars  of  his  travel  and  the  fruits  of  his  observation, 
was  published  soon  after,  and  impressed  his  countrymen  with  a  high  respect 
for  the  solidity  of  his  judgment,  and  the  calm,  determined  fortitude  of  his 
character. 

Governor  Dinwiddle,  finding  that  nothing  was  to  be  gained  by  amicable 
negotiation,  projected  the  construction  of  forts  at  various  places  which  had 
been  surveyed  and  selected  by  Washington  ;  and  the  assembly  agreeing  to 
defray  the  expense  of  these  operations,  materials  were  procured  and  the  works 
commenced  without  delay.  Unfortunately,  no  means  were  taken  to  gain  the 
consent  of  the  natives  to  this  measure,  which  accordingly  served  only  to 
increase  the  jealousy  and  malevolence  with  which  they  had  begun  to  regard 
the  English.  A  regiment  was  raised  at  the  same  time  by  the  Virginian  gov- 
ernment, and  Washington,  who  was  its  lieutenant-colonel,  marched  with  two 
companies,  in  advance  of  the  main  body,  to  the  Great  Meadows,  situated 
within  the  disputed  territory.  [April,  1754.]  Here  he  learned  from  some 
friendly  Indians,  that  the  French,  with  a  force  of  six  hundred  men  and  eigh- 
teen pieces  of  cannon,  having  attacked  and  destroyed  a  fort  which  the  Vir- 
ginians had  been  erecting,  were  themselves  engaged  in  completing  another 
fort  at  the  confluence  of  the  Alleghany  and  Monongahela,  one  of  the  spots 
which  was  especially  recommended  in  his  own  journal  to  the  occupation 
of  his  countrymen  ;  and  that  a  detachment  of  French  troops  from  this  place 
was  then  on  its  march  towards  the  Great  Meadows,  and  had  encamped  for 
the  night  in  the  bosom  of  a  retired  valley  at  a  short  distance.     Convinced 

T 


230  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

that  this  was  a  hostile  movement,  Washington  availed  himself  of  the  prof- 
fered guidance  of  the  Indians,  and,  advancing  with  his  troops  on  a  dark  and 
rainy  night,  effectually  surprised  the  French  encampment.  The  Virginians, 
rousing  the  enemy  by  a  sudden  discharge  of  firearms,  completely  discon- 
certed them  by  rushing  forward  to  close  attack,  and  compelled  them  instant- 
ly to  surrender.  1 

Washington,  after  this  success,  erected  at  the  Great  Meadows  a  small 
stockade  fort,  which  received  the  name  of  Fort  Necessity,  and  then  ad- 
vanced with  his  troops,  which,  by  the  accession  of  two  companies,  one  from 
New  York  and  the  other  from  North  Carolina,  now  amounted  to  four  hun- 
dred men,  towards  the  new  French  fort  called  Duquesne,^  with  the  inten- 
tion of  dislodging  the  enemy.  But  learning  on  his  march  that  the  French 
had  been  reinforced  and  were  approaching  with  a  great  body  of  Indian 
auxiharies  to  attack  him,  he  retreated  to  Fort  Necessity,  and  endeavoured 
to  strengthen  its  defences  by  the  construction  of  a  ditch  around  the  stockade. 
Before  this  operation  was  completed,  the  fort  was  attacked,  on  the  fourth 
of  July,  by  a  very  superior  force,  under  the  command  of  De  Villiers.  The 
garrison  made  a  vigorous  defence  from  ten  in  the  morning  till  a  late  hour 
at  night,  when  De  Villiers  having  sounded  a  parley  and  tendered  a  capitu- 
lation, they  at  first  refused,  but  finally  consented,  to  surrender,  or,  more 
properly  speaking,  to  evacuate  the  fort,  on  condition  that  they  should  be 
allowed  to  march  out  with  the  honors  of  war,  to  retain  their  arms  and  bag- 
gage, and  to  retire  without  molestation  into  the  inhabited  parts  of  Virginia, 
—  and  that  the  French  themselves,  instead  of  advancing  farther  at  present, 
or  even  retaining  the  evacuated  fort,  should  retreat  to  their  previous  station 
at  Monongahela.  Fifty-eight  of  the  Virginians,  and  two  hundred  of  the 
French,  were  killed  and  wounded  in  the  encounter.  Such  a  capitulation 
was  by  no  means  calculated  either  to  damp  the  spirit  of  the  Virginians  or 
to  depress  the  reputation  of  their  commander.  It  was  violated,  however, 
with  unscrupulous  barbarity  by  the  Indians  who  were  united  to  the  forces  of 
De  Villiers,  and  who,  hovering  round  the  Virginians  during  the  whole  of 
their  retreat,  harassed  them  with  frequent  attacks,  and  killed  and  wounded 
a  considerable  number  of  them.  At  the  close  of  this  unsuccessful  expedi- 
tion, the  Virginian  assembly,  with  equal  justice  and  magnanimity,  expressed 
by  a  vote  of  thanks  its  approbation  of  the  conduct  of  Washington  and  his 
troops.^ 

Though  the  British  ministers  had  obtained  from  the  parliament,  in  the 
preceding  year,  a  felicitation  to  the  king  on  the  pretended  stability  of  peace, 
it  was  impossible  that  they  could  disguise  from  themselves  that  the  progress 
of  affairs  ever  since  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  tended  manifestly  to  a 
rupture  with  France,  and  that  the  two  nations  were  already  on  the  brink 
of  another  war.  The  conferences  at  Paris  had  proved  abortive,  and  the 
disputes  which  were  there  ineffectually  discussed  had  not  only  multiphed  in 
the  interval,  but  broken  forth  into  actual  hostihties  in  America.    In  the  East 

'  Some  French  writers  declared  that  the  conduct  of  Washington,  on  this  occasion,  betrayed 
the  most  savage  barbarity  ;  and  taxed  him  personally  with  acts  of  wanton  and  unmanly  blood- 
shed. These  charges,  repeated  in  various  publications,  rendered  Washington  very  odious  to 
the  French,  who  afterwards,  however,  forgot  or  disbelieved  them,  when  the  War  of  Independ- 
ence rendered  Washington  their  ally. 

2  Pittsburg,  in  Pennsylvania,  stands  upon  the  ground  that  was  formerly  occupied  by  Fort 
Duquesne. 

3  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington.  Burk.  Minot.  Trumbull.  Rogers's  American  Bio- 
graphical Dictionary. 


CHAP.  Ill]  INDECISION  OF  THE  BRITISH  MINISTRY.  231 

Indies,  also,  the  colonial  empire  of  Britain  was  disturbed  and  invaded  by 
the  ambition  and  intrigues  of  the  French  court. ^  That,  in  such  circum- 
stances, a  declaration  of  war  should  have  been  retarded,  and  the  French 
permitted  to  extend  and  mature  their  system  of  encroachment,  seems  to 
have  arisen  not  from  blindness  or  credulity  on  the  part  of  the  British  minis- 
ters, but  from  the  perplexity  and  irresolution  which  they  felt  with  regard  to 
the  manner  of  conducting  hostilities  in  America,  and  the  extent  to  which 
these  hostilities  might,  consistently  with  prudence,  be  carried.  The  French 
court  entertained  simpler  views  with  regard  to  America,  and  was  far  more 
bent  upon  conquest  in  that  quarter  than  the  English  ;  and  for  this  reason, 
that  the  liberty  that  prevailed  in  the  English  settlements  was  a  dangerous 
neighbour  to  the  French  colonial  empire,  whereas  the  vicinity  of  the  French 
power  was  a  circumstance  favorable  to  the  continued  ascendency  of  Britain 
over  her  colonies.  Whether  these  colonies  should  be  defended  and  their 
invaders  encountered  by  British  troops,  or  by  their  own  forces  ;  in  what 
manner  their  counsels  and  political  organization  should  be  united,  in  order 
to  give  due  efficacy  to  the  latter  mode  of  defence,  without  rendering  their 
combined  vigor  dangerous  to  the  parent  state  ;  and  how  far  it  would  be 
expedient  to  push,  or  possible  to  pause  in,  the  career  of  successful  warfare 
conducted  in  either  of  these  ways,  —  were  questions,  which  the  British  min- 
isters, distracted  between  their  jealousy  of  the  colonists  and  their  resentment 
against  the  enemy,  revolved  with  much  hesitation  and  embarrassment. 
Eventually,  their  indecision,  concurring  with  the  immoderate  ambition  of 
France,  forced  upon  them  the  very  extremity  to  which  they  were  most 
averse,  and  which,  by  any  reasonable  sacrifice,  they  would  doubtless  have 
willingly  avoided.  Had  they  vigorously  resisted  the  French  encroachments 
at  the  outset,  and  despatched  a  force  sufficient  to  check  them  and  to  inspire 
the  enemy  with  apprehensions  of  still  more  signal  retribution,  a  peace  might, 
perhaps,  have  been  concluded,  which  would  have  retained  America  for  a 
while  longer  under  the  divided  empire  of  France  and  England.  But  they 
hesitated  to  act,  and  delayed  to  act  with  vigor,  till  the  quarrel,  signalized 
by  victories  and  triumphs  of  the  French  and  disgraces  and  disasters  of  the 
English,  acquired  in  the  eyes  of  both  nations  an  importance  far  beyond 
what  it  had  originally  possessed,  and  conducted  England,  in  particular,  to  a 
point  at  which  her  dignity  and  reputation  seemed  to  be  staked  on  the  issue  of 
a  decisive  contest  for  the  sole  dominion  of  North  America. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  this  year,  and  before  the  expedition  from  Virginia 
to  the  Great  Meadows,  the  British  ministers  signified  to  the  provincial  gov- 
ernments the  desire  of  the  king  that  they  should  oppose  the  French  en- 
croachments by  force  of  arms  ;  together  with  a  recommendation  from  his 
Majesty  that  they  should  send  delegates  to  a  general  convention  at  Albany, 
both  in  order  to  form  a  league  with  the  Six  Nations,  and  to  concert  among 
themselves  a  plan  of  united  operations  and  defence  against  the  common  enemy. 
Seven  of  the  colonies,  consisting  of  Maryland,  New  York,  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  New  England  States,  agreed  to  comply  with  this  recommendation  ;* 
and  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  at  the  same  time  [April  10,  1754]  pre- 
sented an  address  to  Governor  Shirley,  desiring  him  "to  pray  his  Majesty 

'  Smollett.  ~  "  " 

*  Virginia  and  New  Jersey,  though  specially  named  in  the  royal  invitation,  sent  no  dele- 
gates to  the  convention.  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  the  Carolmas,  and  Georgia  received 
no  direct  invitation  from  the  crown.  The  other  colonies  were  instructed  to  demand  the  co- 
operation of  these  States ;  but  their  application  prevailed  only  with  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island. 


232  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

that  affairs  which  relate  to  the  Six  Nations  and  their  aUies  may  be  put  under 
such  general  direction  as  his  Majesty  shall  judge  proper  ;  and  that  the  sev- 
eral governments  may  be  obliged  to  bear  their  proportions  of  defending  his 
Majesty's  territories  against  the  encroachments  of  the  French  and  the  rav- 
ages and  incursions  of  the  Indians."  Shirley,  sensible  probably  of  the  jeal- 
ousy which  any  measure  founded  on  this  suggestion  would  provoke  among 
the  colonists  in  general,  unless  it  originated  with  themselves,  proposed  to 
the  governors  of  the  several  colonies,  that  the  delegates  elected  to  the  con- 
vention should  be  authorized  by  their  constituents  to  deliberate  on  a  plan  of 
united  operation  of  all  the  States  for  their  common  safety  and  defence.  In- 
structions to  this  effect  w^ere  accordingly  communicated  to  the  delegates, 
who,  assembling  at  Albany  in  the  month  of  June,  were  met  by  a  numerous 
deputation  from  the  tribes  of  the  Six  Nations.  After  an  explanatory  and 
pacific  treaty  with  the  Indians,  who  very  willingly  accepted  the  presents 
that  were  tendered  to  them,  but  yet  plainly  betrayed  by  their  negligent  de- 
meanour the  success  with  which  the  French  had  intrigued  to  weaken  their 
regards  for  the  English,  —  the  convention  undertook  the  more  important 
subject  which  was  committed  to  its  deliberations  ;  and  it  was  unanimously 
resolved  that  a  union  of  the  colonies  was  essential  to  the  general  safety,  and 
ought  to  be  forthwith  accomplished.  But  here  the  unanimity  of  the  dele- 
gates ended.  Probably  all  the  inhabitants  of  all  the  colonies  would  have 
united  in  approving  the  foregoing  resolution.  The  difficulty,  or  rather  the 
impossibihty,  was  to  devise  a  plan  for  carrying  it  into  execution,  which 
would  be  satisfactory  at  once  to  the  colonists  and  the  parent  state. 

Among  various  individuals  considerable  for  their  talents  and  reputation 
who  were  assembled  in  this  convention,^  the  most  popular  and  remarkable 
person  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  one  of  the  delegates  from  Pennsylvania. 
This  great  man,  who  now  sustained  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  most  impor- 
tant national  council  that  had  ever  been  convoked  in  North  America,  has 
already  been  introduced  (in  the  two  preceding  chapters)  to  our  attention, 
first,  as  a  provincial  patriot  and  philosopher,  and  afterwards  as  an  enterpris- 
ing and  successful  votary  of  science.  In  the  year  1736,  which  was  the 
thirtieth  year  of  his  age,  a  matter  nowise  extraordinary  in  its  nature  gave 
occasion  to  the  earliest  display  of  his  genius  and  capacity  as  a  politician. 
He  had  previously  established  a  club  or  society  in  Philadelphia,  of  which 
the  associates  were  limited  in  number  to  twelve,  and  of  which  the  main 
object  was  to  promote  the  exercise  and  efficacy  of  patriotic,  philosophic, 
and  republican  virtue.  By  a  fundamental  rule  of  this  institution,  which  re- 
ceived the  name  of  The  Junto,  its  existence  and  transactions  were  kept  se- 
cret from  the  public,  in  order  to  prevent  apphcations  for  admission  from 
persons  whose  character  and  sentiments  might  render  them  unmeet  associ- 
ates, and  whose  influence  and  connections  might  at  the  same  time  make  it 
painful  and  inconvenient  to  reject  them.  Some  of  the  members  having  pro- 
posed to  render  the  society  more  numerous  by  introducing  their  friends  into 
it,  —  "I  was  one  of  those,"  says  Franklin,  "  who  were  against  any  addition 
to  our  number  ;  and  instead  of  it,  I  made  in  writing  a  proposal  that  every 
member  separately  should  endeavour  to  form  a  subordinate  club  with  the 
same  rules,  but  without  any  hint  or  information  of  its  connection  with  the 
Junto.     The  advantages  proposed  were  the  improvement  of  so  many  more 

'  One  of  the  delegates  from  Massachusetts  was  Thomas  Hutchinson,  afterwards  the  gov- 
ernor and  historian  of  this  province.  From  Connecticut  were  sent  William  Pitkin,  Roger 
Wolcott,  and  Elisha  Williams. 


CHAP.  Ill]  THE  ALBANY  PLAN  OF  UNION.  233 

young  citizens  by  the  use  of  our  institutions  ;  our  better  acquaintance  with 
the  general  sentiments  of  the  inhabitants  on  any  occasion,  as  the  Junto  mem- 
ber might  propose  what  queries  we  should  desire,  and  was  to  report  to  the 
Junto  what  passed  m  his  separate  club  ;  the  promotion  of  our  particular  in- 
terests in  business  by  more  extensive  recommendation  ;  and  the  increase 
of  our  influence  in  public  affairs,  and  our  power  of  doing  good,  by  spreading 
through  the  several  clubs  the  sentiments  of  the  Junto.  Five  or  six  clubs 
were  thus  completed,  which  were  called  by  different  names,  as  the  Vine, 
the  Union,  the  Band,  &c.  :  they  were  useful  to  themselves,  and  afforded 
us  a  good  deal  of  amusement,  information,  and  instruction,  besides  answer- 
ing, in  a  considerable  degree,  our  views  of  influencing  the  public  on  partic- 
ular occasions." 

Here  we  behold  the  theory  and  primitive  model  of  that  engine  of  party 
purpose  and  power  which  was  afterwards  employed  with  tremendous  efficacy 
by  the  Jacobin  Club  of  Paris  during  the  earlier  stages  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution. In  the  year  1753,  Franklin,  who  for  some  time  had  held  a  subor- 
dinate appointment  in  the  post-office,  was  promoted  to  the  function  of  post- 
master-general of  America,  —  a  situation  which  he  retained  till  about  twenty 
years  after,  when  he  was  displaced  by  the  British  court.  Of  humble  par- 
entage and  narrow  fortune,  in  a  young  and  dependent  commonwealth,  un- 
friended by  the  gale  of  patronage,  the  captivation  of  brilliant  qualities,  or  the 
opportunities  afforded  by  revolutionary  change,  self-educated  and  self-aided, 
this  man  achieved  at  once  the  highest  civic  preeminence  and  the  most  splen- 
did and  imperishable  renown.  At  the  period  at  which  we  have  now  arrived, 
he  had  already  distinguished  himself  by  grand  discoveries  in  science  and  by 
useful  projects  in  economics,  and  had  been  for  a  number  of  years  a  member 
of  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  where  he  spoke  rarely,  but  sententiously, 
concisely,  and  with  convincing  force  and  propriety,  when  the  occasion  was 
at  length  presented  of  exhibiting  his  genius  on  a  wider  theatre.  It  was  now 
that  he  proposed  to  his  fellow-delegates  in  the  Albany  convention  that  mem- 
orable scheme  of  a  federal  league  between  the  American  colonies,  which  has 
received  the  name  of  The  Albany  Plan  of  Union,  and  which,  though  little 
more  than  the  transcript  of  a  design  suggested  by  another  pohtician  about 
thirteen  years  before,^  has  been  celebrated  with  far  higher  praise  than  his 
more  ingenious  and  original  idea  of  a  ramification  of  clubs  in  Pennsylvania 
has  attracted.  This  was  the  purport  of  the  plan  which  he  suggested.  Ap- 
plication was  to  be  made  for  an  act  of  parhament  to  establish  in  the  colo- 
nies a  general  government,  to  be  administered  by  a  president  appointed  by 
the  crown,  and  by  a  grand  council,  consisting  of  members  chosen  by  the 
several  provincial  assemblies,  the  number  of  representatives  from  each  prov- 
ince being  directly  proportioned  to  the  amount  of  its  contributions  to  the 
general  treasury,  —  with  this  restriction,  however,  that  no  colony  should 
have  more  than  seven,  or  fewer  than  two  representatives.^  The  whole 
executive  authority  of  the  general  government  was  committed  to  the  presi- 
dent.    The  power  of  legislation  was  lodged  jointly  in  the  grand  council  and 

'  See  account  of  Dr.  Coxe's  project,  ante^  Chap.  II. 

*  It  was  proposed  that  the  assemblies  should  choose  members  for  the  grand  council  in  the 
following  proportion  :  — 


Massachusetts       ...  7 

New  Hampshire  ...  2 

Connecticut      ....  5 

Rhode  Island  ....  2 


New  York        ....  4 

New  Jersey      ....  3 

Pennsylvania  ....  6 

Maryland 4 


Virginia       7 

North  Carolina     ...    4 

South  Carolina     ...    4 

48 


VOL.    II.  30  T  * 


234  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

president ;  the  consent  of  the  latter  functionary  being  requisite  to  the  ad- 
vancement of  bills  into  laws.  The  functions  and  prerogatives  of  the  general 
government  were,  to  declare  war  and  make  peace  ;  to  conclude  treaties 
with  the  Indian  nations  ;  to  regulate  trade  with  them,  and  to  make  purchase 
of  vacant  lands  from  them,  either  in  the  name  of  the  crown  or  of  the  Union  ; 
10  settle  new  colonies,  and  to  exercise  legislative  authority  over  them  until 
jhey  should  be  erected  into  separate  provincial  governments  ;  and  to  raise 
troops,  build  forts,  fit  out  armed  vessels,  and  pursue  all  other  measures  requi- 
site for  the  general  defence.  To  defray  the  expenses  of  this  establishment 
and  its  various  operations,  the  president  and  grand  council  were  empowered 
to  frame  laws  enacting  such  duties,  imposts,  and  taxes,  as  they  might  deem 
at  once  necessary  and  least  burdensome  to  the  people.  These  legislative 
ordinances  were  to  be  transmitted  to  England  for  the  approbation  of  the 
king  ;  and  unless  disallowed  within  three  years  after  their  enactment,  they 
were  to  remain  in  force.  All  officers  in  the  naval  and  military  service  of 
the  United  Colonies  were  to  be  nominated  by  the  president,  and  approved 
by  the  council  ;  civil  officers  were  to  be  nominated  by  the  council,  and 
approved  by  the  president. 

This  plan,  though  recommended  to  the  approbation  of  a  majority  of  the 
convention,  both  by  its  own  merits  and  by  the  reputation,  talent,  and  ad- 
dress of  the  author,^  was  opposed  with  warm  and  inflexible  determination 
by  the  delegates  of  Connecticut,  who  objected  to  the  authority  conferred 
on  the  president,  and  to  the  power  of  general  taxation  [July  4,  1754];  and 
insisted  that  a  government  of  this  description  would  prove  dangerous  in  the 
highest  degree  to  the  liberties  of  the  colonists,  and  utterly  unfit  to  conduct 
with  vigor  or  economy  a  defensive  war  along  their  extended  frontier.  Of 
all  the  members  of  the  convention,  these  delegates  alone  had  the  satisfac- 
tion to  find  that  their  sentiments  were  in  unison  with  those  of  their  constit- 
uents. No  sooner  was  the  plan  communicated  to  the  various  provincial  as- 
semblies, than  it  was  condemned  and  rejected  by  every  one  of  them  ;  ^  and 
resolutions  were  formed  to  oppose  the  expected  attempts  of  the  British 
court  to  obtain  an  act  of  parliament  for  carrying  it  into  efl^ect.  But  the 
apprehensions  of  the  colonists  on  this  score  Were  groundless  ;  for,  by  a  sin- 
gular coincidence,  the  plan  proved  as  unacceptable  to  the  ministers  of  the 
crown  as  to  themselves.  In  America  it  was  accounted  too  favorable  to  the 
royal  prerogative  ;  in  England  it  was,  contrariwise,  censured  as  savoring 
too  strongly  of  depiocracy,  and  conceding  too  much  power  to  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people.  Although  thus  rejected  by  all  parties,  the  project 
of  Franklin  was  attended  with  important  consequences  in  America.  The 
discussion  of  it  served  to  familiarize  the  idea  of  a  federal  league,  a  general 
government,  an  American  army ;  and  prepared  the  minds  of  the  people  for 
the  very  form  of  confederacy  w^hich  was  afterwards  resorted  to  in  their  rev- 
olutionary contest  with  Britain.^  A  plan  of  a  diiFerent  complexion  from 
Franklin's  was  conceived  by  the  British  cabinet,  and  communicated,  among 
others,  to  Governor  Shirley  of  Massachusetts,  who,  though  a  popular  mag- 

'  Though  the  plan  was  confessedly  and  solel}r  the  composition  of  Franklin,  a  committee  of 
the  convention  had  been  appointed  to  digest  it.  This  co;nmittee  consisted  of  Hutchinson, 
of  Massachusetts ;  Atkinson,  of  New  Hampshire  ;  Hopkins,  of  Rhode  Island  ;  Pitkin,  of 
Connecticut ;  Smith,  of  New  York  ;  Franklin,  of  Pennsylvania  ;  and  Tasker,  of  Maryland. 

2  "Not  one  of  the  assemblies,  from  Georgia  to  New  Hampshire,  when  the  report  was  made 
by  their  delegates,  inclined  to  part  with  so  great  a  share  of  power  as  was  to  be  given  to  this 
general  government."     Hutchinson. 

3  See  Note  XIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  ■-   ,-        \       ^ 


CHAP.  III.]      FRANKLIN  AND  SHIRLEY'S  CORRESPONDENCE.  23$ 

istrate,  was  inclined  to  favor  the  prerogative  of  the  crown,  to  which  be  was 
indebted  for  his  own  advancement.  According  to  this  plan  (somewhat  akin 
to  the  ministerial  projects  which  we  have  remarked  a  few  years  before), 
the  general  defence  of  the  colonies  was  to  be  intrusted  to  an  assembly  con- 
sisting of  all  the  governors  and  a  certain  number  of  the  provincial  counsel- 
lors, who  were  to  draw  bills  of  exchange  on  the  English  treasury  for  the 
sums  of  money  which  might  be  required  to  carry  their  measures  into  effect, 
and  of  which  the  reimbursement  was  to  be  derived  from  taxes  imposed  on 
the  colonies  by  act  of  parhament. 

The  aversion  which  the  Americans  expressed  for  a  far  more  liberal  scheme 
deterred  Shirley  from  wantonly  risking  his  popularity  by  openly  announcing 
and  advocatmg  this  proposition  ;  but  he  privately  imparted  it  to  Franklin, 
and  an  interesting  discussion  of  its  merits  and  chances  of  success  ensued 
between  them.  Franklin  affirmed  that  any  attempt  to  carry  into  effect  the 
project  of  the  British  ministry  would  excite  the  strongest  dissatisfaction  in 
America  ;  and  with  great  force  of  argument  demonstrated  the  injustice  of 
the  measure,  and  the  injurious  consequences  which  the  Americans  might 
reasonably  apprehend  from  it.  They  could  have  no  confidence,  he  declared, 
in  a  convention  consisting  of  governors  and  counsellors,  of  whom  the  far 
greater  number  were  the  creatures  of  the  crown,  whose  interest  would 
prompt  them  to  enlarge  the  expenditure  committed  to  their  administration, 
and  multiply  the  posts  and  appointments  included  within  their  patronage. 
The  people  might  expect  that  a  tax  imposed  by  their  own  representatives 
would  be  diminished  and  repealed,  whenever  a  change  of  circumstances 
permitted  such  alleviation  ;  but  a  tax  imposed  by  parliament,  in  conformity 
with  the  representations  and  private  interests  of  a  board  of  royal  officers 
in  America,  would  most  probably  obtain  perpetual  duration.  He  maintained 
that  it  was  unjust  that  the  subjects  of  the  British  crown  resident  in  the 
colonies  should  be  loaded  with  direct  taxes  except  by  their  own  repre- 
sentatives, of  whom  they  had  none  in  parliament ;  and  that  the  parliamentary 
restrictions  on  the  commerce  of  the  colonies  were  secondary  taxes,  which 
the  colonists,  on  the  one  hand,  submitted  to,  though  they  had  no  share  in 
imposing  or  adjusting  them,  and  which  Britain,  on  the  other,  ought  to  ac- 
cept as  an  equivalent  for  the  exemption  of  the  colonists  from  direct  parlia- 
mentary taxation.  Yet  was  he  disposed  to  recommend  a  more  intimate 
union  of  the  colonies  with  Britain,  by  the  admission  of  representatives  from 
America  into  the  British  parliament  ;  and  he  beheved  that  this  union  would 
be  acceptable  to  the  colonists,  provided  a  reasonable  number  of  representa- 
tives were  allowed  to  them,  and  all  the  old  statutes  restraining  the  trade 
or  cramping  the  manufactures  of  the  colonies  were  repealed,  till  the  new- par- 
liament, representing  the  whole  empire,  might  think  fit,  for  the  general  inter- 
est, to  reenact  some  or  all  of  them.  Not  that  he  imagined  that  the  colonies 
would  obtain  so  many  representatives  as  to  possess  any  considerable  numeri- 
cal force  in  parhament  ;  but  he  expected  that  the  reasoning  and  influence 
of  the  American  members  might  be  sufficient  to  cause  the  trade  laws  to  be 
more  impartially  considered,  and  framed  with  more  regard  to  equity,  and 
might  prevail  so  far  as  to  withstand  the  private  interest  of  a  single  corpora- 
tion or  class  of  merchants  or  artificers  in  England.  He  characterized  the 
colonies  as  so  many  counties  gained  to  Great  Britain,  and  all  included  within 
the  pale  of  British  constitutional  law  and  rights,  no  less  than  of  the  British 
empire  ;  and  he  held  it  alike  indifferent  to  the  general  interest,  whether  a 


2$Q  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

merchant,  a  smith,  or  a  hatter  grew  rich  in  Old  or  in  New  England,  as  wheth- 
er an  English  manufacturer  of  iron  pursued  his  business  at  Birmingham  or 
Sheffield  ;  since,  in  either  place,  they  were  still  within  the  bounds  of  the 
commonwealth,  and  their  persons  and  property  were  subject  to  its  juris- 
diction. 

In  this  correspondence  between  Franklin  and  Shirley,  which  was  con- 
ducted with  great  privacy,^  we  behold  a  partial  rehearsal  of  the  contro- 
versy that  broke  out  not  many  years  after  between  America  and  Britain, 
and  issued  in  the  American  Revolution.  Franklin,  in  the  interval,  found 
cause  to  alter  some  of  his  political  notions  ;  and  at  the  latter  period,  depart- 
ing from  the  views  which  we  have  now  seen  him  unfold,  he  declared  his 
conviction  that  the  legislatures  of  Britain  and  America  were  and  ought  to  be 
distinct  from  each  other,  and  that  the  relation  between  the  two  countries 
was  precisely  analogous  to  that  which  subsisted  between  England  and 
Scotland  before  their  union.  When  we  consider  how  notably  Franklin 
(mistaking  his  own  view  of  men's  interests  for  an  acquaintance  with  their 
desires  and  opinions)  misapprehended  the  sentiments  of  his  countrymen  in 
proposing  a  plan  at  Albany  which  they  almost  unanimously  rejected,  we 
may  be  justified  in  supposing  that  some  degree  of  kindred  error  mingled 
with  his  notion  of  their  willingness  to  submit  to  direct  taxation  by  the  parent 
state,  on  condition  of  being  allowed  to  send  representatives  to  the  British 
House  of  Commons.  He  seems  to  have  entirely  neglected  the  consid- 
eration, that,  unless  an  order  of  nobility  were  estabhshed  in  America,  and 
the  members  of  it  admitted  to  participate  in  the  privileges  of  the  British 
peerage,  there  would  still  be  no  channel  through  which  the  interests  of  his 
countrymen  could  penetrate  into  the  House  of  Lords  ;  and  this  branch  of 
the  supreme  legislature  would  remain  exclusively  British  in  its  conpposition. 
Shirley,  convinced,  not  less  by  the  issue  of  Franklin's  own  plan  than  by  the 
force  of  his  arguments,  of  the  hopelessness  of  the  project  which  was  com- 
municated to  him  by  the  British  ministers,  refrained  from  any  pubhc  ex- 
pression of  his  opinion  on  the  subject  of  pohtical  union  for  the  general  de- 
fence ;  and  the  royal  cabinet,  after  persisting  a  little  longer  in  a  feeble  and 
irresolute  attempt  to  induce  the  colonies  to  raise  a  common  revenue  which 
the  officers  of  the  crown  were  to  administer,  either  abandoned,  forgot,  or 
suspended  their  purpose  ;  ^  and  finally  embraced  the  determination,  or  at 
least  pursued  the  course,  of  carrying  on  hostihties  in  America  with  British 
troops  aided  by  such  auxiliary  forces  as  the  colonial  assemblies  might  vol- 
untarily furnish.*"*  Though  these  assemblies  were  but  imperfectly  acquainted 
with  the  inclinations  of  the  court,  their  jealousy  supplied,  and  perhaps  more 
than  suppHed,  the  defectiveness  of  their  information  ;  and  nothing  could 
exceed  the  stubborn  and  determined  purpose  evinced  by  them  to  resist  the 

*  It  was  first  published  in  the  London  Magazine  for  February,  1766. 

'  Yet,  so  late  as  the  month  of  May,  1755,  we  find  Shirley  writing  thus  to  Wentworth,  the 
governor  of  New  Hampshire  :  —  "1  may  assure  your  Excellency,  from  every  letter  I  have 
of  late  received  from  Sir  Thomas  Robinson,  I  have  reason  to  think  that  his  Majesty  hath 
a  dependence  upon  a  common  fund's  being  raised  in  all  his  colonies  upon  this  continent;  and 
that  such  an  one  must,  in  the  end,  be  either  voluntarily  raised,  or  else  assessed  in  some  other 
way."  A  few  months  after,  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  instructions  they  communi- 
cated to  their  agent  at  London,  thus  admonished  him  :  —  "It  is  more  especially  expected  that 
you  oppose  every  thing  that  shall  have  the  remotest  tendency  to  raise  a  revenue  in  the  planta- 
tions for  any  public  uses  or  services  of  government." 

^  "The  ministry,"  says  Belknap,  "determined  to  employ  their  own  troops  to  fight  their 
battles  in  America,  rather  than  let  the  colonists  feel  their  own  strength  and  be  directed  by 
their  own  counsels.  Some  aid  was  to  be  exacted  from  them;  but  the.  weight  of  tlie  enterprise 
and  honor  of  the  victory  were  to  belong  to  British  troops,  conimaaded  by  British  officers. ' 


CHAP.  HI.]  PROVINCIAL  DISSENSIONS.  237 

establishment  of  a  general  American  revenue,  which  the  representatives  of 
America  were  not  to  impose  and  administer.^ 

While  the  king  and  his  ministers,  though  desirous  that  the  military  force 
of  America  should  be  more  fully  developed,  were  still  more  desirous  to 
avoid  any  proportional  development  of  the  spirit  of  American  liberty,  and 
were  bent  on  establishing  in  the  colonies  only  such  a  system  of  united 
agency  as  might  be  subservient  to  British  ascendency  and  royal  preroga- 
tive ;  and  while  the  Americans,  on  the  other  hand,  were  determined  to 
cultivate  their  military  resources  only  in  correspondence  with-  the  interests 
of  their  domestic  liberty,  and  to  oppose  the  establishment  of  any  new  juris- 
diction over  their  country  in  which  they  themselves  were  not  to  possess  a 
commanding  share,  —  it  was  impossible  that  any  plan  of  general  govern- 
ment or  even  of  combined  operation  of  the  colonies  could  be  introduced, 
except  by  force  on  the  part  of  Britain,  or  by  revolt  on  the  part  of  Amer- 
ica. Additional  impediments  to  such  a  measure  were  occasioned  at  the 
present  period  by  dissensions  between  two  of  the  American  provinces,  by 
the  struggles  of  domestic  factions  in  a  third,  and  by  an  unusual  degree  of 
discontent  and  impatience  kindled  in  several  of  them  by  certain  recent  pro- 
ceedings of  the  British  government  and  its  officers.  A  quarrel  had  arisen 
between  Virginia  and  New  York,  in  consequence  of  the  failure  of  the  ex- 
pedition to  the  Great  Meadows  ;  the  Virginians  reproaching  the  other  colony 
with  having  caused  this  disaster  by  neglecting  to  furnish  an  adequate  contin- 
gent of  troops.  Pennsylvania  was  distracted  by  the  continual  disputes  be- 
tween her  assemblies  and  the  provincial  proprietaries  and  governors.  The 
assembly  of  Virginia  at  first  cooperated  zealously  with  Dinwiddie,  the  gov- 
ernor of  this  province,  in  the  prosecution  of  hostilities  with  the  French.  But 
shortly  after  the  expedition  to  the  Great  Meadows,  they  manifested  a  very 
different  spirit,  and,  refusing  to  sanction  or  support  measures  which  he  by 
his  office  was  entitled  to  conduct,  they  plainly  declared  that  they  entertained 
more  jealousy  and  apprehension  of  him  than  of  the  foreign  enemy.  Dinwid- 
die, who  was  a  man  of  arbitrary  principles,  insolent  temper,  and  rapacious 
disposition,  attempted  to  introduce  the  practice,  which,  though  established 
in  New  York,  was  a  novelty  in  Virginia,  of  exacting  a  fee  or  perquisite  to 
the  governor  for  every  patent  of  land  which  he  was  required  to  grant.  The 
assembly  declared  that  this  exaction  was  illegal,  arbitrary,  and  oppressive  ; 
they  protested  that  every  planter  who  complied  with  it  ought  to  be  deemed 
an  enemy  of  his  country  ;  and  despatched  an  agent  to  London  to  soHcit 
an  order  of  (he  privy  council  for  its  discontinuance. 

In  North  Carolina,  the  conduct  of  Arthur  Dobbs,  who  succeeded  John- 
stone in  the  office  of  governor,  proclaimed  the  instructions  which  he  had  re- 
ceived to  enlarge  the  bounds  of  the  royal  prerogative,  and  provoked  the 
most  determined  spirit  of  resistance  from  the  assembly.  But  it  was  at  New 
York  that  the  strongest  manifestation  of  public  discontent  was  elicited  by  an 
accidental  discovery  of  the  strain  in  which  the  instructions  from  the  crown 
to  its  governors  were  actually  couched.  We  have  already  remarked  the 
practice  of  the  British  court  to  express,  in  its  commissions  to  the  governors 
of  New  York,  the  delegation  of  a  very  large  and  indeed  unwarrantable  ex- 
tent of  authority.  In  addition  to  their  commissions,  these  officers,  !:ke  all 
the  governors  who  were  appointed  by  the  crown,  were  furnished  with  written 

*  Franklin's  Memoirs.  Trumbull.  Hutchinson.  Belknap.  Minot.  Gordon.  Holmes. 
Wynne. 


238  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X: 

instructions  for  the  direction  of  their  political  conduct,  which  were  not  com- 
municated to  the  public.  But  in  the  present  year,  Sir  Danvers  Osborne, -a 
new  governor  of  this  province,  having  died  immediately  after  his  arrival  at 
New  York,  his  instructions  somehow  fell  into  the  hands  of  persons  who 
hastened  to  expose  their  contents  to  the  public  eye.  *  The  preamble  of  this 
document  sharply  inveighed  against  the  provincial  assembly,  which  was  stig- 
matized as  an  undutiful,  disloyal,  and  factious  body,  which  had  repeatedly 
violated  the  royal  prerogative  by  usurping  a  control  over  the  expenditure 
of  the  publi«  money.  Osborne  was  directed  to  insist  on  the  reformation  of 
all  such  abuses,  and  particularly  to  require  the  establishment  of  a  certain 
and  definite  revenue  for  the  service  of  the  government,  as  well  as  for  the 
appropriation  of  a  fixed  salary  to  his  own  office.  Moreover,  his  Majesty, 
in  these  instructions,  signified  his  will  that  all  money  raised  for  the  use  and 
support  of  government  should  be  disposed  of  by  warrant  from  the  governor, 
with  the  consent  of  the  council,  and  no  otherwise  ;  that,  nevertheless,  the 
assembly  should  be  permitted,  from  time  to  time,  to  see  the  accounts  of  the 
expenditure  of  money  levied  by  the  authority  of  laws  which  they  enacted  ; 
that,  if  any  member  of  the  council,  or  officer  holding  a  place  of  trust  or  profit 
in  the  government,  should  in  any  manner  whatever  encourage,  advise,  or 
unite  with  the  assembly  in  passing  any  act  or  vote,  whereby  the  royal  pre- 
rogative might  be  Hmited  or  impaired,  or  any  money  be  raised  or  expended 
for  the  pubHc  service,  otherwise  than  by  the  method  prescribed  by  these 
instructions,  the  functionary  so  offending  should  forthwith  be  degraded  from 
his  office  by  the  governor.^  These  were  peremptory  injunctions,  and  plain- 
ly proved  that  the  British  ministry  regarded  the  province  with  displeasure, 
and  were  determined  to  invigorate  the  royal  prerogative  within  it  ;  nor  is  it 
surprising  that  the  publication  of  them  excited  at  New  York  a  lively  in- 
dignation and  jealousy  against  the  government  of  the  parent  state. 

The  mutual  distrust  and  ill-humor  which  thus  contributed  to  perplex  the 
councils  and  enfeeble  the  operations  of  England  and  her  colonies  was  pro- 
portionably  favorable  to  the  views  and  policy  of  France,  which  continued 
vigorously  to  extend  her  encroachments,  reinforce  her  garrisons,  and  strength- 
en her  position  in  America.  In  aid  of  her  designs,  she  endeavoured,  with 
the  utmost  assiduity  of  hostile  intrigue,  to  muhiply  the  enemies  of  England, 
and  particularly  to  involve  this  country  in  a  quarrel  with  Spain.  In  this 
instance,  indeed,  she  was  for  the  present  disappointed  ;  for  Wall,  the  minis- 
ter of  the  king  of  Spain,  succeeded  in  convincing  his  master  that  peace 
with  England  was  essential  to  the  real  interests  of  the  Spanish  monarchy. 
In  America  the  French  intrigues  w^eremore  successful  ;  and  by  the  influence 
of  the  governor  of  Canada  and  his  Indian  allies,  a  tribe  of  Indians  with  whom 
New  England  had  no  previous  quarrel  were  induced  to  invade  and  ravage  the 
frontiers  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire.  Massachusetts  had  of  late 
been  the  scene  of  violent  altercations,  provoked  by  the  introduction  of  an 
excise  law,  which,  however,  in  spite  of  the  threats  of  its  opponents  and  the 
fears  of  its  supporters,  was  peaceably  carried  into  execution.  In  the  course 
of  the  present  year,  the  assembly  of  this  province  caused  some  new  forts  to 
be  erected,  renewed  a  pacific  treaty  with  the  Eastern  Indians,  and  ascertained 
that  the  tidings  which  had  been  formerly  communicated  to  them  of  a  French 
settlement  on  the  Kennebec  were  destitute  of  foundation.^ 

The  British  ministers,  on  receiving  intelligence  of  the  defeat  of  Washing- 
'       '  Smollett.    Williamsoil.    Burk.    Wynne  *  Minot.    Pmollett.    BelkHap.    ". 


CHAP.  III.]  PREPARATIONS  FOR  WAR.  23ff 

ton,  and  of  the  establishment  of  French  posts  on  the  Ohio,  perceived  plainly 
that  a  war  between  France  and  England  had  begun.  Even  with  a  view  to 
the  speedy  restoration  of  peace,  it  was  expedient  that  they  should  exert 
more  vigor  and  promptitude  of  hostility,  and  demonstrate  more  active  and 
determined  concern  for  the  dignity  of  the  British  empire  and  the  safety  of 
its  colonial  adjuncts  or  dependencies.  Finding  that  their  complaints  to  the 
court  of  Versailles  were  answered  only  by  a  repetition  of  former  evasions,  and 
learning  that  the  French  were  making  active  preparation  for  the  enlargement 
of  their  naval  and  military  force  in  America,  they  determined  to  send  a  de- 
tachment of  the  standing  army  maintained  in  England  to  the  defence  of  the 
British  possessions  and  pretensions  in  the  same  quarter.  In  conformity  with 
this  determination,  and  early  in  the  following  year  [January,  1755],  General 
Braddock  was  despatched  from  Ireland  with  two  regiments  of  infantry  com- 
manded by  Halket  and  Dunbar,  which  were  destined  to  the  service  of  Amer- 
ica, and  especially  to  the  protection  of  the  Virginian  frontier.  On  the  arrival 
of  this  armament  at  its  destination,  the  provinces  seemed  to  forget  alike  their 
disputes  with  each  other  and  their  jealousies  of  the  parent  state,  and  a  vigor- 
ous offensive  campaign  against  the  French  was  projected.  A  convention  of 
the  provincial  governors,  at  the  request  of  the  British  commander,  assembled 
at  Annapolis,  in  Maryland,  to  settle  the  plan  of  military  operations,  and  re- 
solved that  three  simultaneous  expeditions  should  be  undertaken.  The  first, 
directed  against  Fort  Duquesne,  was  to  be  conducted  by  Braddock  with  his 
British  troops  ;  the  second,  which  was  to  attempt  the  reduction  of  the  French 
fort  at  Niagara,  was  committed  to  the  American  regulars  and  Indians,  com- 
manded by  Governor  Shirley,  who  now  received  the  rank  of  a  British  gen- 
eral from  the  king  ;  and  the  third,  an  expedition  against  Crown  Point,  was 
to  be  undertaken  by  mihtia  drawn  from  the  northern  colonies. 

The  French  court,  apprized  of  Braddock's  departure  for  America,  now 
made  one  more  attempt  to  prolong  the  inactivity  of  the  British  government, 
by  reiterating  assurances  of  its  pacific  purposes  and  earnest  desire  of  accom- 
modation. But  when  the  Marquis  de  Mirepoix,  the  ambassador  of  France  at 
London,  a  truly  honorable  man,  tendered  these  assurances,  in  full  rehance 
on  their  truth,  to  the  British  ministers,  they  exhibited  to  him  such  incontesta- 
ble proofs  of  the  insincerity  of  his  court,  that  he  was  struck  with  astonishment 
and  mortification,  and,  repairing  to  Versailles,  upbraided  the  ministers  of 
Louis  the  Fifteenth  with  the  indignity  to  which  they  had  exposed  him  as  the 
tool  of  their  dissimulation.  By  them  he  was  referred  to  the  king,  who  com- 
manded him  to  return  to  London  with  fresh  protestations  of  his  royal  inten- 
tion to  preserve  peace  ;  but  the  conduct  of  this  monarch  corresponded  so  ill 
with  his  professions,  that  his  ambassador  had  scarcely  obtained  an  audience 
to  communicate  them,  when  indubitable  assurance  was  received  that  a  pow- 
erful squadron  was  ready  to  sail  for  America  from  Brest  and  Rochefort.  In 
effect,  it  sailed  soon  after,  and  transported  a  great  quantity  of  military  stores, 
and  four  thousand  regular  troops,  commanded  by  the^  Baron  Dieskau. 
Roused  by  this  intelligence,  the  British  government  despatched  a  small  fleet, 
under  the  command  of  Admiral  Boscawen,  and  afterwards,  on  learning  the 
superior  strength  of  the  enemy,  a  few  more  vessels  under  Admiral  Hol- 
borne,  to  watch  the  motions  of  the  French  squadron.  But  no  additional 
land  forces  were  sent  by  Britain  to  America  ;  nor  yet  did  she  think  fit  to 
declare  war  against  France.  The  French  monarch  was  still  more  bent  on 
avoiding  or  at  least  postponing  this  extremity  ;  and  although  a  part  of  the 


240  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [  BOOK  X. 

fleet  which  he  had  despatched  to  America  was  attacked  off  Newfoundland 
and  captured  by  Admiral  Boscawen,  he  still  refrained  from  any  nearer  ap- 
proach to  a  declaration  of  war  than  the  recall  of  his  ambassador  from  Eng- 
land. [April  25,  1755.]  The  British  king,  in  his  speech  to  parliament,  as- 
serted the  sincerity  of  his  wishes  and  endeavours,  and  still  expressed  a  hope 
of  his  ability,  to  preserve  peace  ;  but  withal  declared  that  he  would  not 
purchase  even  this  blessing  at  the  expense  of  submitting  to  encroachments 
upon  his  dominions.  An  act  of  parliament  was  passed,  extending  the  provis- 
ions of  the  British  Mutiny  Act  to  North  America  ;  ^  and  declaring  that  all 
troops,  raised  by  any  of  the  colonial  governors  or  assembhes,  should,  when- 
ever they  acted  in  conjunction  with  the  British  soldiers,  be  subject  to  the  same 
system  of  martial  law  and  discipline  which  obtained  in  the  British  army.  A 
communication,  addressed  some  time  before  to  the  provincial  governments, 
signified  the  king's  commands,  that  officers  commissioned  by  his  Majesty, 
or  by  his  commander-in-chief  in  North  America,  should  take  precedence  of 
all  those  whose  commissions  were  derived  from  the  provincial  governors  or 
assemblies  ;  "  and  that  the  general  and  field  officers  of  the  provincial  troops 
should  have  no  rank,  when  serving  with  the  general  and  field  officers  com- 
missioned by  the  crown."  This  regulation  proved  exceedingly  unpalatable 
to  the  Americans.  Washington,  in  particular,  resenting  it  as  injurious  to  the 
merit  of  his  countrymen  and  calculated  to  depress  their  spirit  and  character, 
resigned  his  commission.  Happily,  however,  for  his  own  fame  and  his 
country's  interest,  he  was  persuaded  to  accept  the  appointment  of  aid-de- 
camp to  General  Braddock.^ 


CHAPTER    IV. 


Hostilities  in  Nova  Scotia  —  Expulsion  of  the  French  Neutrals.  —  Braddock's  Expedition  — 
and  Defeat.  —  Battle  of  Lake  George.  —  Transactions  in  South  Carolina.  —  Dissensions  in 
Pennsylvania  —  Resignation  of  Political  Power  by  the  Quakers  —  Quaker  Proceedings  re- 
specting Negro  Slavery. — War  declared  between  France  and  Britain.  —  Success  of  the 
French  at  Oswego, 

While  preparations  were  making  for  the  prosecution  of  the  military 
schemes  devised  in  the  convention  at  Annapolis,  an  expedition,  which  the 
New  England  States  had  previously  agreed  to  undertake  on  condition  of 
being  reimbursed  of  the  expense  of  it  by  the  British  government,  was  de- 

'  Much  disgust  and  jealousy  was  excited  by  this  measure  in  America.  It  had  been  strongly* 
but  ineffectually,  opposed  by  Bollan,  the  agent  at  London  for  Massachusetts,  who,  in  a  petition 
to  parliament,  represented,  "  that  his  Majesty's  American  subjects  were  generally  freeholders 
and  persons  of  some  property,  and  enlisted,  not  for  a  livelihood,  but  with  intent  to  return  to 
their  farms  or  trades  as  soon  as  the  particular  services  for  which  they  might  enlist  should  ter- 
minate ;  that  the  officeVs  were  persons  in  similar  though  better  circumstances ;  and  that  all  of 
them  — being  chiefly  influenced  to  take  up  arms  by  a  regard  to  the  honor  of  the  king,  the  de- 
fence of  their  country,  and  the  preservation  of  their  religion  and  liberties  —  had  but  little  pre- 
paratory exercise  for  war,  and  were,  therefore,  unsuitable  subjects  for  the  operation  of  the 
rigorous  code  of  discipline  adapted  to  the  government  of  his  Majesty's  standing  forces." 
Minot.  In  communicating  the  parliamentary  measure  to  his  constituents,  Bollan,  a  sagacious 
and  impartial  man,  apprized  them  that  he  possessed  the  best  evidence  of  the  purposes  of 
the  British  court  "  to  govern  America  like  Ireland,  by  keeping  up  a  body  of  standing  forces 
with  a  military  chest,  under  some  act  similar  to  the  famous  Poyning's  law."     Walsh's  Appeal, 

*  Cj»mpbeII.    Burk.     Smollett.    Wynne.    Minot.    Williamson.    Marshall. 


CHAP.  IV.]        THE  FRENCH  NEUTRALS  OF  NOVA  SCOTIA.  £41* 

spatched  against  the  forts  and  settlements  recently  established  by  the  French 
in  Nova  Scotia.  The  main  body  of  the  forces  thus  employed  consisted 
of  about  three  thousand  men,  raised  in  New  England,  principally  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  conducted  by  Colonel  Winslow,  one  of  the  most  popular  and 
considerable  inhabitants  of  this  province,  and  the  representative  of  one  of 
the  old  Puritan  families  which  were  the  pride  of  New  England  and  had 
gathered  the  respect  of  successive  generations.  Arriving  at  the  British  set- 
tlement in  Nova  Scotia  .[May  25, 1755] ,  the  New  England  forces  were  joined 
by  three  hundred  regular  troops  and  a  small  train  of  artillery ;  and  the  com- 
mand of  the  whole  was  assumed  by  Colonel  Monckton,  an  English  officer 
of  respectable  talents  and  experience.  This  enterprise  was  pursued  with 
skill  and  vigor,  and  crowned  with  entire  success.  Beau  Sejour,  the  princi- 
pal fort  which  the  French  possessed  at  Chignecto,  after  a  hot  siege  of  a 
few  days,  was  compelled  to  surrender,  and  received  from  the  victors  the 
new  name  of  Fort  Cumberland.  [June  16,  1755.]  The  garrison  were  al- 
lowed to  march  out  with  the  honors  of  war,  and,  having  engaged  not  to  bear 
arms  for  six  months,  were  transported  to  Louisburg.  The  other  fortresses 
of  the  French  in  this  quarter  surrendered  shortly  after,  on  the  same  terms. 
But  although  the  whole  of  Nova  Scotia  was  thus  reduced  to  the  dominion 
of  Britain,  it  was  impossible  not  to  perceive  that  the  possession  of  it  was 
still  rendered  precarious  by  the  existing  relations  between  the  British  gov- 
ernment and  the  French  inhabitants  of  the  country.  This  race  of  colonists, 
interesting  both  by  their  character  and  their  misfortunes,  amounted  in  num- 
ber, probably,'  to  about  seven  or  eight  thousand.  They  were  distinguished 
by  the  mildness  of  their  manners,  their  frugal,  industrious  habits,  and  the 
warmth  and  sincerity  of  their  attachment  to  the  Roman  Cathohc  faith.  The 
vanity,  licentiousness,  and  restless  ambition,  which  we  have  remarked  in 
the  character  of  the  Canadian  colonists,  were  unknown  to  this  little  commu- 
nity, which  exhibited  a  happy  scene  of  primitive  harmony  and  benevolence, 
virtuous  simplicity,  moderation  of  desire,  and  equality  of  condition.  Mar- 
riage was  contracted  at  an  early  age,  and  celibacy  was  exemplified  only  by 
the  priests  ;  nor  had  one  instance  of  illicit  intercourse  of  the  sexes  been 
known  to  occur  among  the  people  since  their  first  establishment  in  America. 
Whenever  a  youth  born  in  this  region  came  to  man's  estate,  a  house  was 
built  for  him  by  a  general  contribution  of  his  neighbours,  a  portion  of  land 
was  cleared  and  sown  for  his  use,  and  he  was  supplied  with  all  the  necessa- 
ries of  life  for  a  twelvemonth.  His  marriage  was  contemporary  with  this 
establishment  ;  and  a  flock  of  cattle  constituted  the  portion  of  his  wife.  But, 
unhappily,  the  people,  though  mildly  treated  by  Britain,  and  exempted  from 
all  taxes,  even  for  the  support  of  the  institutions  of  government  in  Nova 
Scotia,  never  ceased  to  regret  their  political  separation  from  France,  and 
were  more  estranged  from  the  British  colonists  by  difference  of  religious 
faith,  than  attached  to  them  by  similarity  of  manners  and  moral  character. 
Their  priests,  supplied  by  France,  were  devoted  to  the  interests  of  her 
church  and  monarchy,  maintained  a  close  correspondence  with  the  French 
authorities  in  Canada,  and  cherished  in  their  people  a  conviction  of  the  in- 
dissoluble nature  of  their  original  relation  to  the  crown  of  France,  and  a 
rooted  aversion  to  the  sway  and  the  faith  of  that  nation  to  which  their  terri- 
tory was  ceded  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht.     Thoug;h  they  had  desired,  upon 

*  The  accounts  of  the  actual  numbers  of  this  race,  transmitted  by  the  historians  of  America, 
are  surprisingly  inconsistent  and  contradictory. 

VOL.    n.  31  -  .  U 


242  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

this  event,  and  by  a  singular  arrangement  were  permitted,  to  assume  the 
title  and  character  of  a  neutral  race  in  all  controversies  between  their  old 
and  new  masters,  the  same  sentiments  which  thus  qualified  their  subjection 
to  Britain  prevented  them  from  strictly  sustaining  the  neutrality  which  they 
professed  between  her  and  France.  They  repeatedly  afforded  to  the  Cana- 
dian colonists  and  their  Indian  allies  intelligence,  quarters,  provisions,  and 
even  still  more  active  cooperation  in  their  hostilities  against  the  British 
government  and  its  subjects  ;  and  upon  the  present  occasion,  in  particular, 
three  hundred  of  these  professed  neutrals  were  actually  found  in  arms  at 
Fort  Beau  Sejour. 

It  was  manifest  that  the  interest  of  Britain  demanded,  and  that  her  just 
authority  entitled  her  to  require,  some  additional  pledge  of  the  submission, 
or  safeguard  against  the  hostility,  of  a  people  inhabitmg  a  portion  of  her  do- 
minions ;  and  an  intimation  was  now  conveyed  by  Lawrence,  the  deputy- 
governor  of  Nova  Scotia,  to  all  of  the  French  colonists  who  had  not  made 
open  demonstration  of  hostility,  that  they  would  be  allowed  to  continue  in 
possession  of  their  lands,  if  they  would  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
British  king  without  any  qualification.  As  they  unanimously  refused  to  give 
this  pledge,  Lawrence,  and  the  English  admiral,  Boscawen,  who  was  then 
at  Halifax,  embraced  the  resolution  of  transporting  them  without  farther 
delay  beyond  the  confines  of  Nova  Scotia.  To  have  permitted  them  to 
choose  the  place  of  their  exile  would  have  been  to  recruit  Canada,^  in  the 
very  beginning  of  a  war,  with  men  who  would  have  instantly  returned  in 
arms  upon  the  British  frontiers.  It  was  therefore  determined  to  remove  and 
disperse  this  whole  people  among  the  British  colonies,  where  they  could  not 
unite  in  any  hostile  purpose  or  attempt,  and  where  they  might  be  expected 
gradually  to  mingle  with  the  rest  of  the  population.  Notice  having  been 
given  to  the  governors  of  the  several  colonies  to  prepare  for  their  recep- 
tion, the  French,  who  had  latterly  been  amused  with  the  hope  that  only 
their  former  pledge  of  neutrality  would  be  required  of  them,  were  assembled 
at  various  places  by  a  stratagem  less  honorable  in  its  character  than  humane 
in  its  purpose  ;  and  having  been  surrounded  by  troops,  were  abruptly  ac- 
quainted with  their  fate,  and  hurried  on  board  a  fleet  of  vessels  which  was 
collected  to  transport  them  from  their  native  land. 

A  party  of  them  had  been  collected  in  a  church,  which  was  thus  profaned 
by  violence  and  breach  of  faith  ;  and  some  having  escaped  from  their  cap- 
tors, and  others,  from  negligence  or  suspicion,  having  avoided  the  snare,  their 
houses  and  plantations  were  ravaged  in  order  to  deprive  them  of  shelter  and 
compel  them  to  surrender.  Winslow  and  the  New  England  troops  were 
compelled  to  take  a  share  in  this  disagreeable  duty,  the  severity  of  which 
they  endeavoured  to  alleviate  to  the  unhappy  victims  by  the  exercise  of  a 
tenderness  and  humanity  very  remote  from  the  stern  instructions  which 
were  communicated  by  Lawrence.  Yet,  in  the  hurry  of  the  embarkation, 
a  great  deal  of  superfluous  misery  was  unintentionally  inflicted  ;  husbands 
were  separated  from  their  wives,  and  parents  were  conveyed  to  settlements 
far  distant  from  those  to  which  their  children  were  transported.  "  It  was 
the  hardest  case,"  said  one  of  the  sufl^erers,  "  which  had  happened  since 
our  Saviour  was  on  earth."  About  a  thousand  of  them  were  consigned  to 
the  territory  of    Massachusetts,   where    their  wretchedness   excited  much 

*  Raynal  affirms,  that  these  French  colonists,  apprehending  that  their  religion  was  endan- 
gered by  the  English  settlement  at  Halifax,  and  instigated  by  their  priests,  were,  at  this  very 
time,  actually  preparing  to  emigrate  to  Canada. 


CHAP.  IV.]  BRADDOCK'S  EXPEDITION,      r  24S 

compassion  ;  but  they  were  debarred,  by  the  provincial  laws,  from  the  public 
exercise  of  their  religious  worship.  The  people  of  Massachusetts  were  in- 
capable of  the  inhuman  absurdity  of  executing,  in  such  circumstances, 
their  severe  law  against  Cathohc  priests  discovered  within  the  province, 
but  they  would  not  consent  to  tolerate  the  celebration  of  the  mass.  These 
involuntary  emigrants  occasioned  a  heavy  expense  to  all  the  colonies  ;  for, 
partly  from  anguish  of  spirit,  and  partly  from  the  fond  hope  that  the  king 
of  France  would  never  make  peace  till  he  had  procured  their  reestablish- 
ment  in  Nova  Scotia,  they  refused  to  mingle  with  or  pursue  any  business 
among  the  English,  and  declined  to  weaken  their  claims  on  their  own  sove- 
reign by  soliciting  compensation  for  their  losses  from  the  British  govern- 
ment. Their  pride  would  not  permit  them  to  accept  for  themselves  or 
their  offspring  the  benefit  of  any  of  the  provincial  establishments  for  dis- 
pensing charity  to  paupers,  or  for  the  maintenance  and  education  of  desti- 
tute children.  In  the  sequel,  a  number  of  them  embarked  for  France, 
and  others  contrived  to  make  their  way  to  Canada  and  to  other  settlements 
of  the  French  and  the  Spaniards  ;  but  the  greater  number  died  in  the  British 
colonies  in  an  indigent,  though  not  a  starving  condition,  and  mainly  the  vic- 
tims of  sorrow  and  disappointment.^ 

The  forces  by  which  the  conquest  of  Nova  Scotia  was  thus  completed 
incurred  no  greater  loss,  during  the  whole  expedition,  than  that  of  twenty- 
men  killed  and  about  as  many  wounded.  Winslow  and  his  troops,  on  their 
return  to  New  England,  expressed  much  disgust  at  the  distinctions  which 
were  studiously  enforced  during  the  campaign  between  them  and  the  British 
regulars,  and  which  the  disproportion  between  the  British  and  the  provincial 
contingents  to  the  combined  army  rendered  peculiarly  striking  and  offensive. 
But  the  success  of  the  enterprise,  occurring  in  this  early  stage  of  the  war, 
diffused  a  general  animation  through  the  colonies,  and  was  hailed  as  the 
omen  of  farther  triumph.  There  needed  not  this  influence,  indeed,  to  exalt 
the  confident  expectation  that  prevailed  of  a  victorious  issue  of  the  greater 
enterprise  which  Braddock  was  to  conduct  against  the  French  settlements 
on  the  Ohio.  It  was  known  that  the  garrison  of  Fort  Duquesne  did  not 
exceed  two  hundred  men  ;  and  the  British  regulars,  united  with  a  body  of 
Virginian  rangers  and  a  troop  of  friendly  Indians,  seemed  more  than  a  match 
for  any  additional  force  that  the  French  could  assemble  in  this  quarter. 
Braddock  might  have  entered  upon  action  early  in  the  spring,  had  he  not 
been  delayed  by  the  inability  of  the  Virginian  contractors  to  fulfil  their  en- 
gagements to  furnish  a  sufficient  quantity  of  provisions  and  carriages  for  his 
army.  That  this  accident,  which  might  easily  have  been  foreseen,  was 
not  prevented  by  the  British  government  implies  the  most  culpable  igno- 
rance or  disregard  on  their  part  of  the  actual  condition  of  the  American 
provinces.  The  Virginians,  engrossed  with  the  culture  of  tobacco,  did  not 
raise  corn  enough  for  their  own  subsistence  ;  and  being  amply  provided 
with  the  accommodation  of  water  conveyance,  they  employed  but  few 
wheel-carriages  or  beasts  of  burden ;  whereas  Pennsylvania,  which  abound- 
ed in  corn  and  all  other  sorts  of  provisions,  enjoyed  but  little  water- 
carriage,  especially  in  its  western  settlements,  where  the  inhabitants  pos- 
sessed great  numbers  of  carts,  wagons,  and  horses.  The  British  troops 
should  therefore  have  been  landed  in  Pennsylvania,  and  their  supplies  con- 
tracted for  with  the  planters  there,  who  could  have  easily  performed  their 


*  Raynal.     Smollett.     Minot.     Hutchinson.     T^mbull.     Holmes. 


fcnii     \ji 


244  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

engagements  ;  and  if  their  commander  had  pitched  his  camp  near  Franks- 
town,  or  elsewhere  upon  the  southwest  borders  of  this  province,  he  would 
have  had  less  than  eighty  miles  to  march  from  thence  to  Fort  Duquesne, 
instead  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles  which  he  had  to  traverse  from 
Will's  Creek,  on  the  frontiers  of  Virginia,  where  his  encampment  was  ac- 
tually formed.  The  road  to  Fort  Duquesne  from  the  one  place  was  not 
better  or  more  practicable  than  from  the  other. 

When  Braddock  and  his  officers  discovered  the  incompetence  of  the 
Virginians  to  fulfil  the  contract  which  only  an  injudicious  preference  had 
obtained  for  them,  they  exclaimed  against  the  blundering  ignorance  of  the 
British  ministers  in  selecting  a  scene  so  unsuitable  to  their  operations,  and 
declared  that  the  enterprise  was  rendered  impracticable.  It  was,  indeed, 
retarded  for  many  weeks,  and  must  have  been  deferred  till  the  following 
summer,  if  a  supply  of  carriages  and  provisions  had  not  been  seasonably 
procured  from  Pennsylvania  by  the  influence  and  exertions  of  Dr.  Frank- 
lin and  some  other  popular  and  public-spirited  inhabitants  of  this  province. 
Notwithstanding  the  blunder  by  which  the  progress  of  the  expedition  was 
thus  delayed,  it  would  still,  in  all  probability,  have  been  attended  with  com- 
plete success,  if  a  more  fatal  error  had  not  been  committed  in  the  choice 
of  its  commander.  Braddock  was  a  man  of  courageous  and  determined 
spirit,  and  expert  in  the  tactics  and  evolutions  of  European  regiments  and 
regular  warfare.  But,  destitute  of  real  genius,  and  pedantically  devoted 
to  the  formalities  of  military  science,  he  was  fitter  to  review  than  to  com- 
mand an  army  ;  and  scrupled  not  to  express  his  contempt  for  any  troops, 
however  efficient  in  other  respects,  whose  exercise  on  a  parade  did  not  dis- 
play the  same  regularity  and  dexterity  which  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
witness,  and  unfortunately  to  overvalue,  in  a  regiment  of  English  guards 
in  Hyde  Park.  Rigid  in  enforcing  the  nicest  punctilios  and  in  inflicting  the 
harshest  severities  of  military  discipline,  haughty,  obstinate,  presumptuous, 
and  difficult  of  access,  he  was  unpopular  among  his  own  troops,  and  excited 
the  disgust  both  of  the  Americans  and  the  Indians.  There  are  two  sorts  of 
vulgarity  of  mind  ;  to  the  one  of  which  it  is  congenial  timidly  to  overrate, 
and  to  the  other  presumptuously  to  underrate,  the  importance  of  scenes  and 
circumstances  remote  from  the  routine  of  its  ordinary  experience.  The 
latter  of  these  qualities  had  too  much  place  in  the  character  of  Braddock, 
who,  though  totally  unconversant  with  American  warfare,  and  strongly 
warned  by  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  that  ambush  and  surprise  were  the 
dangers  which  he  had  chiefly  to  apprehend  in  such  scenes,  scorned  to  so- 
licit counsel  adapted  to  the  novelty  of  his  situation  from  the  only  persons 
who  were  competent  to  afford  it.  Despising  the  credulity  that  accepted  all 
that  was  reported  of  the  dangers  of  Indian  warfare,  he  refused,  with  fatal 
skepticism,  to  believe  any  part  of  it.  It  seemed  to  him  degrading  to  the 
British  army  to  suppose  that  it  needed  the  directions  of  provincial  officers, 
or  could  be  endangered  by  the  hostility  of  Indian  foes. 

Filled  with  that  pride  which  goes  before  destruction,  Braddock  com- 
menced his  march  from  Will's  Creek,  on  the  10th  of  June,  at  the  head  of 
about  two  thousand  two  hundred  men.  The  advance  of  the  army,  una- 
voidably retarded  by  the  natural  impediments  of  the  region  it  had  to  traverse, 
was  additionally  and  unnecessarily  obstructed  by  the  stubborn  adherence 
of  Braddock,  amidst  the  boundless  woods  and  tangled  thickets  of  America, 
to  the  system  of  military  movements  adapted  to  the  open  and  extensive 


CHAP.  TV.]  ^  BRADDOCK'S  DEFEAT.    •  245 

plains  of  Europe.'  He  was  roused  at  length  to  greater  vigor  and  activity 
by  the  intelligence  that  the  French  at  Fort  Duquesne  expected  a  reinforce- 
ment of  five  hundred  regular  troops  ;  whereupon,  at  the  head  of  twelve 
hundred  men  whom  he  selected  from  the  different  corps,  and  with  ten  pieces 
of  cannon  and  the  necessary  ammunition  and  provisions,  he  resolved  to 
press  forward  to  the  point  of  destination, — leaving  the  residue  of  the  army, 
under  the  command  of  Colonel  Dunbar,  to  follow,  with  all  the  heavy  bag- 
gage, by  easy  and  leisurely  marches.  After  a  laborious  progress,  which 
was  still  unnecessarily  retarded,  and  yet  unaccompanied  by  the  precaution 
of  reconnoitring  the  woods,  Braddock  arrived  at  the  Monongahela  on  the 
eighth  of  July,  and  encamped  within  ten  miles  of  Fort  Duquesne.  Though 
Dunbar  was  now  forty  miles  behind  him,  and  the  proximity  of  the  enemy 
increased  the  danger  of  instantaneous  attack,  he  prepared  to  advance  the 
next  day  in  his  usual  style  of  march,  and  expected  to  invest  the  French 
fortress  without  opposition.  Sir  Peter  Halket  and  others  of  his  officers 
now  vainly  entreated  him  to  proceed  with  greater  caution,  to  convert  the 
column  of  march  into  an  order  of  battle,  and  to  employ  the  friendly  In- 
dians, who  attended  him,  as  an  advanced  guard,  to  explore  and  anticipate 
the  probabilities  of  ambuscade.  Not  less  vainly  did  Washington  represent 
that  the  profound  silence  and  apparent  solitude  of  the  gloomy  scenes  around 
them  afforded  no  security  in  American  warfare  against  deadly  and  immi- 
nent danger,  and  offer  with  the  provincial  troops  to  scour  and  occupy  the 
woods  in  the  front  and  on  the  flanks  of  the  main  body.  Braddock  treated 
with  equal  contempt  the  idea  of  aid  and  of  hostility  from  Indian  savages  ; 
and  disdainfully  rejecting  the  proposition  of  Washington,  ordered  the  pro- 
vincials to  form  the  rearguard  of  the  British  force. 

On  the  following  day,  this  infatuated  commander  resumed  his  march  [July 
9,  1755],  without  having  made  the  slightest  attempt  to  gain  intelligence  of 
the  situation  or  dispositions  of  the  enemy.  Three  hundred  British  regulars, 
conducted  by  Colonel  Gage,  composed  his  van  ;  and  Braddock  himself 
followed  at  some  distance  with  the  artillery  and  main  body  of  the  army 
divided  into  small  columns.  Thus  incautiously  advancing,  and  having  ar- 
rived about  noon  within  seven  miles  of  Fort  Duquesne,  —  in  an  open  wood 
undergrown  thickly  with  high  grass,  his  troops  were  suddenly  startled  by  the 
appalling  sound  of  the  Indian  war-cry  ;  and  in  the  same  moment  a  rattling 
shower  of  musketry  was  poured  on  their  front  and  left  flank  from  an 
enemy  so  artfully  concealed  that  not  a  man  of  them  could  be  descried. 
The  vanguard,  staggered  and  daunted,  fell  back  upon  the  main  body  ;  and 
the  firing  being  repeated  with  redoubled  fury  and  without  yet  disclosing 
either  the  numbers  or  the  position  of  the  assailants,  terror  and  confusion 
began  to  spread  among  the  British  troops  ;  and  many  of  them  sought 
safety  in  flight,  notwithstanding  all  the  efforts  of  their  officers,  some  of  whom 
behaved  very  gallantly,  to  recall  and  rally  them.  Braddock  himself,  if  he 
ever  possessed  any  of  the  higher  qualities  of  a  soldier,  was  in  this  emergence 
deserted  of  them  all,  and  exhibited  only  an  obstinate  and  unavailing  bravery. 
Instead  of  raking  the  thickets  and  bushes  whence  the  fire  was  poured  with 
grape-shot  from  the  ten  pieces  of  cannon  which  he  had  with  him,  or  push- 
ing forward  flanking  parties  of  his  Indians  against  the  enemy,  he  confined 

'  "  I  find,"  said  Washington,  in  a  letter  to  his  brother,  "  that,  instead  of  pushing  on  with 
vigor,  without  regarding  a  little  rough  road,  they  are  halting  to  level  every  mole-hill,  and  to 
erect  bridges  over  every  brook."  In  his  character  and  fortune,  Braddock  seems  to  have  re 
semblted  the  Roman  general,  Varui. 


U 


# 


246  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

his  attention  exclusively  to  the  regular  infantry.  To  them  the  only  command 
which  he  should  have  addressed  was  either  an  instant  retreat,  or  a  rapid 
charge  without  regard  to  methodical  order  and  regularity.  He  adopted 
neither  of  these  expedients  ;  but,  remaining  on  the  ground  where  he  was 
first  attacked,  under  an  incessant  and  galling  fire,  he  directed  the  brave  offi- 
cers and  men  who  continued  with  him  to  form  in  regular  line  and  advance. 
Meanwhile  his  troops  fell  fast  beneath  the  iron  tempest  that  hissed  around 
them,  and  almost  all  his  officers  were  singled  out  one  after  another  and 
killed  or  wounded  ;i  for  the  Indians,  who  always  take  deliberate  and  particu- 
lar aim  when  they  fire,  and  aim  preferably  at  the  officers,  easily  distinguished 
them  by  their  dress.  After  an  action  of  three  hours,  Braddock,  under  whom 
three  horses  were  killed,  and  whose  obstinacy  seemed  to  increase  with  the 
danger,  received  a  shot  through  the  right  arm  and  the  lungs,  and  was  carried 
off  the  field  by  Colonel  Gage.  All  the  officers  on  horseback,  except  Colonel 
Washington,  were  now  killed  or  wounded,  and  the  residue  of  the  troops 
by  whom  the  conflict  had  been  maintained  abandoned  it  in  dismay  and  dis- 
order. The  provincials,  who  were  among  the  last  to  leave  the  field,  were 
rallied  after  the  action  by  the  skill  and  presence  of  mind  of  Washington, 
and  covered  the  retreat  of  the  regulars.^     The  defeat  was  complete. 

About  seven  hundred  of  the  British  were  killed  or  wounded,  including  a 
considerable  proportion  of  the  Virginian  troops,  and*  sixty-four  out  of  eighty- 
five  officers.  Sir  Peter  Halket  fell  by  the  first  fire  at  the  head  of  his  regi- 
ment ;  and  the  general's  secretary,  son  to  Governor  Shirley,  was  killed 
soon  after.  The  artillery,  ammunition,  and  baggage  were  abandoned  to 
the  enemy  ;  and  the  defeated  army  fled  precipitately  to  the  camp  of  Dun- 
bar, where  Braddock  expired  of  his  wounds.^  Although  no  pursuit  was  at- 
tempted by  the  French,  who  afterwards  gave  out  that  their  numbers,  includ- 
ing Indian  auxiliaries,  had  amounted  only  to  four  hundred  men,'*  and,  with 
greater  probability,  that  their  loss  in  the  action  was  perfectly  insignificant, 
Dunbar,  struck  with  astonishment  and  alarm,  and  finding  that  his  troops 
were  infected  with  the  panic  and  disarray  of  the  fugitives,  hastily  recon- 
ducted them  to  Will's  Creek.  Here  letters  were  brought  to  him  from  the 
governors  of  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Pennsylvania,  beseeching  him  to  as- 
sist in  defending  the  frontiers  of  these  provinces,  while  they  would  endeav- 
our to  raise  from  the  inhabitants  reinforcements  that  might  enable  him  yet 
to  resume  the  enterprise  against  Fort  Duquesne.  But,  diffident  of  his 
safety,  he  declined  to  accede  to  their  desire  ;  and  abandoning  his  position 
at  Will's  Creek,  pursued  a  hasty  retreat  to  Philadelphia.  Since  their  ar- 
rival in  America,  and  especially  during  this  retreat,  the  conduct  of  the 
British  soldiers  towards  the  American  colonists  was  marked  by  hcentious 

^  Among  the  few  British  officers  who  escaped  with  life  and  untarnished  reputation,  though 
severely  wounded  in  this  engagement,  was  Horatio  Gates,  who  afterwards  settled  in  America, 
and  achieved  a  high  rank  and  brilliant  renown  in  the  service  of  his  adopted  country  during 
the  Revolutionary  War. 

**  In  a  sermon,  occasioned  by  this  expedition,  and  preached  soon  after  it,  Dr.  Davies,  a 
Virginian  clergyman,  thus  prophetically  expressed  himself:  —  "  As  a  remarkable  instance  of 
patriotism,  I  may  point  out  to  the  public  that  heroic  youth,  Colonel  Washington,  whom  I 
cannot  but  hope  Providence  has  hitherto  preserved  in  so  signal  a  manner  for  some  impor- 
tant service  to  his  country."     Rogers. 

3  This  unfortunate  commander  seems  never  to  have  surmounted  the  astonishment  created 
by  his  defeat.  "  Who  would  have  thought  it  ?  We  shall  know  better  how  to  deal  with 
them  another  time,"  were  his  last  words.  Washington  read  the  funeral  service  over  his  re- 
mains by  the  light  of  a  torch. 

♦  According  to  more  credible  accounts,  the  total  number  of  the  French  and  Indians  was  nine 
hundred. 


CHAP.  IV.]  RAVAGES  ON  THE  VIRGINIA  FRONTIER.  247 

rapine  and  insolence  ;  and  it  was  generally  declared  of  them  that  they 
were  much  more  formidable  to  the  people  whom  they  had  been  commis- 
sioned to  defend,  than  to  the  enemy  whom  they  had  undertaken  to  conquer. 

The  issue  of  this  expedition,  and  the  different  circumstances  and  result 
of  the  prior  campaign  in  Nova  Scotia,  could  not  fail  to  awaken  in  the  minds 
of  the  colonists  impressions  no  less  flattering  to  American  genius  and  valor 
than  unfavorable  to  British  ascendency.  Nothing,  indeed,  could  be  m.ore 
injurious  to  the  dignity  and  influence  of  Britain,  than  that,  at  the  very  time 
when  she  first  offended  and  mortified  the  colonists  by  the  superiority  which 
she  arrogated  to  her  own  soldiers,  these  soldiers,  commanded  by  a  British 
general,  should  have  incurred  a  disgraceful  defeat  by  neglecting  the  advice, 
of  the  provincial  officers,  and  should  have  been  saved  from  total  destruction 
only  by  the  firmness  and  valor  of  the  provincial  troops.^  But  the  Virginians 
at  present  had  little  leisure  for  such  considerations,  amidst  the  calamitous 
consequences  which  immediately  resulted  from  the  defeat  on  the  Ohio. 
Their  frontiers  were  now  exposed  to  the  hostilities  of  a  foe  roused  by  a 
formidable  attack,  inflamed  by  a  surprising  victory,  and  additionally  incited 
by  the  timidity  displayed  by  Dunbar  and  his  troops.  A  large  addition  to 
the  militia  of  the  province  was  decreed  by  the  assembly  ;  and  the  com- 
mand of  this  force  was  bestow£d  on  Colonel  Washington,  with  the  unusual 
privilege  of  appointing  his  own  field-oflicers.  But  whether  from  a  misdi- 
rected economy,  or  from  the  jealousy  w^hich  they  entertained  of  Governor 
Dinwiddie,  the  measures  of  the  Virginian  assembly  were  quite  inadequate  to 
the  purpose  of  effectual  defence.  The  skilful  and  indefatigable  exertions 
of  Washington,  seconded  by  his  militia  with  an  admirable  bravery  and 
warmth  of  patriotic  zeal,"^  proved  unavailing  to  stem  the  furious  and  deso- 
lating incursions  of  the  French  and  Indians,  who,  dividing  themselves  into 
small  parties  and  actively  pursuing  a  system  of  predatory  hostility,  rendered 
the  frontiers  of  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania  a  scene  of  carnage,  terror,  and 
desolation.  In  the  scenes  of  this  desultory  warfare,  unattended  with  glory, 
but  replete  with  action,  danger,  and  enterprise,  did  Washington  qualify  him- 
self to  sustain  the  greater  and  more  arduous  part  which  his  destiny  reserved 
for  him.^ 

The  defeat  sustained  on  the  Ohio  produced  a  very  unpropitious  effect  on 
the  enterprise  which  had  been  projected  against  Niagara,  under  the  conduct 
of  Shirley,  whom  Braddock's  death  advanced  to  the  chief  command  of  the 
British  forces  in  North  America.  The  troops  destined  both  for  this  ex- 
pedition and  for  the  attack  of  Crown  Point  were  ordered  to  assemble  at 
Albany.  Those  whom  Shirley  was  personally  to  lead  consisted  of  cer- 
tain regiments  of  regulars  furnished  by  New  England,  New  York,  and  New 
Jersey,  and  of  a  band  of  Indian  auxiliaries.     Various  causes  conspired  to 

*  "  This  whole  transaction  gave  us  Americans  the  first  suspicions  that  our  exalted  ideas  of 
the  prowess  of  British  regular  troops  had  not  been  well  founded."     Franklin. 

'  A  party  of  these  miiitia  having  been  conducted  to  the  frontiers  of  Virginia  during  the  win- 
ter, "  the  men,  who  were  indifferentlv  clothed,  without  tents,  and  exposed  to  the  rigor  and 
inclemency  of  the  weather,  discovered  great  aversion  to  the  service,  and  were  anxious,  and 
even  clamorous,  to  return  to  their  families ;  when  William  Winston,  a  lieutenant  in  one  of 
the  companies,  mounting  the  stump  of  a  tree,  addressed  them  with  such  keenness  of  invective, 
and  declaimed  with  such  force  of  eloquence  on  liberty  and  patriotism,  that,  when  he  con- 
cluded, the  general  cry  was,  '  T^t  us  march  on  !  lead  us  against  the  enemy  ! '  And  they  were 
now  willing,  nay,  anxious,  to  encounter  all  those  difficulties  and  dangers,  which,  but  a  few 
moments  before,  had  almost  produced  a  mutiny."     Wirt's  Life  of  Henry. 

*  Franklin's  Memoirs.  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington.  Smollett.  Burk.  Trumbull. 
Rogers.     Holmes.     McGuire's  Religious  Opinions  and  Character  of  Washington., 


248  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [  BOOK  X. 

retard  the  commencement  of  his  march  ;  and  while  he  was  advancing  to 
Oswego,  the  tidings  of  Braddock's  defeat  overtook  him  and  spread  con- 
sternation through  his  army.  Many  of  the  boatmen  and  sledgemen  who 
were  hired  to  transport  the  stores  and  provisions  now  began  to  desert  ; 
and  the  Indians  discovered  such  backwardness  to  follow  him,  or  even  to 
adh'^re  longer  to  the  declining  fortunes  of  England,  that  prudence  induced 
him  to  consume  a  great  deal  of  time  in  efforts  but  partially  successful  to  re- 
store their  confidence  and  regain  their  good-will.  On  his  arrival  at  Oswego 
[August  21,  1755],  his  forces  were  so  much  reduced  by  desertion,  and 
the  fidelity  of  the  Indians  appeared  so  precarious,  that  farther  delay  was 
rendered  inevitable  ;  and  though  he  finally  attempted  to  press  forward  with 
vigor  to  Niagara,  he  was  compelled  to  abandon  this  design  by  a  succession 
of  heavy  rains,  the  sickness  of  his  troops,  and  the  dispersion  of  the  few  In- 
dians whose  constancy  endured  somewhat  longer  than  that  of  the  rest  of 
their  countrymen.  Leaving  Colonel  Mercer  at  Oswego,  with  a  garrison  of 
seven  hundred  men,  and  instructions  to  build  two  additional  forts  for  the 
security  of  the  place,  Shirley  reconducted  his  unsuccessful  army  to  Albany. 
The  forces  which  were  to  proceed  from  Albany  against  Crown  Point 
consisted  of  militia  regiments,  amounting  to  between  five  and  six  thousand 
men,  supplied  by  the  New  England  States  and  New  York.  By  the  ad- 
vice of  Shirley,  the  command  of  this  expedition  was  intrusted  to  William 
Johnson,  a  native  of  Ireland,  who  had  emigrated  to  New  York,  and  was  now 
a  member  of  the  council  of  this  province.  Johnson  was  distinguished  by 
uncommon  strength  of  body,  and  possessed  a  hardy,  coarse,  and  vigorous 
mind,  united  with  an  ambitious  and  enterprising  temper.  He  began  life  as 
a  common  soldier,  and  in  the  parent  state  could  hardly  have  emerged 
above  the  level  of  this  condition  ;  but  in  the  colonies  his  genius  and  good 
fortune  advanced  him  to  wealth,  title,  and  fame.  For  several  years  he  had 
resided  on  the  banks  of  the  Mohawk  River  ;  and,  studiously  cultivating  the. 
friendship  of  the  Six  Nations,  had  acquired  a  more  powerful  ascendant  over 
them  than  any  of  his  countrymen  ever  before  enjoyed.  In  conformity  with 
the  expectation  to  which  he  owed  his  appointment,  he  prevailed  with.  Hen- 
drick,  one  of  the  chiefs  of  that  confederacy,  to  join  the  expedition  against 
Crown  Point  at  the  head  of  three  hundred  warriors  of  his  tribe.  Johnson, 
who  received  separate  commissions  from  every  American  province  which 
contributed  to  the  enterprise,  had  never  before  witnessed  a  military  cam- 
paign ;  and  his  troops,  except  a  few  of  the  New  Englanders  who  had 
shared  in  the  reduction  of  Louisburg,  were  equally  inexperienced.  While 
Johnson  was  collecting  his  artillery  and  military  stores.  General  Lyman, 
the  second  in  command,  advanced  with  the  troops  to  the  carrying-place 
between  Hudson's  River  and  Lake  George,  about  sixty  miles  from  Albany, 
and  began  to  build  a  fortress,  which  received  the  name  of  Fort  Edward,  on 
the  east  side  of  the  Hudson.  Having  joined  his  army,  Johnson  left  a  part 
of  it  as  a  garrison  to  Fort  Edward,  and  towards  the  end  of  August  pro- 
ceeded with  the  main  body  to  the  southern  extremity  of  Lake  George. 
Here  he  learned  from  his  Indian  scouts  that  a  party  of  French  and  Indians 
had  established  a  fort  at  Ticonderoga,  which  is  situated  on  the  isthmus 
between  the  north  end  of  Lake  George  and  the  southern  shore  of  Lake 
Champlain,  about  fifteen  miles  from  Crown  Point-  As  the  fortifications  at 
Ticonderoga  were  reported  to  be  incomplete,  Johnson,  deeming  that  the 
conquest  of  the  place  would  be  attended  with  little  difficulty,  and  regarding 


CHAP.  IV.]  EXPEDITION  AGAINST  CROWN  POINT.  -  249 

h  as  a  key  to  the  main  object  of  his  enterprise,  was  preparing  to  advance 
against  it,  when  he  was  suddenly  reduced  to  act  on  the  defensive  by  the  mo- 
tions of  the  enemy,  and  the  unexpected  tidings  that  reached  him  of  the 
force  wiiich  they  possessed. 

Baron  Dieskau,  an  able  and  experienced  officer,  had  now  arrived  in 
Canada  with  a  strong  reinforcement  of  troops  from  France  ;  and  having 
collected  a  considerable  army  both  of  French  and  Indians,  was  advancing 
against  the  British  settlements  with  the  purpose  of  striking  an  important 
blow.  Johnson  hastened  to  transmit  this  alarming  intelligence  to  the  prov- 
inces whose  troops  he  commanded,  and  especially  to  the  government  of 
Massachusetts,  —  together  with  an  urgent  request  for  further  assistance,  which 
he  reckoned  indispensable  to  the  success  of  his  enterprise  and  even  to  the 
safety  of  his  army.  The  issue  of  this  application  affords  another  instance 
of  that  unconquerable  spirit  which  distinguished  the  people  of  New  Eng- 
land. Massachusetts  had  suppHed  the  greatest  part  of  the  force  which  John- 
son already  commanded,  and  by  her  various  military  exertions  incurred  an 
expense  disproportioned  to  her  resources,  and  of  which  she  anxiously  so- 
licited a  reimbursement  from  the  parent  state.  The  reputation  of  Dieskau. 
and  the  advantage  which  he  possessed  in  commanding  disciplined  troops, 
contrasted  with  the  inexperience  of  Johnson  and  the  American  militia, 
gave  rise  to  apprehensions,  which,  combining  with  the  depression  occasioned 
by  Braddock's  defeat,  produced  a  general  despair  of  the  success  of  the 
expedition  against  Crown  Point.  But  this  was  a  favorite  enterprise  with 
the  people  of  New  England,  and  they  were  determined  to  persist  in  it  as 
long  as  possible,  and  to  support  to  the  utmost  of  their  power  the  brave  men 
who  were  engaged  in  conducting  it.  A  large  subsidiary  force  was  raised 
in  Massachusetts,  and  despatched  with  the  hope  of  at  least  extricating 
Johnson  and  his  army  from  the  danger  of  being  compelled  to  surrender  to 
the  superior  power  of  the  enemy.  But  the  danger  was  over  before  this  re- 
inforcement reached  the  scene  of  action.  Dieskau  had  been  ordered  to  di- 
rect his  first  effort  to  the  reduction  of  the  British  post  at  Oswego,  of  the 
importance  of  which  the  French  government  was  fully  aware  ;  and  he  had 
already  commenced  his  march  for  this  purpose,  when  the  tidings  of  John- 
son's expedition  induced  him  to  reserve  his  force  for  the  defence  of  Crown 
Point.  Finding  that  Johnson's  army,  which  was  inferior  both  in  number 
and  experience,  did  not  venture  to  approach,  he  determined  to  advance 
against  it ;  and  expecting  an  easy  victory  and  the  consequent  fall  of  Fort 
Edward,  proposed,  as  an  ulterior  measure,  to  invade  Albany,  to  ravage 
the  neighbouring  settlements,  and  deprive  the  British  of  all  communication 
with  Oswego.  His  purpose  would  have  succeeded,  if  the  fate  of  the  two 
armies  had  depended  on  the  comparative  skill  of  their  commanders.  But 
victory,  though  commonly,  is  not  indefeasibly,  the  prize  of  either  the  skilful 
or  the  strong. 

Johnson  was  apprized  of  Dieskau's  approach,  but  ignorant  both  of  his 
position  and  of  his  force  ;  for  the  Indians,  who  were  his  scouts,  had  no 
words  or  signs  for  expressing  any  large  number,  and  customarily  pointed 
to  the  hair  of  their  heads,  or  to  the  stars  in  the  firmament,  when  they 
meant  to  denote  any  quantity  which  exceeded  their  reckoning.  It  was  im- 
possible to  collect  from  their  reports  whether  the  French  fell  short  of  a 
thousand,  or  exceeded  ten  thousand  in  number.  Yet,  notwithstanding  this 
uncertainty,  Johnson,  who  had  fortified  his  camp  at  Lake  George,  commit- 

voL.   II.  32 


250  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

ted  tlie  rashness  of  detaching  a  thousand  men,  under  the  command  of  a 
brave  officer,  Colonel  Ephraim  Williams,  together  with  Hendrick  and  the 
Indian  auxiliaries,  to  attack  the  enemy.  [September  6,  1755.]  This  de- 
tachment had  hardly  advanced  three  miles  beyond  the  camp,  when  it  found 
itself  almost  entirely  surrounded  by  the  French  army,  and,  after  a  gallant 
but  hopeless  conflict,  was  defeated  with  some  loss  and  put  to  flight.  Wil- 
liams fell  in  this  encounter  ;  and  Hendrick,^  with  several  of  his  Indians, 
who  fought  with  heroic  bravery,  were  also  among  the  slain.  The  French, 
whose  loss  was  not  inferior,  pursued  the  fugitives  to  their  camp,  and,  had 
they  made  an  instantaneous  attack,  they  would  probably  have  carried  it ; 
but,  fortunately  for  its  defenders,  a  pause  took  place,  which,  though  short, 
gave  time  for  their  panic  and  confusion  to  subside.  Dieskau  had  learned  a 
few  days  before  that  Johnson  had  no  cannon  at  his  camp  ;  and  he  waS  not 
aware,  that,  in  the  interim,  a  number  of  these  engines  had  been  seasonably 
transported  to  it  from  Fort  Edward.  Dismayed  by  the  unexpected  fire  of 
this  artillery,  the  Canadian  mihtia  and  their  Indian  auxiliaries  fled  into  the 
Woods,  whence  the  discharges  of  their  musketry  against  a  fortified  camp 
produced  little  effect.  The  French  regulars,  however,  maintained  their 
ground,  and  with  them,  Dieskali,  in  an  engagement  which  was  prolonged  for 
several  hours,  conducted  a  vigorous  assault  upon  Johnson's  position.  John- 
ison  displayed  a  firm  and  intrepid  spirit  during  his  brief  participation  in  the 
commencement  of  the  action  ;  but  having  soon  received  a  painful  wound, 
he  was  compelled  to  retire  to  his  tent  and  abandon  the  command  to  Lyman. 
Under  the  conduct  of  this  American  officer,  his  countrymen  defended  their 
camp  with  such  resolution  and  success,  that  the  French  were  finally  re- 
pulsed with  the  loss  of  nearly  a  thousand  men.  Dieskau  Was  mortally 
tvounded  and  taken  prisoner  ;  and  his  discomfited  forces,  assembling  at  some 
distance  and  preparing  to  refresh  themselves  with  food,  were  Suddenly  at- 
tacked by  a  small  party  of  New  York  and  New  Hampshire  militia  com- 
iiianded  by  Captains  Folsom  and  M'Ginnes,  and,  flying  in  confusion,  left  the 
tvhole  of  their  baggage  and  ammunition  a  prey  to  the  victors.  In  the  vari- 
ous conflicts  by  which  this  important  day  was  signalized,  there  were  killed 
or  mortally  wounded  about  a  hundred  and  thirty  of  the  British  provincials, 
and  among  others  Captain  M'Ginnes,  by  whom  the  success  was  corhpleted, 
knd  Colonel  Titcomb  of  Massachusetts,  who  had  previously  gained  the 
praise  of  distinguished  bravery  at  the  siege  of  Louisburg. 

Now  was  the  time  for  the  British  to  improve  the  advantage  they  had 
Won,  and  reap  the  full  fruit  of  their  victory  by  a  vigorous  pursuit  of  the 
flying  enemy  and  by  investing  Crown  Point,  which,  from  the  smallness  of  its 
garrison,  and  the  impression  produced  by  the  defeat  of  Dieskau,  would 
have  probably  afforded  them  an  easy  conquest.  But  Johnson  was  less 
desirous  of  extending  the  public  advantage  than  of  reaping  and  securing  his 
own  personal  share  in  it  ;  and  sensible  of  the  claim  he  had  acquired  on 
royal  favor,  he  was  averse  to  expose  it,  while  yet  unrewarded,  to  the  hazard 
of  diminution.  He  directed  his  troops  to  strengthen  the  fortifications  of  his 
camp,  in  utter  disregard  of  the  spirited  counsel  of  Shirley,  who  pressed  him 
to  resume  active  operations,  and  at  least  to  dislodge  the  French  from  Ticon- 
deroga  before  they  had  time  to  fortify  this  post  and  recover  from  their  sur- 
prise and  consternation.  Whether  from  negligence  or  from  a  politic  defer- 
ence to  the  sentiments  of  the  British  court,  he  maintained  scarcely  any  com- 
»  ge6  Note  XTV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


CHAP.  IV.]  ABANDONMENT  OF  THE   EXPEDITION.  25t 

raunication  with  the  New  England  governments,  and  sent  the  French  general 
and  the  other  prisoners  to  New  York,  —  although  Massachusetts  had  claimed 
the  distinction  of  receiving  them,  as  due  to  the  preponderance  of  her  inter- 
est in  the  army  by  which  they  were  taken.  With  the  additional  troops  late- 
ly raised  in  this  province,  and  which  were  now  united  to  Johnson's  original 
and  victorious  army,  it  was  not  doubted  that  he  would  still  attempt  some 
farther  enterprise  before  the  close  of  the  year.  But  he  suffered  the  oppor- 
tunity to  pass  by,  and  consumed  the  time  in  lingering  and  irresolute  dehb- 
eration,  till,  by  the  advice  of  a  council  of  war,  the  attack  of  Crown  Point, 
and  all  other  active  operations,  were  abandoned  for  the  present  season. 
[October,  1755.]  His  army  was  then  disbanded,  with  the  exception  of  six 
hundred  men,  who  were  appointed  to  garrison  Fort  Edward,  and  another 
strong  fort  which  was  erected  at  the  southern  extremity  of  Lake  George  and 
received  the  name  of  Fort  WiUiam  Henry. 

The  French,  taking  advantage  of  Johnson's  remissness,  exerted  them- 
selves to  strengthen  Ticonderoga  ;  while  their  Indian  allies,  provoked  by  the 
conflict  at  Lake  George,  and  encouraged  by  the  seeming  timidity  or  inca- 
pacity of  the  victor,  indulged  their  revenge  and  animosity  in  furious  and 
destructive  ravages  on  the  frontiers  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire. 
The  British  colonists,  though  at  first  highly  elated  with  the  victory  over 
Dieskau,  perceived  with  chagrin  and  disappointment  that  the  advantages  of 
it  were  entirely  thrown  away,  and  that  the  issue  of  an  enterprise  which 
began  with  a  signal  defeat  of  the  enemy  had  been  to  render  the  chief  object 
of  it  more  difficult  of  attainment  than  it  was  before.  Nor  was  their  dissat- 
isfaction abated  by  perceiving  that  Johnson  alone  derived  any  substantial 
benefit  from  the  victory,  and  that  to  him  exclusively  was  the  gratitude  of 
Britain  expressed  for  the  first  battle  in  which  the  honor  of  her  arrps  had 
been  vindicated  since  the  coirimencement  of  hostilities  with  France.  In 
Johnson's  reports  of  the  action  at  Lake  George  he  assumed  the  whole 
merit  of  it  to  himself ;  and  while  the  superior  claims  of  Lyman  and  other 
native  Americans  were  unknown,  or  at  least  unnoticed,  in  England,  John- 
son received  from  the  king  the  dignity  of  a  baronet,  together  with  the  office 
of  royal  superintendent  of  Indian  affairs,  and  from  the  parliament  a  grant  of 
five  thousand  pounds,  which  was  in  fact  paid  by  the  colonies,  as  it  was  de- 
ducted from  the  sum  of  one  hundred  and  fifteen  thousand  pounds  voted  this 
year  by  the  House  of  Commons  to  New  England,  New  York,  and  New 
Jersey,  in  consideration  of  the  burdens  entailed  upon  them  by  the  war.^ 

While  the  British  colonies  were  thus  balked  of  the  fruits  which  might 
have  been  reaped  from  the  victory  at  Lake  George,  the  French,  with  politic 
and  assiduous  exertion,  were  cultivating  the  advantage  they  obtained  at  Fort 
Duquesne.  They  were  particularly  successful  in  improving  the  favorable 
impression  of  their  genius  and  good  fortune  which  the  defeat  of  Braddock 
produced  on  the  Indian  tribes  inhabiting  the  territory  adjacent  to  the  river 
Ohio  ;  and  in  the  course  of  this  year,  some  of  their  emissaries,  united  with 
envoys  deputed  by  these  tribes,  made  their  first  attempt  to  seduce  the  Cher- 
okees,  who  had  been  hitherto  the  firmest  Indian  allies  of  Britain.  This  na- 
tion differed  in  some  respects  from  all  the  other  branches  of  the  Indian 
race,^  and  especially  from  those  roving  tribes  who  possessed  no  fixed  or 

»  Smollett.  TrumbuTT  Minot.  Hutchinson"  Belknap.  Dwight's  Travels.  The  sum 
awarded  to  the  colonies  was  a  very  inadequate  compensation. 

•  "  They  are  seldom  intemperate  in  drinking,  but  when  they  can  be  so  on  free  cost.  Other- 
wise, love  of  driak  yields  to  covetousness  j  ,^  wic©  pQfgweLy.Jo  b©  f^i^  in  any  Indian  b#t.)i 
Cherokee."     JoJ^  Wesley's  «/in^«^. 


252  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

constant  habitations.  From  time  immemorial  they  had  occupied  the  territory 
which  they  still  inhabited  ;  and  in  speaking  of  their  forefathers,  customarily 
affirmed  that  ''  they  sprung  from  that  ground,"  or  that  '^  they  descended 
from  the  clouds  upon  those  hills."  They  termed  the  Europeans  .ATs^/iin^s, 
and  themselves  the  beloved  people.  Hitherto  they  had  regarded  the  French 
with  especial  aversion,  and  contemptuously  remarked  of  them,  that  they  were 
light  as  a  feather,  fickle  as  the  wind,  and  deceitful  as  serpents ;  and  valuing 
themselves  on  the  grave  and  stately  decorum  of  their  own  manners,  they  re- 
sented the  sprightly  levity  of  French  deportment  as  an  unpardonable  insult. 
But  now  the  chief  warrior  of  the  Cherokees  sent  in  haste  a  message  to  Glen, 
the  governor  of  South  Carolina,  acquainting  him  with  the  intrigues  of  the 
French  and  their  Indian  partisans,  and  advising  him  to  hold  a  general  con- 
ference with  the  Cherokee  tribes,  and  to  renew  the  former  treaties  of  his 
countrymen  with  them.  Glen,  sensible  of  the  importance  of  securing  the 
favor  of  these  powerful  tribes,  who  at  this  time  could  bring  about  three  thou- 
sand warriors  into  the  field,  willingly  acceded  to  the  proposition  of  a  con- 
ference, and  met  the  chiefs  of  the  Cherokees  in  their  own  country,  at  a 
place  two  hundred  miles  distant  from  Charleston.  The  conference  that  en- 
sued lasted  about  a  week,  and  terminated  in  the  renovation  of  a  friendly 
league,  and  in  an  arrangement,  by  which,  to  the  satisfaction  of  both  parties^ 
a  large  section  of  their  territory  was  ceded  by  the  Indians  to  the  king  of 
Great  Britain.  This  acquisition,  which  was  defined  by  deeds  of  conveyance 
executed  by  the  chiefs  of  the  Cherokees  in  the  name  of  their  people,  oc- 
casioned the  removal  of  the  Indians  to  a  greater  distance  from  the  English, 
and  enabled  the  inhabitants  of  Carolina  to  extend  their  settlements  into  the 
interior  of  the  country  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  their  numbers.  Soon 
after  the  cession  took  place.  Governor  Glen  built  a  fort,  which  was  named 
Prince  George,  at  a  spot  on  Savannah  River  about  three  hundred  miles  from 
Charleston,  and  within  gunshot  of  an  Indian  town  called  Keowee.  It  con- 
tained barracks  for  a  hundred  men,  and  was  designed  for  the  security  of 
the  western  frontiers  of  CaroHna.^ 

To  the  tumult  and  agitation  of  war  in  North  America  there  was  now 
added  the  terror  inspired  by  an  earthquake,  of  which  the  shock  was  more 
violent  than  any  that  had  ever  before  been  experienced  in  this  quarter 
of  the  world.  [November  18,  1755.]  It  continued  at  least  four  minutes  ; 
and,  shaping  its  course  from  northwest  to  southeast,  caused  the  earth  and 
its  warring  inhabitants  to  tremble  throughout  an  extent  of  nineteen  hundred 
miles.  The  most  remarkable  effect  of  this  convulsion  of  nature  was  the  dif- 
fusion of  an  increased  warmth  and  solemnity  of  rehgious  sentiment  among  the 
people  of  New  England,  who,  in  all  seasons  of  danger  and  alarm,  still,  like 
their  excellent  forefathers,  elevated  their  view  from  secondary  causes  to 
that  Being  without  whose  permission  and  appointment  no  evil  can  assault 
and  no  danger  menace.  The  impression  thus  produced  on  their  minds  was 
additionally  heightened  by  the  tidings  that  arrived,  shortly  after,  of  the  dread- 
ful catastrophe  which  in  the  same  month  attended  the  great  earthquake  at 
Lisbon.  In  the  fate  of  the  Portuguese  the  pious  New  Englanders  recog- 
nized, with  emotions  of  awe  and  admiration,  the  extremity  of  their  own 
danger  and  the  magnitude  of  their  deliverance  ;  and  the  government  of 
Massachusetts,  in  particular,  solemnized  the  general  alarm  by  appointing  a 
day  of  humiliation  and   prayer,  "  in  acknowledgment  of  the  distinguishing 

mercy  of  God,  and  in  submission  to  his  righteous  judgments."  ^ 

»~Hewit.  ~       ^  s»  S.  Smith.    Minot.  ' 


CHAP.  IV.]        MORRIS  AND  THE  PENNSYLVANIA  ASSEMBLY.  253 

In  the  close  of  this  year  [December  12,  1755],  Shirley,  prompted  by 
his  enterprising  temper,  and  entided  by  his  supreme  command  of  the  British 
forces  in  America  to  take  the  lead  in  all  measures  and  deliberations  for 
the  general  defence,  convoked  a  council  of  war  at  New  York,  which  was 
attended  by  the  governors  of  this  province  and  of  Connecticut,  Maryland, 
and  Pennsylvania.  Here  a  plan  of  operations  for  the  next  campaign  was 
concerted  on  a  very  extensive  scale  ;  but  in  order  to  the  definitive  adoption 
of  this  or  any  other  general  plan,  it  was  necessary  that  it  should  be  canvassed 
and  approved  by  the  assemblies  of  all  the  provinces  which  were  to  participate 
in  its  execution  ;  and  this  preliminary  arrangement  was  always  embarrassed 
by  difficulties  and  obstructions.  Shirley  had  found  and  still  continued  to  find 
it  no  easy  matter  to  persuade  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  to  embark  as 
deeply  as  he  wished  in  military  enterprise  ;  and  his  urgency  with  them,  co- 
operating with  the  jealousy  awakened  by  his  appointment  to  the  chief 
command  of  the  forces  in  America,  provoked  an  opposition  against  him, 
which  only  his  prudence  and  conciliatory  address  prevented  from  becoming 
formidable  to  his  authority.  A  rivalship,  which  arose  out  of  the  expedition 
against  Crown  Point,  between  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  proved  favor- 
able to  Shirley's  popularity  in  his  own  province,  though  it  obstructed  the 
concert  and  harmony  between  the  legislatures  of  those  States.^  We  have 
already  had  occasion  to  advert  to  the  causes  by  w^hich  disunion  and  distrust 
were  promoted  between  the  governors  and  assemblies  of  several  of  the 
other  North  American  provinces. 

The  conduct  of  public  affairs  was  more  embarrassed  by  political  dis- 
sension in  Pennsylvania  than  in  any  of  the  other  colonies.  Hamilton,  the 
governor  of  this  province,  a  worthy  and  honorable  man,  impatient  of  the 
continual  disputes  with  the  assembly  to  which  he  was  exposed  by  his  fidehty 
to  the  instructions  of  the  proprietaries,  resigned  his  office  in  1754,  and  was 
succeeded  by  Robert  Hunter  Morris,  son  of  Lewis  Morris,  governor  of 
New  Jersey.  Morris,  an  ingenious  man,  but  wrong-headed  humorist,  in- 
heriting the  pecufiar  taste  and  teniper  of  his  father,  delighted  above  measure 
in  argument  and  controversy,  and  gladly  embraced  the  prospect  of  such  a 
scene  of  disputation  as  the  presidency  over  the  Quaker  politicians  of  Penn- 
sylvania was  likely  to  afford.  But  either  he  undervalued  the  controversial 
vigor  and  spleen  which  the  provincial  assembly  was  endowed  with,  or  he 
overvalued  his  own  power  of  retorting  and  enduring  its  hostiHty.  A  series 
of  interminable  disputes  with  this  body,  into  which  he  plunged  directly  after 
his  assumption  of  the  government,  soon  degenerated  into  the  most  violent 
and  even  scurrilous  altercations,  wherein  he  found  himself  completely  over- 
matched both  in  acrimony  and  perseverance  of  vituperation  by  his  Quaker 
antagonists.  "  His  administration,"  says  Franklin,  ''  was  a  continual  battle, 
in  which  he  labored  hard  to  blacken  the  assembly,  who  wiped  off  his  col- 
oring as  fast  as  he  laid  it  on,  and  placed  it  in  return  thick  upon  his  own 
face."  With  all  his  relish  for  disputation,  and  the  advantage  of  a  contin- 
ual flow  of  mirth  and  good-humor,^  it  is  surprising  that  Morris  should  have 
sustained,  for  two  years,  such  a  contest  with  a  party  supported  by  the  ex- 
haustless  resources  of  Quaker  conceit  and  pertinacity,  and  supplied  with  the 
sharpest  artillery  of  wit  by  the  pen  of  Franklin,  who,  as  clerk  of  the  as- 
sembly, lent  his  aid  in  digesting  the  efl^usions  of  its  spleen  and  ingenuity. 
At  length,  in  defiance  of  his  anticipations,  this  governor,  like  his  predeces- 
'  Minot.  '  See  Note  XV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  * 

V 


254  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X 

sor,  became  completely  disgusted  with  his  office,  and,  resigning  it  in  1756, 
was  succeeded  by  William  Penny,  an  Englishman,  and  a  captain  in  the 
British  army. 

These  dissensions  were  chiefly  occasioned  by  the  meanness  and  avarice 
of  the  proprietaries,  who  prohibited  their  lieutenants  or  governors  from  con- 
senting to  any  tax  upon  provincial  property,  unless  their  own  large  reve- 
nues, derived  from  quitrents,  and  all  the  lands  which  they  had  acquired  from 
the  Indians,  but  had  not  yet  cultivated  nor  farmed  out  to  the  colonists,  were 
exempted  from  its  operation.  Engrossed  with  the  interest  of  this  dispute, 
and  alarmed  by  the  menacing  aspect  of  public  affairs,  the  Quaker  majority 
in  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly  seemed  of  late  to  have  waived  or  abated 
their  repugnance  to  military  operations.  They  passed  bills  for  levying  ten 
thousand  pounds  to  purchase  provisions  for  the  troops  appointed  to  march 
against  Crown  Point  ;  and  fifty  thousand  pounds  in  aid  of  Braddock's  ex- 
pedition against  Fort  Duquesne.  But  these  bills  produced  only  a  repetition 
of  disputes  with  the  governor,  who  vainly  offered  to  affirm  them,  on  condi- 
tion of  his  being  allowed  to  modify  one  of  their  clauses  by  the  alteration 
of  a  single  word.  The  clause  to  which  he  referred  enacted,  "  that  all  es- 
tates, real  and  personal,  were  to  be  taxed  ;  those  of  the  proprietaries  not 
excepted  "  ;  and  his  proposition  was,  that  the  word  not  should  be  can- 
celled, and  the  word  only  substituted  in  its  place.  The  disaster  at  Fort 
Duquesne  occasioned  a  temporary  suspension  of  this  controversy,  and 
gave  rise  to  measures  which  produced  a  remarkable  change  in  the  political 
state  of  Pennsylvania.  When  the  tidings  of  that  disgraceful  defeat  arrived 
in  England,  the  partisans  of  the  provincial  assembly  found  it  easy  to  direct 
the  public  irritation  against  the  proprietary  family.  The  English  willingly 
vented  their  impatience  and  mortification  in  clamorous  reproach  of  the  self- 
ishness and  injustice  of  the  policy  pursued  by  the  proprietaries  ;  and  some 
persons  went  so  far  as  to  maintain,  that,  by  obstructing  the  defence  of  the 
province,  they  had  forfeited  their  right  to  administer  its  government.  In- 
timidated by  this  expression  of  public  feeling  in  England,  the  proprietaries 
commanded  their  receiver-general  to  add  five  thousand  pounds  of  their 
money  to  whatever  sum  might  be  levied  by  the  assembly  for  the  common 
defence.  This  overture,  being  reported  to  the  assembly,  was  accepted 
in  lieu  of  a  direct  contingent  to  a  general  tax  ;  and  a  new  bill,  imposing  an 
assessment  of  sixty  thousand  pounds  on  the  province  for  the  purpose  of 
military  defence,  with  an  exemption  of  the  proprietary  estates,  was  accord- 
ingly passed  into  a  law.  Contemporary  with  this  law,  and  the  fruit  partly 
of  Frankhn's  address,  and  partly  of  the  general  alarm  that  prevailed,  was  a 
bill,  which,  though  it  encountered  some  Quaker  opposition,  w^as  yet  ratified 
by  a  majority  of  the  assembly,  for  embodying  and  training  a  regiment  of 
provincial  mihtia  to  be  raised  by  voluntary  enlistment.  It  was  provided, 
with  special  and  unnecessary  precaution,  that  no  member  of  the  Quaker 
society  should  be  required  to  serve  in  the  regiment  that  was  thus  directed 
to  be  raised.  This  superfluous  clause,  which,  if  it  had  really  conveyed  any 
additional  advantage  or  security,  should  have  also  included  the  Moravian 
settlers,  was  probably  intended  as  an  empty  compliment  to  the  still  extant 
out  dechning  political  preponderance  of  the  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania.  So 
strong  and  general  at  this  time  was  the  military  spirit  that  had  been  aroused 
in  this  province,  that  some  even  of  the  Moravian  societies  declared  their 


CHAP.  IV.]     RESIGNATION  OF  CIVIL  POWER  BY  THE  QUAKERS.        255 

approbation  of  defensive  war,  and,  fortifying  their  settlements,  prepared  to 
repel  hostile  aggression.^ 

The  Pennsylvanian  Quakers  now  began  to  perceive  the  impossibility  of 
reconciling  the  preservation  of  their  sectarian  principles  with  the  admin- 
istration of  political  power  in  the  colony  which  their  fathers  had  planted.  It 
was  chiefly  with  the  hope  of  cultivating  those  principles,  and  exhibiting  them 
to  the  world  in  a  high  degree  of  practical  perfection, ^  that  they  originally 
incurred  the  lot  of  exiles  and  undertook  the  cares  of  government.  But, 
step  by  step,  they  had  been  led  on  to  pursue  a  career,  as  colonists  and  poli- 
ticians, on  which,  as  votaries  of  Quakerism,  it  was  impossible  for  them  to 
deflect  with  satisfaction.  The  first  signal  dereliction  of  their  principles  was 
the  appropriation  of  negro  slaves,  —  an  evil,  which,  of  late  years,  had  spread 
with  rank  and  baleful  increase  among  them.  Professing  unbounded  meek- 
ness and  patience,  they  distinguished  themselves  in  their  provincial  assembly 
by  extreme  contentiousness  and  susceptibility  of  provocation,  and  by  the 
promptitude  and  inveteracy  with  which  they  resented  and  retorted  every  in- 
jury and  affront.  They  were  at  an  early  period  seduced  into  a  covert 
sanction  of  war,  and  now  permitted  a  militia  law  to  pass  in  an  assembly 
of  which  they  possessed  the  command.  But  there  always  existed  a  party 
among  the  Quakers  by  whom  these  evils  were  deplored  ;  and  now  the  soci- 
ety in  general  began  to  open  their  eyes  to  the  inconsistency  of  which  they 
were  guilty,  and  to  the  inevitable  fruits  of  its  farther  continuance.  They 
perceived  that  it  was  vain  to  pretend  any  longer  to  control  by  Quaker  prin- 
ciple the  proceedings  of  an  assembly  in  which  they  had  assented  to  a 
militia  law  ;  they  foresaw  that  the  British  government  would  (as  it  actually 
did)  forthwith  endeavour  to  obtain  a  farther  participation  in  military  meas- 
ures from  the  assembly  ;  and  justly  concluded  that  they  themselves  must 
now  either  renounce  entirely  their  political  capacity,  or  consent  to  merge 
entirely  the  Quaker  in  the  politician.  They  chose,  though  with  reluctance, 
the  alternative  most  creditable  to  their  sectarian  sincerity  and  personal  disin- 
terestedness ;  and,  with  a  rare  virtue,  adhered  to  their  religious  principles 
and  resigned  the  political  authority  which  they  had  enjoyed  since  the  foun- 
dation of  the  colony.  Their  administration  of  power  was  characterized  by 
nothing  so  becoming  and  praiseworthy  as  the  grace  with  which  it  was  thus 
surrendered  ;  and  yet,  with  all  their  failings  and  infirmities,  they  had  rendered 
it  instrumental  in  no  mean  degree  to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  commu- 
nity over  which  they  presided.  So  frugal  was  their  system  of  government, 
that  the  produce  of  the  custom-house  and  a  small  excise  had  proved  suffi- 
cient to  defray  the  ordinary  public  expenditure.  The  remarkable  proceed- 
ing which  we  have  commemorated  was  not  all  at  once  carried  into  general 
effect ;  but  a  number  of  Quakers  now  seceded  from  the  assembly,  and  de- 
clined to  accept  the  offices  of  government  under  a  political  system  by  which 
a  military  establishment  was  sanctioned  ;   and  their  example  was   gradually 

'  The  first  Moravian  colony  in  North  Carolina  also  fortified  their  settlement.     Williamson. 

The  Quakers  in  New  Jersey,  it  would  seem,  did  not  at  this  period  enjoy  an  exemption  from 
military  service.  A  distinguished  member  of  their  society  relates,  that,  in  the  year  1757,  a 
number  of  Quakers  were  summoned  to  join  the  New  Jersey  militia,  and  march  against  the 
French  and  Indians  ;  and  that  several  consented  to  obey  the  requisition.  He  reproaches 
many  professors  of  Quakerism  with  evincing  no  other  fruits  of  their  pretended  principles,  ex- 
cept aversion  to  the  danger  and  fatigues  of  war  ;  and  represents  a  great  majority  of  the  society 
as  consenting  to  pay  war  taxes ;  adding,  "  that  a  carnal  mind  is  gaining  upon  us,  I  believe, 
will  not  be  denied."     John  Woolman's  Journal. 

*  See  Note  XXIX.,  at  the  end  of  Volume  I.  , 


256  HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

followed  by  others  of  their  fellow-sectaries,  till,  first,  the  Quaker  majority- 
was  extinguished  in  the  assembly,  and,  at  length,  few  or  no  Quakers  at  all 
remained  in  this  body.^ 

This  policy  proved  no  less  favorable  to  the  personal  happiness  and  virtue 
of  the  Pennsylvanian  Quakers  than  advantageous  to  their  sectarian  fame. 
Dedicating  henceforward  to  philanthropic  labors  the  talents  that  political  de- 
bate had  absorbed  and  perverted,  they  caused  the  genuine  principles  of 
Quaker  equity  and  benevolence  to  shine  forth  with  a  strength  and  lustre  that 
gradually  purged  off  all  or  nearly  all  the  peculiar  stains  and  specks  that 
Quakerism  had  contracted  in  America.  By  a  remarkable,  and  surely  not 
an  accidental  coincidence,  the  secession  of  the  Quakers  from  political 
office,  which  now  began  to  take  place,  was  contemporary  with  their  first 
decisive  effort  as  a  religious  society  to  arrest  the  progress  of  negro  slavery. 

We  have  seen  ^  that  the  Quaker  society  of  Pennsylvania,  so  early  as  the 
year  1688,  condemned  the  conduct  that  was  pursued  by  many  of  its  own 
members,  by  issuing  a  declaration  of  the  unlawfulness  of  negro  slavery. 
Although  this  declaration  served  merely  to  guard  the  purity  of  Quaker  theory 
in  America,  without  visibly  affecting  the  general  Quaker  practice,  there 
were  not  wanting  individual  members  of  this  sect  who  practically  recognized 
its  validity,  and  labored  with  zealous  benevolence  to  propagate  their  own  su- 
perior virtue  among  their  countrymen.  Buriing,  a  Quaker  inhabitant  of 
Long  Island,  pubhshed  a  tract  against  slavery  in  the  year  1718.  Sandiford, 
a  Quaker  merchant  in  Philadelphia,  published  a  work  on  the  same  subject, 
under  the  title  of  The  Mystery  of  Iniquity,  in  1729.  Similar  compositions, 
reinforced  by  the  personal  example  of  their  authors,  were  given  to  the 
world  by  three  remarkable  Quakers,  —  Benjamin  Lay,  of  Pennsylvania,  a 
benevolent  enthusiast,  but  whimsical  and  eccentric  in  his  general  behaviour, 
and  occasionally  disordered  in  his  understanding  ;  John  Woolman,  of  New 
Jersey,  whose  admirable  and  unwearied  exertions  to  elevate  the  morality  of 
his  countrymen  and  the  condition  of  the  Africans  may,  perhaps,  entitle  him 
to  be  regarded  as  the  Clarkson  of  America  ;  and  Anthony  Benezet,  a  na- 
tive of  Picardy,  who  had  emigrated  to  Pennsylvania  in  1731,  and  who  united 
a  fine  genius  and  all  the  accomplishments  of  an  elegant  scholar  to  a  heart 
that  was  the  seat  of  every  humane  virtue  and  rehgious  sentiment.  De- 
voting himself  to  the  education  of  youth,  Benezet  inculcated  upon  all  his 
pupils  an  abhorrence  of  slavery,  and  reared  a  generation  of  Quakers  the  de- 
termined and  uncompromising  adversaries  of  this  injustice.^  We  have  learned 
from  the  testimony  of  Kalm,  the  traveller,  and  other  authorities,  that,  about 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  various  individual  Quakers  illustrated 
their  justice,  and  the  consistency  of  their  conduct  with  their  principles,  by 
emancipating  their  slaves.     Yet  the  number  of  slaves  possessed  by  the  Qua- 

^  Proud.     Franklms  Memoirs.    BrissoVs  Travels.    See  Note  XVI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

«  Ante,  Book  VII.,  Chap.  II. 

^  Benezet  was  the  first  person  in  North  America  who  conceived  and  conducted  the  benev- 
olent enterprises  of  educating  the  deaf  and  dumb  and  of  restoVing  to  life  persons  apparently 
drowned.  His  exertions  in  behalf  of  the  negroes  commenced  in  the  year  17.50.  The  cele- 
brated Patrick  Henry,  of  Virginia  (in  a  letter  preserved  in  Vaux's  Life  of  Benezet),  declares 
that  Benezet's  writings  had  opened  his  eyes  to  the  iniquity  of  negro  slavery,  condemns  him- 
self for  his  possession  of  slaves,  —  and,  protesting  that  he  yields  to  the  strong  current  of  gen- 
eral practice,  expresses  his  hope  of  the  future  emancipation  of  the  negro  race,  and  recommends 
meanwhile  to  all  slave-owners  the  exercise  of  gentleness  and  kindness  towards  their  sable  de- 
pendents, and  every  practicable  means  of  ameliorating  their  unhappy  lot.  Perhaps  the  most 
signal  and  admirable  effect  of  the  writings  of  Benezet  was  the  impression  they  produced  on 
the  mind  of  Clarkson.  .     . 


CHAP.  IV.]  WAR  DECLARED  BETWEEN  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND.   257 

kers  in  general  had  continued  to  increase  ;  ^  a  fact  which  was  noticed  and 
deplored  in  a  circular  letter  addressed,  in  the  year  1754,  by  the  Quaker 
society  of  Pennsylvania  to  its  members.  In  this  letter  the  society  content- 
ed itself  with  exhorting  the  Quaker  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania  and  New 
Jersey  to  desist  from  purchasing  and  importing  any  more  slaves,  and  to 
treat  the  negroes  already  in  their  possession  with  a  tender  consideration. 
But  in  the  present  year  it  advanced  a  step  farther,  and  embraced  a  resolu- 
tion by  which  its  ecclesiastical  officers,  termed  elders  or  overseers^  were 
directed  to  report  the  conduct  of  every  Quaker  within  its  jurisdiction,  who 
should  purchase  or  import  addiuonal  slaves ;  and  offenders  in  this  respect, 
though  not  visited  with  the  extreme  penalty  of  excommunication,  were  ex- 
cluded from  the  more  select  meetings  of  the  society,  and  from  the  privilege 
of  contributing  to  support  its  pecuniary  funds  ;  —  a  penal  infliction,  it  must 
be  confessed,  more  creditable  to  its  authors  than  formidable  to  the  persons 
who  were  likely  to  be  its  objects.  Whether  the  penalty  was  inflicted  or 
not,  it  is  certain  that  the  measure,  in  its  immediate  operation,  produced  YiXr 
tie,  if  any,  visible  good  ;  many  Quakers  persisted  in  purchasing  slaves  ; 
and  some  continued  even  engaged  in  the  slave-trade.  This,  however,  was 
the  first  step  in  a  line  of  policy,  which,  pursued  with  steady  virtue  and  in- 
creasing determination,  conducted  the  American  Quakers,  about  twenty 
years  after,  to  that  magnanimous  proceeding  by  which  a  great  majority  of 
their  society  emancipated  all  their  slaves,  and  excommunicated  every  mem- 
ber who  declined  to  incur  the  same  sacrifice. ^ 

From  the  agreeable  contemplation  of  the  revival  and  practical  illustratiori 
of  Quaker  virtue,  we  must  now  return  to  trace  the  progress  of  national 
enmity  and  strife.  Although  a  war  between  the  French  and  English  had 
been  openly  on  foot  for  more  than  two  years  in  America,  it  had  not  yet 
been  formally  proclaimed.  The  British  government,  conscious  of  the 
moderation  (not  to  say  the  timidity)  of  its  own  views,  obstinately  clung  to 
the  hope  that  peace  might  yet  be  established  by  an  amicable  arrangement 
and  upon  solid  foundations  ;  and  the  French  court,  transported  by  inamod^ 
erate  ambition,  and  yet  more  misled  by  reliance  on  ignoble  cunning  and  iur 
trigue,  studiously  encouraged  that  hope,  with  the  view  of  relaxing  the  vigoy 
of  British  hostility.  But  at  length,  all  prospect  of  accommodation  having 
ceased,  a  formal  declaration  of  war  was  published  by  Great  Britain  [May 
17,  1756],  and  followed  soon  after  by  a  counter  proclamation  from  France, 
whose  cabinet  apparently  cherished  the  hope  that  an  atta(?k  upon  the  Eng- 
lish monarch's  German  possessions,  to  which  from  birth  and  education  he 
was  notoriously  much  more  attached  than  to  England,  might  alarm  him  into 
a  modification  of  his  pretensions  in  America.^     A  reinforcement  of  troops 

'It  appears  also,  from  the  testimony  of  John  Woolman,  that,  although  some  Quakers  used 
their  slaves  kindly,  and  endeavoured  to  communicate  instruction  to  them,  their  conduct  in  these 
respects  was  neither  imitated  nor  approved  by  the  majority  of  their  fellow-sectaries.  In 
Woolman's  interesting  journal  a  curious  account  is  preserved  of  a  discussion  between  himself 
and  some  other  Quakers,  who  had  adopted  the  apologetic  theory,  that  negroes  are  the  offspring 
of  Ham,  and  as  such  divinely  doomed  to  a  life  of  hardship  and  bondage. 

•  Clarkson's  History  of  the  Molition  of  the  Slave-trade.  Vaux's  Life  of  Benezet.  Woolman's 
Journal.  And  communications  (received  in  1824)  from  an  aged  and  intelligent  Pennsylvanian 
Quaker. 

Woolman  remarks,  that  the  first  proposition  to  the  Quaker  society  to  punish  farther  im- 
portations and  purchases  of  negroes  originated  with  Quakers  who  themselves  possessed  slaves 
whom  they  declined  to  emancipate. 

3  London  Annual  Register  for  1758.  Smollett.  Raynal.  "The  hostilities  hitherto  waged," 
says  Raynal,  "  had  been  rather  countenanced  than  openly  avowed  by  the  respective  parent 
states.     This  clandestine  mode  of  carrying  on  the  war  was  perfectly  agreeable  to  the  mmistry 

VOL.  II.  33  V* 


258  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

had  been  despatched  to  America  two  months  before  this  event,  under  Gen- 
eral Abercrombie,  who  was  appointed  to  supersede  Shirley  in  the  chief 
command  of  the  British  forces.  An  act  of  parliament  ^  was  passed  for 
enabling  the  king  to  grant  the  rank  and  pay  of  military  officers  to  a  limited 
number  of  foreign  Protestants  residing  and  naturalized  in  the  colonies.  This 
act,  which  was  not  passed  without  a  strong  opposition  in  England,  excited 
great  discontent  and  apprehension  in  America.^  Another  contemporary 
statute^  empowered  the  king's  officers  to  recruit  their  regiments  by  enlist- 
ing the  indented  servants  of  the  colonists,  with  the  consent  of  their  masters. 

The  plan  of  operations  for  this  year's  campaign  was  concerted  in  the 
council  of  provincial  governors  at  New  York.  It  was  proposed  to  raise 
ten  thousand  men  for  an  expedition  against  Crown  Point ;  six  thousand  for 
an  attempt  upon  Niagara  ;  and  three  thousand  for  the  attack  of  Fort 
Duquesne.  In  addition  to  this  large  force,  and  in  aid  of  its  operations,  it 
was  resolved  that  two  thousand  men  should  proceed  up  the  river  Kenne- 
bec, destroy  the  French  settlements  on  the  river  Chaudiere,  and,  advancing 
to  its  mouth,  within  three  miles  of  Quebec,  distract  the  attention  of  the  en- 
emy and  spread  alarm  through  all  the  adjacent  quarter  of  Canada.  To  fa- 
ciHtate  the  reduction  of  Crown  Point,  it  was  proposed  to  take  advantage 
of  the  season  when  the  lakes  should  be  frozen  in  order  to  seize  Ticonde- 
roga  ;  but  this  measure  was  rendered  impracticable  by  the  unusual  mild- 
ness of  the  winter. 

The  command  of  the  expedition  against  Crown  Point  w^as  intrusted  to 
General  Winslow,  who,  on  reviewing  the  provincial  troops  destined  for  this 
service,  found  their  number  to  amount  only  to  about  seven  thousand  ;  a 
force,  which,  after  deducting  from  it  the  garrisons  required  at  various  places, 
appeared  inadequate  to  the  enterprise.  The  arrival  of  the  British  troops  un- 
der Abercrombie,  while  it  suppHed  the  deficiency,  created  a  new  difficulty, 
which  for  a  while  suspended  the  expedition.  Much  disgust  was  excited 
in  America  by  the  regulations  of  the  crown  respecting  military  rank  ;  and 
Winslow,  when  consulted  on  this  dehcate  point  by  Abercrombie,  avowed 
his  apprehension,  that,  if  the  result  of  a  junction  of  the  British  and  provincial 
troops  should  be  to  place  the  provincials  under  British  officers,  it  would  pro- 
voke general  discontent,  and  probably  occasion  extensive  desertion.  To 
avoid  so  serious  an  evil,  it  was  finally  arranged,  that  the  provincials,  taking 
the  lead,  should  jdvance  against  the  enemy,  and  that  at  the  forts  and  other 
posts  which  they  were  progressively  to  quit,  the  regulars  should  succeed  to 
their  stations  and  perform  the  duty  of  garrisons.  This  matter  was  hardly 
feettled,  when  the  discussion  of  it  was  again  renewed  by  the  Earl  of  Loudoun, 
who  now  arrived  in  America  to  succeed  Abercrombie  as  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  British  forces,  and  with  the  additional  appointment  of  governor 
of  Virginia.  [July,  1756.]  An  unusual  extent  of  authority  was  delegated  to 
Lord  Loudoun  by  his  commission  ;  and  from  some  parts  of  the  subsequent 
conduct  of  this  nobleman,  it  would  seem  that  he  was  prompted  either  by  his 
instructions,  or  by  his  own  disposition,  to  render  his  power  at  least  as  formi- 
dable to  the  British  colonists  as  to  the  enemy.  He  gravely  demanded 
of  the  officers  of  the  New  England  regiments,  if  they  and  their  troops  w^ere 

at  Versailles,  as  it  afforded  an  opportunity  of  recovering  by  degrees,  and  without  exposing  their 
weakness,  what  they  had  lost  by  treaties,  at  a  time  when  the  enemy  had  imposed  their  own 
terms.  But  repeated  checks  at  last  opened  the  eyes  of  Great  Britain,  and  disclosed  the 
political  system  of  her  rival." 

>  29  George  II.,  Cap.  5.  «  See  Note  XVII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

3  29  George  II.,  Cap.  35. 


ClIAP.  IV.]  FRENCH  SUCCESS  AT  OSWEGO.  259 

willing  to  act  in  conjunction  with  the  British  regulars,  and  to  obey  the  king's 
commander-in-chief,  as  his  Majesty  had  directed.  To  this  the  provincial 
officers  unanimously  replied,  that  they  cheerfully  submitted  themselves  in  all 
dutiful  obedience  to  Lord  Loudoun,  and  were  ready  and  willing  to  act  in 
conjunction  with  the  royal  forces  ;  but  that,  as  the  New  England  troops  had 
been  enlisted  this  year  on  particular  terms,  and  had  proceeded  thus  far  ac- 
cording to  their  original  compact  and  organization,  they  entreated  as  a  favor 
that  Lord  Loudoun  would  permit  them  to  act  -separately,  so  far  as  might 
be  consistent  with  the  interests  of  his  Majesty's  service.  His  Lordship  hav- 
ing acceded  to  their  desire,  this  point  of  honor  seemed  at  length  to  be  satis- 
factorily adjusted  ;  when  suddenly  the  plan  of  the  British  campaign  was 
disconcerted  by  the  alarming  intelligence  of  an  important  advantage  obtained 
by  the  French. 

The  Marquis  de  Montcalm,  an  officer  of  high  reputation  for  vigor  and 
ability,  who  succeeded  Baron  Dieskau  in  the  chief  command  of  the  French 
forces  in  Canada,  conducting  an  army  of  five  thousand  regulars,  Canadian 
militia,  and  Indians,  by  a  rapid  march,  to  Oswego,  invested  one  of  the  two 
forts  which  the  British  possessed  there  ;  and  having  promptly  made  the 
necessary  dispositions,  opened  his  trenches  at  midnight  with  thirty-two 
pieces  of  cannon,  besides  several  brass  mortars  and  howitzers.  [August  12, 
1756.]  The  scanty  stock  of  ammunition  with  which  the  garrison  had  been 
supplied  was  soon  exhausted  ;  and  Colonel  Mercer,  the  commander,  there- 
upon spiked  his  guns,  and,  evacuating  the  place,  carried  his  troops  without 
the  loss  of  a  single  man  into  the  other  fort.  Upon  this  stronghold  a  heavy 
fire  was  speedily  poured  by  the  enemy  from  the  deserted  post,  of  which 
they  assumed  possession  ;  and  Mercer  having  been  killed  by  a  cannon-ball, 
the  garrison,  dismayed  by  his  loss  and  disappointed  in  an  attempt  to  pro- 
cure aid  from  Fort  George,  situated  about  four  miles  and  a  half  up  the  river, 
where  Colonel  Schuyler  was  posted,  demanded  a  capitulation  and  surren- 
dered as  prisoners  of  war.  The  garrison  consisted  of  the  regiments  of 
Shirley  and  Pepperell,  and  amounted  to  one  thousand  four  hundred  men. 
The  conditions  of  surrender  were  that  the  prisoners  should  be  exempted 
from  plunder,  conducted  to  Montreal,  and  treated  with  humanity.  But 
these  conditions  were  violated  in  a  manner  disgraceful  to  the  warfare  of  the 
French.  It  was  the  duty  of  Montcalm  to  guard  his  engagements  from  the 
danger  of  infringement  by  his  savage  allies ;  and  yet  he  instantly  delivered 
up  twenty  of  his  prisoners  to  the  Indians  who  accompanied  him,  as  victims 
to  their  vengeance  for  an  equal  number  of  their  own  race  who  perished  in 
the  siege.  Nor  was  the  remainder  of  the  captive  garrison  protected  from  the 
cruelty  and  indignity  with  which  these  savages  customarily  embittered  the 
fate  of  the  vanquished.  Almost  all  of  them  were  plundered  ;  many  were 
scalped  ;  and  some  were  assassinated.  In  the  two  forts,  the  victors  obtained 
possession  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  pieces  of  artillery,  fourteen  mor- 
tars, and  a  great  quantity  of  military  stores  and  provisions.^  A  number  of 
sloops  and  boats  at  the  same  time  fell  into  their  hands.  No  sooner  was 
Montcalm  in  possession  of  the  forts,  than,  with  judicious  policy,  he  demol- 
ished them  both  in  presence  of  the  Indians  of  the  Six  Nations,  within 
whose  territory  they  were  erected,  and  whose  jealousy  they  had  not  a 
little  awakened. 

*  "  Such  an  important  magazine  deposited  in  a  place  altogether  indefensible,  and  without  the 
reach  of  immediate  succour,  was  a  flf^ant  proof  of  egregious  foUy,  temerity,  and  misconduct." 

Smollett. 


^gO"  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

In  consequence  of  this  disastrous  event,  all  the  plans  of  oiFensive  op- 
eration that  had  been  concerted  on  the  part  of  the  British  were  abandoned. 
Winslow  was  commanded  by  Lord  Loudoun  not  to  proceed  on  his  in- 
tended expedition  against  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  but  to  fortify  his 
camp  ;  while  General  Webb,  with  fourteen  hundred  British  regulars,  and 
Sir  WiUiam  Johnson,  with  a  thousand  militia,  were  stationed  at  positions 
fitted  to  support  Winslow  and  repel  the  farther  attacks  which  were  antici- 
pated from  the  French.  The  projected  expedition  up  the  Kennebec,  to 
destroy  the  settlements  on  the  Chaudiere,  terminated  in  a  mere  scouting- 
party  which  explored  the  country.  The  enterprise  proposed  against  Fort 
Duquesne  was  not  carrred  into  effect.  Virginia  declined  to  participate 
farther  in  the  general  warfare  than  by  defensive  operations  ;  and  even  these 
were  conducted  on  a  scale  inadequate  to  the  protection  of  her  own  people. 
Pennsylvania  raised  fifteen  hundred  men,  but  with  no  other  view  than  to 
guard  her  frontier  settlements  ;  and  Maryland,  whose  frontier  was  covered 
by  the  adjoining  provinces,  remained  completely  inactive.  In  South  Caro- 
lina the  slaves  were  so  much  more  numerous  than  the  white  inhabitants, 
that  it  was  judged  unsafe  to  detach  any  troops  from  this  province.  A  fort 
was  now  built  on  Tennessee  River,  about  five  hundred  miles  from  Charles- 
ton, and  called  Fort  Loudoun  ;  and  this,  together  with  Fort  Prince  George 
and  Fort  Moore  on  the  Savannah  River,  and  the  forts  of  Frederica  and 
Augusta,  was  garrisoned  by  the  king's  independent  companies  of  infantry 
embodied  for  the  protection  of  Carolina  and  Georgia.  Lord  Loudoun, 
whether  perplexed  by  the  inferiority  of  his  capacity  to  the  difficulties  of  his 
situation,  or  justly  accounting  that  the  season  was  too  far  advanced  to  ad- 
mit of  any  enterprise  against  the  enemy,  confined  his  attention  to  the  prep- 
aration of  an  early  campaign  in  the  ensuing  spring,  and  to  the  immediate 
security  of  the  frontiers  of  the  British  colonies.  Fort  Edward  and  Fort 
William  Henry  were  put  in  a  posture  of  defence,  and  secured  each  with  a 
competent  garrison  ;  and  the  remainder  of  the  British  forces  were  placed  in 
winter-quarters  at  Albany,  where  barracks  were  built  for  their  reception. 
The  French,  meanwhile,  sacked  a  small  fort  and  settlement  called  Gren- 
ville,  on  the  confines  of  Pennsylvania,  and,  in  conjunction  with  their  Indian 
allies,  carried  ravage  and  desolation  into  many  of  the  frontier  settlements 
of  the  British  provinces.  But  these  losses  were  in  some  measure  balanced 
by  the  advantage  resulting  from  a  treaty  of  peace  which  the  governor  of 
Pennsylvania  concluded  with  the  Delaware  Indians,  —  a  powerful  tribe  that 
dwelt  on  the  river  Susquehannah,  and  formed  as  it  were  a  line  or  belt  along 
the  southern  skirts  of  this  province.  At  the  same  time,  the  government  of 
Virginia  secured  the  friendship  and  alliance  of  the  tribes  of  the  Cherokees 
and  Catawbas.  Notwithstanding  some  appearances  of  an  opposite  import, 
it  was  expected  that  a  vigorous  effort  would  be  made  by  the  British  in  the 
ensuing  campaign  to  retrieve  their  recent  disasters  and  humble  the  insolence 
of  the  enemy,  —  the  more  especially,  as  in  the  close  of  this  year  a  fresh 
reinforcement  of  troops,  with  a  large  supply  of  warhke  stores,  was  despatched 
in  fourteen  transports,  and  under  convoy  of  two  British  ships  of  war,  from 
Cork  to  North  America. 

Much  discontent  and  impatience  had  been  latterly  excited  in  England  by 
the  events  of  the  war,  which  was  conducted  still  more  unhappily  in  other 
parts  of  the  world  than  in  the  American  provinces.  The  nation,  exasperated 
by  the  triumphs  of  France,  was  eager  to  shift  from  itself  the  scandal  of  oc- 


CHAP.  IV]  '      RECALL  OF  SHIRLEY. ''i  261 

currences  so  humiliating  to  its  pride  and  glory ;  and  attempts  the  most  impu- 
dent and  absurd  were  made  to  load  the  Americans  with  the  blame  both  of 
Braddock's  defeat  and  of  every  other  calamity  and  disappomtment  which 
they  had  partaken  with  the  British  forces.  Among  other  individuals  who 
were  now  sacrificed  by  the  British  court,  as  victims  partly  to  its  own  morti- 
fication and  partly  to  popular  displeasure,  was  Shirley,  the  governor  of 
Massachusetts,  who  was  recalled^  this  year  to  England,  and  appointed  soon 
after  to  the  government  of  the  Bahama  Islands.  Shirley  at  a  subsequent 
period  returned  to  Massachusetts,  where  he  died  in  a  private  station  ;  and 
though  he  had  held  some  of  the  most  lucrative  offices  within  the  gift  of  the 
crown  in  America,  he  bequeathed  to  his  posterity  little  else  but  a  reputation 
rather  honorable  than  illustrious,  and  in  which  merit  and  virtue  were  ac- 
knowledged to  preponderate  over  imperfection  and  infirmity.  More  san- 
guine and  eager  than  deliberate  and  collected,  he  studied  always  with 
greater  diligence  to  extend  his  fame  than  to  guard  and  adorn  the  distinction 
which  he  had  already  acquired.  Prompted  by  the  ardor  of  his  disposition 
and  by  the  pride  of  success,  he  had  latterly  courted  and  accepted  an  extent 
of  command  to  which  his  capacity  was  inadequate ;  and  which  he  was  be- 
sides unfitted  to  administer  satisfactorily  both  to  the  parent  state  and  to  the 
colonies,  by  the  concurrence  of  his  conscientious  or  interested  zeal  for  royal 
prerogative  with  his  generous  or  politic  respect  for  American  hberty.  With- 
out either  stiffly  asserting  or  expressly  waiving  the  pretensions  of  the  crown 
to  have  a  fixed  salary  attached  to  the  office  he  enjoyed  in  Massachusetts, 
he  contrived,  with  the  approbation  of  the  colonists,  and  without  censure 
from  the  parent  state,  to  accept  the  periodical  allotments  of  salary  which 
the  provincial  assembly  was  willing  to  bestow  upon  him.  His  connection 
with  the  glory  of  New  England,  his  conciliating  manners,  and  his  steady  re- 
gard for  the  privileges  and  sentiments  of  the  people  moderated  the  opposi- 
tion of  his  political  adversaries  in  the  colony.  His  recent  inability  to  com- 
mand success,  and  his  devotion  to  the  crown,  induced  the  British  ministers 
to  displace  without  ruining  him.  It  was  more  than  a  year  after  his  departure 
before  a  successor  was  appointed  to  his  office,  which,  in  the  interval,  was 
administered  by  Spencer  Phips,  a  prudent  and  honorable  man,  nephew  of 
Sir  William  Phips,  the  first  royal  governor  of  Massachusetts  after  the 
British  Revolution.  The  vacated  dignity  of  Shirley  was  then  conferred  on 
Thomas  Pownall,  an  Englishman,  formerly  lieutenant-governor  of  New 
Jersey,  and  related  to  persons  holding  high  official  situations  in  the  parent 
state.  The  policy  of  this  officer  was  the  very  reverse  of  that  which  Shirley 
had  pursued,  and  led  him  to  devote  himself  unreservedly  to  the  views  and 
wishes  of  the  popular  party  in  Massachusetts.^ 

'  Perhaps,  also,  the  intrigues  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  who,  with  ungrateful  jealousy,  en- 
deavoured to  prejudice  the  British  court  against  Shirley,  contributed  in  part  to  his  recall. 

^  Smollett.  Minot.  Hutchinson.  Trumbull.  Belknap.  Eliot's  JVew  England  Biographical 
Dictionary.     Burk.     Hewit. 


262  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 


CHAPTERV. 

Incapacity  of  the  British  Commander  in  America.  —  Loss  of  Fort  William  Henry.  —  Dis- 
pute between  Massachusetts  and  the  British  Commander.  —  State  of  Parties  in  New  England. 
—  Change  of  the  British  Ministry  and  Measures.  —  Affairs  of  Pennsylvania.  —  Political  Ex- 
ertions of  Franklin  in  England.  —  Conquest  of  Cape  Breton.  —  Repulse  at  Ticonderoga.  — 
Reduction  of  Fort  Frontignac  —  and  Fort  Duquesne.  —  Effect  of  the  British  Successes  upon 
the  Indians.  —  Plan  of  the  Campaign  of  1759.  —  Reduction  of  Ticonderoga  —  and  Crown 
Point.  —  Battle  of  Niagara  —  and  Capture  of  Fort  Niagara.  —  Siege  of  Quebec.  —  Battle 
of  the  Heights  of  Abraham  —  and  Surrender  of  Quebec. 

The  expectations  which  had  been  formed  both  in  Britain  and  America 
of  a  vigorous  and  successful  campaign  were  completely  disappointed.  If  it 
had  been  the  wish  or  intention  of  the  British  ministers  to  render  the  guar- 
dian care  of  the  parent  state  ridiculous  and  its  supremacy  odious  to  the  col- 
onists, they  could  hardly  have  selected  a  fitter  instrument  for  the  achieve- 
ment of  this  sinister  purpose  than  Lord  Loudoun.  Devoid  of  genius, 
either  civil  or  military  ;  in  carriage  at  once  imperious  and  undignified  ;  al- 
ways hurried,  and  hurrying  others,  yet  making  little  progress  in  the  despatch 
of  business  ;  quick,  abrupt,  and  forward  to  project  and  threaten,  but  in- 
firm, remiss,  and  mutable  in  pursuit  and  execution  ;  neghgent  of  even  the 
semblance  of  public  virtue  ;  impotent  against  the  enemy  whom  he  was  sent 
to  destroy  ;  formidable  only  to  the  spirit  and  hberty  of  the  people  whom  he 
was  commissioned  to  defend,  —  he  provoked  alternately  the  disgust,  the  jeal- 
ousy, and  the  contemptuous  amazement  of  the  colonists  of  America.^  In 
the  commencement  of  the  present  year  [January,  1757]  he  repaired  to  Bos- 
ton, where  he  was  met  by  a  council  composed  of  the  governors  of  Nova 
Scotia  and  of  the  States  of  New  England.  To  this  council  he  addressed  a 
speech,  in  which,  with  equal  insolence  and  absurdity,  he  ascribed  the  public 
safety  to  the  efforts  of  the  Enghsh  soldiers,  and  all  the  recent  successes 
of  the  French  to  the  misconduct  of  the  American  troops  or  the  provincial 
governments.  It  is  unlikely,  notwithstanding  the  arrogance  of  his  disposition 
and  the  narrowness  of  his  capacity,  that  he  could  have  expected  to  stimulate 
the  Americans  to  a  higher  strain  of  exertion  by  depreciating  their  past  services, 
and  exalting  above  their  gallant  and  successful  warriors  the  defeated  troops 
and  disgraced  commanders  of  England.  Nor,  indeed,  did  he  seek  to  com- 
pass any  such  chimerical  purpose.  He  required  that  the  governments  of 
New  England  should  contribute  only  four  thousand  men,  which  should  be 
despatched  to  New  York,  there  to  unite  with  the  quotas  to  be  furnished  by 
that  province  and  New  Jersey,  and  thereafter  to  be  conducted  by  him  to  an 
enterprise,  which  he  declared  that  the  interests  of  the  British  service  forbade 
him  at  present  to  disclose,  but  which,  the  council  might  be  assured,  would 
not  be  uncongenial  to  the  views  and  sentiments  of  the  people  of  New 
England.     This  moderate  requisition,  far  inferior  to  the  exaction  which  had 

*  "  He  is  like  St.  George  upon  a  sign-post,"  said  a  Philadelphian  to  Dr.  Franklin,  —  "  al- 
ways on  horseback,  but  never  advancing.'  When  Franklin  pressed  for  reimbursement  of  cer- 
tain supplies  which  he  had  been  employed  to  procure  for  the  army.  Lord  Loudoun  told  him 
;hat  he  could  afford  to  wait,  as  his  employment  had  doubtless  given  him  ample  opportunity  of 
filling  his  own  pockets.  Franklin  endeavoured  to  repel  this  insinuation  ;  but  the  integrity  to 
which  he  pretended  was  treated  by  Lord  Loudoun  as  something  utterly  incredible.  "  On 
the  whole,  '  says  Franklin,  "  I  wondered  much  how  such  a  man  came  to  be  intrusted  with 
so  important  a  business  as  the  conduct  of  a  great  army ;  but  having  since  seen  more  of  the 
great  world,  and  the  means  of  obtaining  and  motives  for  giving  places  and  employments,  my 
Wonder  is  dimihished."     Fraaklin's  Memoirs. 


CHAP,  v.]  LOUDOUN'S  FRUITLESS  SCHEMES.  ^6S 

been  anticipated,  served  at  least  to  silence  the  murmurs,  though  it  could  not 
appease  the  discontent  and  indignation,  created  by  Lord  Loudoun's  prelim- 
inary remarks  ;  and  the  levies  he  demanded,  having  been  speedily  raised, 
hastened  to  unite  with  the  contingents  drawn  from  the  other  provinces  at 
New  York,  where,  early  in  the  spring,  the  British  commander  found  him- 
self at  the  head  of  more  than  six  thousand  American  troops. 

It  was  expected  by  the  States  of  New  England,  and  perhaps  was  the 
original  purpose  of  Lord  Loudoun  himself,  that  the  force  thus  assembled 
should  be  applied  to  the  reduction  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point ;  but 
he  was  induced  to  depart  from  this  plan,  if,  indeed,  he  ever  entertained  it, 
by  the  tidings  of  an  additional  armament  having  been  despatched  from  Britain, 
to  Nova  Scotia.  This  armament,  consisting  of  eleven  ships  of  the  line, 
besides  transports  and  bomb-ketches,  under  the  command  of  Admiral  Hol- 
borne  and  Commodore  Holmes,  and  containing  six  thousand  disciplined  sol- 
diers, conducted  by  George,  Viscount  Howe,  arrived  accordingly  at  Halifax 
[July,  1757],  whither  Lord  Loudoun  shortly  after  repaired,  along  with  the 
forces  he  had  collected  at  New  York.  He  now  proclaimed  his  intention  of 
declining  for  the  present  all  active  operations  against  Crown  Point  or  Ticon- 
deroga, and  of  uniting  his  whole  disposable  force  in  an  expedition  to  Cape 
Breton,  for  the  conquest  of  Louisburg.  This  abandonment  of  the  enter- 
prise on  which  they  had  confidently  relied  was  a  severe  disappointment  to 
the  States  of  New  England  ;  nor  was  their  concern  abated  by  the  issue  of 
the  design  which  Lord  Loudoun  preferably  embraced  ;  for  it  now  appeared 
that  he  was  totally  unacquainted  with  the  condition  of  the  fortress  he  pro- 
posed to  subdue  ;  and  his  attack  upon  it  was  first  suspended  by  the  necessity 
of  gaining  this  preliminary  information,  and  ultimately  relinquished  in  conse- 
quence of  the  result  of  his  inquiries,  and  of  the  accession  of  force  the  place 
received  while  these  inquiries  were  pursued.  It  was  found  that  Louisburg 
was  garrisoned  by  six  thousand  regular  troops,  besides  militia,  and  farther 
defended  by  seventeen  line-of-battle  ships  moored  in  the  harbour,  and  which 
arrived  while  the  British  troops  lingered  inactively  at  Halifax.  Lord  Lou- 
doun, accounting  the  armament  he  commanded  unequal  to  cope  with  this 
force,  announced  that  the  enterprise  must  be  deferred  till  the  following  year  ; 
and  having  dismissed  the  provincial  troops,  he  returned  in  the  end  of  August 
to  New  York,  there  to  learn  the  disaster  which  his  conduct  had  occa- 
sioned in  another  quarter,  and  which  crowned  the  disgrace  of  this  inglorious 
campaign.^ 

Montcalm,  the  French  commander,  availing  himself  of  the  unskilful 
movement  by  which  Lord  Loudoun  withdrew  so  large  a  portion  of  the 
British  force  from  New  York  to  Halifax,  advanced  with  an  army  of  nine 
thousand  men  and  laid  siege  to  Fort  William  Henry,  which  was  garrisoned 
by  nearly  three  thousand  troops,  partly  English  and  partly  American,  com- 
manded by  a  brave  English  officer.  Colonel  Monroe.  The  security  of  this 
important  post  was  supposed  to  be  still  farther  promoted  by  the  proximity 
of  Fort  Edward,  which  was  scarcely  fourteen  miles  from  it,  and  where  the 
English  general,  Webb,  was  stationed  with  a  force  of  four  thousand  men. 
Had  Webb  done  his  duty,  the  besiegers  might  have  been  repulsed,  and 
Fort  William  Henry  preserved  ;  but  though  he  received  timely  notice  of  the 
approach  of  the  enemy,  yet,  with  strange  indolence  or  timidity,  he  neither 

'  The  recent  fate  of  Admiral  Byng,  whom  the  British  court  meanly  sacrificed  to  popular  rage 
for  unsuccessful  operation  at  sea,  was  supposed  to  have  paralyzed  the  energy  ot  min»y  British 
officers  at  this  juncture. 


264  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

summoned  the  American  governments  to  aid  the  place  with  their  militia, 
nor  despatched  a  single  company  of  his  own  soldiers  to  its  succour.  Nay, 
whether  or  not  he  desired,  so  far  was  he  from  hoping  to  avert,  its  capture, 
that  the  only  communication  he  made  to  Monroe,  during  the  siege,  was  a 
letter  conveying  the  faint-hearted  counsel  to  surrender  without  delay.  [Au- 
gust 9,  1757.]  Montcalm,  on  the  other  hand,  who  was  endowed  with  a  high 
degree  of  military  spirit  and  genius,  pressed  the  assault  on  Fort  William  Henry 
with  the  utmost  vigor  and  skill.  He  had  inspired  his  own  daring  ardor  into 
the  French  soldiers,  and  roused  the  fury  and  enthusiasm  of  his  Indian  auxil- 
iaries by  promising  revenge  proportioned  to  their  losses,  and  unrestricted 
plunder  as  the  reward  of  their  conquest.^  After  a  sharp  resistance,  which, 
however,  endured  only  for  six  days,  Monroe,  finding  that  his  ammunition 
was  exhausted,  and  that  hopes  of  relief  were  desperate,  was  compelled  to 
surrender  the  place  by  a  capitulation,  of  which  the  terms  were  far  more 
honorable  to  the  vanquished  than  the  fulfilment  of  them  was  to  the  victors. 
It  was  conditioned  that  the  garrison  should  not  serve  against  the  French 
for  eighteen  months  ;  that  they  should  march  out  with  the  honors  of  war  ; 
and,  retaining  their  private  baggage,  be  escorted  to  Fort  Edward  by  French 
troops,  as  a  security  against  the  lawless  ferocity  of  the  Indians.  But  these 
savages  were  incensed  at  the  terms  which  Montcalm  (whether  swayed  by 
generous  respect  for  a  gallant  foe,  or  apprehensive  that  Webb  might  be 
roused  at  length  from  his  supine  indifference)  conceded  to  the  garrison  ; 
and  seeing  no  reason  why  the  French  general  should  postpone  the  interest 
of  his  allies  to  that  of  his  enemies,  were  determined,  that,  if  he  broke  his 
word  with  either  party,  it  should  not  be  with  them.  Of  the  scene  of  cru- 
elty and  bloodshed  which  ensued  the  accounts  which  have  been  transmitted 
are  not  less  uniform  and  authentic  than  horrid  and  disgusting.  The  only 
point  wrapped  in  obscurity  is  how  far  the  French  general  and  his  troops 
were  voluntarily  or  unavoidably  spectators  of  the  violation  of  the  treaty  they 
stood  pledged  to  fulfil.  According  to  some  accounts,  no  escort  whatever 
was  furnished  to  the  British  garrison.  According  to  others,  the  escort  was 
a  mere  mockery,  both  in  respect  of  the  numbers  of  the  French  guards,  and 
of  their  willingness  to  defend  their  civilized  enemies  against  their  savage 
friends.^  It  is  certain  that  the  escort,  if  there  was  any,  proved  totally  inef- 
fectual ;  and  this  acknowledged  circumstance,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
prior  occurrences  at  Oswego,  is  sufficient  to  load  the  character  of  Mont- 
calm with  an  imputation  of  treachery  and  dishonor,  which,  as  it  has  never 
yet  been  satisfactorily  repelled,  seems  likely  to  prove  as  lasting  as  his  name. 
No  sooner  had  the  garrison  marched  out,  and  surrendered  their  arms,  in 
reliance  upon  the  pledge  of  the  French  general,  than  a  furious  and  irresistible 
attack  was  made  upon  them  by  the  Indians,  who  stripped  them  both  of  their 
baggage  and  their  clothes,  and  murdered  or  made  prisoners  of  all  who  at- 
tempted resistance.  About  fifteen  hundred  persons  were  thus  slaughtered 
or  carried  into  captivity.     Such  was  the  lot  of  eighty  men  belonging  to  a 

'  "  On  the  very  day  he  invested  the  place,  he  sent  a  letter  to  Colonel  Monroe,  telling  him 
he  thought  himself  obliged  in  humanity  to  desire  he  would  surrender  the  fort,  and  not  pro- 
voke the  great  number  of  savages  in  the  French  army  by  a  vain  resistance.  .4  detachment  of 
your  garrison^  he  said,  has  lately  experienced  their  cruelty.  I  have  it  yet  in  my  power  to 
constrain  them,  and  oblige  them  to  observe  a  capitulation^  as  none  of  them  hitherto  are  killed." 
Smollett. 

'  It  is  not  uncommon  for  the  historians  of  remote  events  to  suppose  that  passionate  con- 
temporary statements  must  be  erroneous.  Yet,  surely,  it  is  absurd  to  expect  that  scenes  of 
atrocious  cruelty  and  injustice  should  be  dispassionately  described  either  by  the  victims  or  by 
Vbeir  friends 


CHAP,  v.]  SUCCESSES  OF  THE  FRENCH.  265 

New  Hampshire  regiment,  of  which  the  complement  was  no  more  than  two 
hundred.  A  number  of  Indian  allies  of  the  English,  and  who  had  formed 
part  of  the  garrison,  fared  still  more  miserably.  They  were  seized  without 
scruple  by  tiieir  savage  enemies,  and  perished  in  lingering  and  barbarous 
torture.  Of  the  garrison  of  Fort  William  Henry  scarcely  a  half  were 
enabled  to  gain  the  shelter  of  Fort  Edward  in  a  straggling  and  wretched 
condition. 

The  British  colonists  were  struck  with  the  most  painful  surprise  and  alarm 
by  the  tidings  of  this  disaster.  Many  persons  were  induced  to  question  the 
Odelity  of  General  Webb,  whose  conduct,  indeed,  though  not  justly  obnox- 
ious to  this  charge,  yet  merited  the  sharpest  and  most  contemptuous  cen- 
sure ;  and  all  were  inflamed  with  the  highest  indignation  by  the  atrocious 
breach  of  Montcalm's  treaty  with  the  garrison  of  Fort  William  Henry. 
Webb,  roused,  at  length,  from  his  lethargy  by  the  personal  fear  that  fell 
on  him,  hastily  invoked  the  succour  of  the  States  of  New  England.  The 
call  was  promptly  obeyed  ;  and  a  portion  of  the  militia  of  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut  was  despatched  to  check  the  victorious  progress  of  the 
French,  who,  it  was  feared,  would  not  only  make  an  easy  conquest  of  Fort 
Edward,  but  penetrate  to  Albany.  So  zealously  was  this  service  under- 
taken by  Massachusetts,  that  a  large  extent  of  her  own  frontier  was  strip- 
ped of  its  defenders  and  left  for  a  time  in  a  very  precarious  situation.  But 
Montcalm,  whether  daunted  by  this  vigorous  demonstration,  or  satisfied  with 
the  blow  he  had  struck,  and  engrossed  with  the  care  of  improving  its  pro- 
pitious influence  on  the  minds  of  the  Indians,  refrained  from  even  investing 
Fort  Edward,  and  made  no  farther  attempt  at  present  to  extend  the  range 
of  his  conquests.  The  only  additional  operation  of  the  French,  during  the 
season,  was  a  predatory  enterprise  in  concert  with  their  Indian  allies  against 
the  flourishing  British  settlements  at  German  Flats,  in  the  province  of  New 
York,  and  along  the  Mohawk  River,  which  they  utterly  wasted  with  fire  and 
sword.  At  sea,  from  a  fleet  of  twenty-one  British  merchant- vessels,  home- 
ward bound  from  Carolina,  they  succeeded  in  making  prizes  of  nineteen, 
which  were  loaded  with  valuable  cargoes.^  Thus  ended  a  campaign  which 
covered  Britain  and  her  cabinet  and  commanders  with  disgrace,  filled  her 
colonies  with  the  most  gloomy  apprehension  and  discontent,  and  showed 
conquest  blazing  with  full  beams  on  France.  By  an  act  of  parhament  passed 
this  year,  the  permission  formerly  granted  of  importing  bar-iron,  duty-free, 
from  North  America,  into  the  port  of  London,  was  extended  to  every  port 
in  Great  Britain.^ 

Lord  Loudoun  concluded,  as  he  had  commenced,  the  year,  with  a  pro- 
ceeding that  gave  much  offence  to  the  Americans,  and  showed  him  capable 
of  exerting,  in  a  dispute  with  their  provincial  governments,  a  greater  degree 
of  promptitude  and  energy  than  he  had  displayed  against  the  common  enemy. 
Governor  Pownall,  having  been  apprized  that  a  British  regiment  was  to 
be  stationed  at  Boston,  communicated  this  information  to  the  General  Court 
of  Massachusetts,  which  ordered  accommodations  to  be  provided  for  one 
thousand  men  at  Castle  William,  a  fortified  place  on  a  small  island  facing 
the  town,  in  terms  which  plainly  expressed  their  imderstanding  that  this  was 
not  a  measure  of  necessary  obedience,  but  a  voluntary  disbursement  on  the 

^  Trumbull.      Minot.      Belknap.      Franklin's    Memoirs.      Carver's    Travels  in  .America. 
Smollett.     Dwight's  Travels. 
*  See  Note  XvIH.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
VOL.    II.  34  W 


2QQ  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

national  account.  Soon  afterwards,  a  number  of  officers,  who  repaired  to 
Boston  from  Nova  Scotia  for  the  purpose  of  recruiting  their  regiments, 
finding  that  this  service  was  impeded  by  their  residence  in  barracks  at  the 
castle,  required  the  justices  of  the  peace  to  quarter  and  billet  them  upon 
the  citizens,  in  conformity  with  the  practice  in  the  parent  state,  and  the  pro- 
visions of  the  act  of  parHament  by  which  that  practice  was  commanded. 
The  justices,  however,  refused  to  comply  with  this  requisition,  as  they  con- 
sidered that  the  act  of  parliament  did  not  extend  to  America,  and  that  they 
had  no  authority  to  grant  billets  without  the  sanction  of  the  legislative  as- 
sembly of  the  province.  The  officers,  thereupon,  complained  to  Lord 
Loudoun,  who  signified  in  peremptory  terms  his  commands  that  the  justices 
should  grant  the  accommodation  required  from  them ;  declaring,  that,  in  his 
opinion,  the  act  of  parliament  did  extend  to  America,  and  to  every  part 
of  his  Majesty's  dominions  where  the  public  exigencies  might  oblige  him 
to  send  troops  either  for  the  defence  of  his  territories  or  the  security  of  his 
people.  His  arguments  failing  to  produce  any  impression  on  the  magistra- 
cy or  legislature  of  the  province,  he  was  provoked  to  assume  a  still  higher 
tone  [November  15,  1757]  ;  and  at  length  acquainted  Governor  Pownall 
that  the  patience  and  gentleness  which  he  had  hitherto  employed  were  ex- 
hausted ;  that  he  had  no  leisure  for  farther  parley,  but,  having  already  suffi- 
ciently confuted  the  reasoning  of  the  provincials,  he  was  prepared  to  adopt 
more  vigorous  measures  for  obtaining  their  obedience,  and  preventing  the 
whole  continent  from  being  thrown  into  confusion  by  their  factious  obstinacy. 
The  justices,  he  said,  might  yet  avert  this  extremity  by  immediately  per- 
forming their  duty,  to  which  no  act  of  assembly  could  lend  additional  sanc- 
tion ;  and  accordingly  he  had  instructed  his  messenger  to  remain  forty-eight 
hours  in  Boston,  to  ascertain  and  report  if  they  improved  or  neglected  the 
opportunity.  If  the  messenger,  on  his  return,  should  report  that  the  pro- 
vincial authorities  were  still  refractory,  he  protested  that  he  would  instantly 
give  orders  to  three  battalions  of  British  troops,  which  he  had  in  New  York, 
Long  Island,  and  Connecticut,  to  march  upon  and  occupy  Boston  ;  and  if 
more  were  wanting,  he  had  two  other  battalions  in  New  Jersey,  besides  a 
body  of  troops  in  Pennsylvania,  at  hand  to  support  them. 

The  provincial  authorities,  though  alarmed  by  this  communication,  and 
anxious  to  avoid  the  collision  with  which  it  menaced  them,  were  averse  to 
yield  to  force  what  they  had  refused  to  argument.  Hoping  at  once  to  satis- 
fy Lord  Loudoun  and  preserve  their  privileges,  the  assembly  passed  a  law 
[December  6] ,  of  which  the  provisions  were  somewhat,  though  by  no  means 
entirely,  similar  to  the  act  of  parhament  in  question.  Their  conduct  served 
rather  to  incense  than  to  appease  the  British  commander,  who  immediately 
signified  his  displeasure  to  Pownall ;  observing  that  the  assembly  had  no 
proper  concern  with  the  dispute,  and  that  "  in  time  of  war,  the  rules  and 
customs  of  war  must  govern  "  ;  and  acquainting  him  that  the  troops  had 
received  their  orders  and  were  already  advancing  upon  Boston.  A  rash 
demonstration  ;  not  more  odious  to  the  colonists  than  humiliating  to  the 
arms  of  Britain,  whose  troops,  driven  from  their  outposts,  and  defeated  by 
the  enemy,  were  now  exhibited  in  the  act  of  a  retrograde  movement  against 
the  people  whom  they  were  sent  to  protect,  and  whose  militia  had  in  reahty 
protected  them.  The  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  undaunted  by  this  emer- 
gency, voted  an  address  to  the  governor,  which  breathed  the  genuine  spirit  of 
their  forefathers.    They  again  affirmed  that  the  act  of  parliament  to  which  the 


CHAP,  v.]        LOUDOUN'S  DISPUTE  WITH  MASSACHUSETTS.  287 

controversy  had  reference  did  not  extend  to  the  British  colonies  and  planta- 
tions ;  and  added,  that  they  had,  therefore,  enlarged  the  barracks  at  the 
castle,  in  order  that  the  British  troops  might  not  be  devoid  of  suitable  ac- 
commodation, and  had  also  framed  a  law  for  the  convenience  of  the  recruit- 
ing service,  with  as  close  conformity  to  the  act  of  parliament  as  the  nature 
and  condition  of  the  country  and  its  inhabitants  would  admit.  They  main- 
tained that  the  law  which  they  had  enacted  was  requisite  to  enable  the  pro- 
vincial magistrates  to  execute  the  powers  which  it  conferred  upon  them, 
and  declared  that  they  were  always  willing  to  adopt  such  regulations  when 
the  troops  to  be  quartered  or  recruited  were  necessary  for  their  protection 
and  defence.  They  protested  that  they  were  entitled  to  all  the  rights  and 
liberties  of  Englishmen  ;  that  by  the  provincial  charter  there  was  committed 
to  them  every  power  and  privilege  correspondent  to  a  free  and  unrestricted 
administration  of  their  own  domestic  government ;  and  that  as  they  were 
supported  under  all  difficulties  and  animated  to  resist  an  invading  enemy  to 
their  last  breath  by  the  consciousness  of  enjoying  these  advantages,  so  they 
would  be  proportionally  dispirited  and  enfeebled  by  the  loss  or  diminution 
of  them.  In  conclusion,  they  declared  that  it  would  doubtless  be  a  great 
misfortune  to  them,  if  their  adherence  to  these  rights  and  privileges  should 
deprive  them  of  the  esteem  of  Lord  Loudoun  ;  but  that  they  would  still 
have  the  satisfaction  of  reflecting  that  both  in  their  words  and  actions  they 
had  been  governed  by  a  sense  of  duty  to  his  Majesty,  and  of  fidelity  to  the 
trust  reposed  in  them  by  their  countrymen. 

This  language,  at  once  so  spirited,  temperate,  and  judicious,  probably 
saved  the  province  from  a  scene  fraught  with  mischief  and  peril  to  its  lib- 
erties. Expressions  of  fear  or  humiliation  would  have  tempted  Lord  Lou- 
doun to  persevere  ;  while  demonstrations  of  resistance  would  have  deprived 
him  of  any  decent  pretext  for  receding.  The  address  of  the  assembly  was 
forwarded  to  him  by  Governor  Pownall,  who  farther  tendered  his  own  per- 
sonal assurance  that  the  colonists  had  hoilestly  endeavoured  to  give  to  the 
recruiting  service  every  facility  which  was  compatible  with  the  peculiar  cir- 
cumstances of  the  country.  This  assurance,  unless  interpreted  with  very 
considerable  latitude,  was  hardly  correct ;  for,  doubtless,  with  the  Ameri- 
cans, the  quartering  of  British  regiments  in  their  towns,  and  the  attempts  to 
recruit  them  from  the  colonial  population,  were  generally  unpopular.  In 
every  part  of  America,  the  superiority  arrogated  by  the  British  troops  over 
the  provincial  forces  created  disgust ;  and  the  Puritan  and  republican  sen- 
timents of  the  New  Englanders  in  particular  were  offended  by  the  loose 
manners  of  the  English  officers,  and  the  conversion  of  their  own  fellow- 
citizens  into  the  disciplined  stipendiaries  of  monarchical  authority.  Lord 
Loudoun,  nevertheless,  though  perfectly  aware  that  no  alteration  of  cir- 
cumstances had  occurred  since  he  commanded  the  troops  to  march, 
thought  proper  to  lay  hold  of  the  overture  for  reconciliation  which  was  thus 
afforded  ;  and  accordingly  hastened  to  signify,  in  a  despatch  to  Pownall  [De- 
cember 6J ,  that,  as  he  could  now  "  depend  on  the  assembly  making  the  point 
of  quarters  easy  in  all  time  coming,"  he  had  countermanded  his  previous  or- 
ders for  the  military  occupation  of  Boston.  He  condescended  at  the  same 
time  to  make  some  courteous  remarks  on  the  zeal  which  the  province  dis- 
played for  his  Majesty's  service  ;  but  withal,  he  complained  that  the  assem- 
bly seemed  willing  to  enter  into  a  dispute  upon  tlu  necessity  of  a  provincial 
law  to  enforce  a  British  act  of  parliament. 


26g  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X, 

•  The  communication  of  Lord  Loudoun's  despatch  to  the  General  Court 
of  Massachusetts  produced  from  this  body  a  remarkable  message  to  the 
governor,  which  at  a  later  period  attracted  a  good  deal  of  controversial  crit- 
icism ;  very  different  meanings  being  attached  to  it  by  the  friends  of  Amer- 
ican liberty,  and  by  the  individual,  and  the  political  partisans  of  the  indi- 
vidual, who  composed  it.  In  this  message,  which  was  the  composition  of 
Thomas  Hutchinson,  —  a  gentleman  of  consideration,  who  had  filled  high 
official  situations  in  Massachusetts  for  several  yearsy  and  has  already  been 
introduced  to  our  notice,  which  he  will  farther  engage  in  circumstances  more 
interesting,  —  the  two  houses  (the  assembly  and  council)  composing  the 
General  Court,  after  thanking  the  governor  for  his  good  offices  in  their  be- 
half, denied  the  justice  of  Lord  Loudoun's  complaint ;  and  protested  that 
their  legislative  ordinance  was  intended  not  to  give  force  to  an  act  of  par- 
liament, but  to  regulate  a  case  to  which  no  act  of  parliament  was  applicable. 
"We  are  willing,"  they  declared,  "by  a  due  exercise  of  the  powers  of 
civil  government  (and  we  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  your  Excellency  con- 
cur with  us)  to  remove,  as  much  as  may  be,  all  pretence  of  the  necessity 
of  military  government.  Such  measures,  we  are  sure,  will  never  be  disap- 
proved by  the  parliament  of  Great  Britain,  our  dependence  upon  which  we 
never  had  a  desire  or  thought  of  lessening,''^  "  The  authority  of  all  acts 
of  parliament,"  they  affirmed,  "  which  concern  the  colonies  and  extend  to 
them,  is  ever  acknowledged  in  all  the  courts  of  law,  and  made  the  rule  of 
all  judicial  proceedings  in  the  province.  There  is  not  a  member  of  the 
General  Court,  and  we  know  no  inhabitant  within  the  bounds  of  the  gov- 
ernment, that  ever  questioned  this  authority.  To  prevent  any  ill  conse- 
quences which  may  arise  from  an  opinion  of  our  holding  such  principles, 
we  now  utterly  disavow  them,  as  we  should  readily  have  done  at  any  time 
past,  if  there  had  been  occasion  for  it ;  and  we  pray  that  his  Lordship  may 
be  acquainted  therewith,  that  we  may  appear  in  a  true  hght,  and  that  no 
impressions  may  remain  to  our  disadvantage."  This  document,  composed 
by  a  man  of  considerable  ability,  who  had  not  yet  made  or  at  least  declared 
his  election  between  the  interests  of  British  prerogative  and  American  lib- 
erty, was  afterwards,  in  consequence  of  the  rupture  between  the  parent 
state  and  her  colonies,  subjected  to  much  ingenious  but  disproportioned  com- 
ment and  observation  ;  each  of  two  political  parties  affecting  to  regard  it 
as,  in  some  measure,  a  compact,  or  rather  a  solemn  exposition  of  the  politi- 
cal relation  between  Britain  and  America,  and  each  seeking  to  twist  every 
sentence  of  it  into  a  deliberate  recognition  or  disclamation,  on  the  part  of 
America,  of  the  supremacy  claimed  by  the  British  parliament.  It  will  lose 
much  of  the  significance  which  these  reasoners  have  imputed  to  it,  if  we 
consider  what  was  and  what  must  have  been  the  state  of  political  parties 
and  party  feeling  in  New  England  at  the  present  period. 

From  the  first  establishment  of  British  colonies  in  this  quarter  of  Ameri- 
ca, a  contest  had  prevailed  between  provincial  liberty  and  the  imperial 
power  of  Britain.  Even  before  the  British  Revolution,  two  parties  sprung 
up,  of  which  the  one  counted  among  its  numerous  votaries  the  jealous,  the 
uncompromising,  and  the  headstrong,  —  while  the  other  was  reputed  to 
number  in  its  smaller  phalanx  the  more  prudent,  cautious,  and  timorous 
friends  of  American  liberty.  This  distinction  of  parties  was  not  terminated 
by  the  Revolution,  though  it  was  interrupted  for  a  short  time  by  Lord 
Bellamont's  administration.     Various  causes  had  since  contributed  to  per- 


CHAP.   V.j  STATE  OF  PARTIES  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  269 

petuate  and  even  to  inflame  its  violence  and  alter  its  character.  The 
conduct  of  Shirley  was  so  popular,  even  while  his  language  proclaimed 
his  attachment  to  royal  prerogative,  that  of  late  years  the  progress  of  po- 
litical dissension  in  Massachusetts  was  less  noted  than  it  deserved.  Pownall, 
attaching  himself  to  the  opponents  of  Shirley,  and  throwing  himself  upon 
them  for  support,  incited  at  once  this  party  and  their  adversaries  to  make  a 
fuller  and  more  unguarded  declaration  of  their  sentiments  than  either  had 
previously  ventured  to  express.  The  one  party  was  unwilling  to  believe 
that  its  principles  tended  to  promote  American  slavery  ;  the  other  (except- 
ing, perhaps,  a  few  bold  enthusiasts)  durst  not  believe  that  its  opinions 
conducted,  at  least  directly  or  immediately,  to  American  independence. 
j\ll  parties  were  constrained,  in  theory,  to  admit  the  sovereignty  of  Britain 
and  its  legislature  over  America  ;  and  even  those  of  the  Americans,  who 
were  most  forward  to  claim  for  themselves  the  rights  of  Englishmen^  recog- 
nized in  this  expression  the  dependence  upon  Britain  incident  to  a  compo- 
nent part  and  member  of  the  British  empire.  But  the  politicians  belonging 
to  what  was  now  called  the  popular  party  in  America  cherished  sentiments 
very  discordant  with  this  theory  ;  they  regarded  their  provincial  institutions 
with  jealous  attachment,  and  the  power  and  pretensions  of  Britain  with 
jealous  apprehension.  Fear  cannot  long  prevail  without  begetting  anger 
and  hatred ;  and  the  policy  of  Britain  inspired  well  grounded  fears  in  the 
breast  of  every  friend  of  American  freedom.  Both  in  Britain  and  in  Amer- 
ica, it  was  felt,  rather  than  avowed,  that  the  increasing  numbers  and  strength 
of  the  colonists  demanded  some  change  in  the  relations  that  had  hitherto 
subsisted  between  them  and  the  parent  state  ;  and  the  opposite  view^s  on 
this  subject,  which  each  party,  more  or  less  justly,  imputed  to  the  other, 
served  to  exasperate  the  mutual  jealousy  of  the  partisans  of  British  pre- 
rogative and  provincial  liberty.  The  circumstances  and  events  of  the  war 
with  France  contributed  also  to  strengthen  this  opposition  of  sentiment. 
While  one  party  regarded  with  alternate  alarm,  impatience,  and  contempt 
the  formidable  discipline  and  equipment  of  the  British  troops,  their  arro- 
gant assumption  of  superiority,  and  their  signal  inefficiency  against  the  com- 
mon enemy,  —  the  other  was  struck  with  awe  and  admiration  by  the  display 
of  British  pomp,  profusion,  and  power  ;  and  of  these  last,  if  some  were 
additionally  impressed  with  the  prudence  of  moderating  every  demonstra- 
tion of  American  patriotism  that  might  be  offensive  to  Britain,  others, 
doubtless,  were  inspired  with  the  hope  of  participating  in  the  dignities  and 
emoluments  which  they  saw  lavished  by  that  great  empire  on  her  servants, 
and  which  the  prospect  of  a  change  in  the  institutions  of  America  rendered 
more  likely  to  be  attainable  by  provincial  functionaries.  In  seasons  of 
passion  and  agitation,  the  popular  party,  who  formed  a  great  majority  of  the 
inhabitants,  were  apt  to  proclaim  the  political  sentiments  which  they  cher- 
ished with  an  energy  unguarded  by  the  limits  of  the  political  theory  which 
they  confessed  ;  but  in  seasons  of  more  calmness  and  deliberation,  they 
could  not  refuse  to  avow  their  subjection  to  British  sovereignty,  and  to  re- 
pudiate any  sentiments  inconsistent  with  this  principle.  The  agitation  oc- 
casioned by  Lord  Loudoun's  hostile  menaces  having  subsided,  it  was  im- 
possible for  the  Massachusetts  assembly  to  decline  that  recognition  of  their 
obedience  to  the  parent  state  which  Hutchinson  introduced  into  the  message 
which  he  composed  for  them  ;  and  they  were  the  more  ready  to  disclaim 
the  imputations  of  Lord  Loudoun,   and  to  avoid   the   displeasure  of  the 

w  * 


270  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

British  government  at  this  moment,  on  account  of  the  heavy  expenses  en- 
tailed on  them  by  tlie  war,  and  of  which  they  had  at  some  future  day  to  so- 
hcit  reimbursement  from  the  justice  or  liberahty  of  parliament.  Yet  with  all 
these  motives  to  induce  their  acquiescence  in  a  demonstration  of  loyalty 
and  submission  to  Britain,  it  was  necessary  to  recommend  the  message  to 
their  adoption  by  the  introduction  of  a  strong  protest  that  their  previous 
conduct  was  entirely  free  from  blame. 

If  Lord  Loudoun  supposed,  from  the  issue  of  this  affair,  that  he  had  sub- 
dued the  spirit  of  the  colonists,  or  even  facihtated  the  exercise  of  his  own 
authority  among  them,  he  was  speedily  undeceived.  Early  in  the  following 
year  [February,  1758],  he  summoned  a  convention  of  the  governors  of 
New  England  and  New  York  to  meet  him  at  Hartford,  in  Connecticut ;  but 
finding,  after  some  conference,  that  they  could  not  undertake  any  measure 
that  had  not  received  the  sanction  of  their  respective  assemblies,  he  repaired 
to  Boston,  where  his  reception  gave  him  plainly  to  understand  that  America 
no  longer  reposed  the  slightest  confidence  in  him.  Neither  Pownall  nor 
the  assembly  showed  any  disposition  to  second  his  views  ;  and  before  they 
would  consent  to  place  the  most  trifling  force  at  his  disposal,  the  assembly 
required  him  to  specify  all  the  particulars  of  the  service  in  which  he  pro- 
posed to  employ  it.  Provoked  and  perplexed  by  this  demand,  he  was  de- 
liberating in  what  manner  to  answer  it,  when  an  express  arrived  with  intelli- 
gence that  he  was  superseded  by  the  king,  and  that  the  command  of  the 
royal  forces  was  delegated  to  General  Abercrombie.^ 

The  progress  of  the  war  in  America  had  been  hitherto  signalized  by  the 
discomfiture  of  the  English  and  the  triumph  of  the  French,  —  a  result  that 
was  beheld  with  increasing  resentment  and  impatience  in  England.  It  was 
a  circumstance  additionally  irritating  and  mortifying  to  this  people,  that  the 
few  advantages  which  had  been  gained  over  the  French  were  exclusively 
due  to  the  colonial  troops,  —  while  unredeemed  disaster  and  disgrace  had 
attended  all  the  efforts  of  the  British  forces.  The  events  of  the  last  two 
campaigns  were  remarkably  unpropitious  to  Britain,  and  induced  or  at  least 
manifestly  betokened  the  decisive  preponderance  of  the  power  of  France  i» 
America.  By  the  acquisition  of  Fort  William  Henry,  the  French  obtained 
entire  possession  of  the  lakes  Champlain  and  George  ;  and  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  Oswego,  they  acquired  the  dominion  of  the  other  lakes  which  con- 
nect the  St.  Lawrence  with  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi.  The  first  af- 
forded the  easiest  intercourse  between  the  northern  colonies  and  Canada  ; 
the  last  united  Canada  to  Louisiana.  By  the  continued  possession  of  Fort 
Duquesne,  they  extended  their  influence  over  the  Indians,  and  held  undis- 
turbed possession  of  all  the  country  westward  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains. 
The  superior  strength  of  Britain,  unskilfully  exerted,  was  visibly  yielding,  in 
this  quarter  of  the  world,  to  the  superior  vigor  and  dexterity  of  her  rival, 
who,  with  victorious  strides,  was  rapidly  gaining  a  position,  which,  if  it  did 
not  infer  the  entire  conquest  of  the  British  settlements,  at  least  enabled  her 
to  intercept  their  farther  growth,  to  cramp  their  commerce,  and  continually 
to  overawe  them,  and  attack  them  with  advantage.  The  spirit  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation,  which  had  been  kindling  for  some  time,  was  in  this  emergency 
provoked  to  a  pitch  that  could  brook  no  longer  the  languid  and  inefficient 
conduct  of  the  operations  in  America.  William  Pitt,  afterwards  Earl  of 
Chatham,  the  most  able  and  accomplished  statesman  and  senator  that  Great 
^  Gordon.    Minot.    Hutchinson.    Memoirs  of  an  Jimerican  Lady. 


CHAP,  v.]  PITT  APPOINTED  PRIME  MINISTER.  271 

Britain  had  yet  produced,  and  who  had  long  combated  with  his  powerful 
rhetoric  and  majestic  eloquence  the  policy  of  directing  the  chief  military 
efforts  of  England  to  the  continent  of  Europe,  was  now,  in  opposition  to 
the  wishes  of  the  king,  but  in  compliance  with  the  irresistible  will  of  the  na- 
tion, placed  at  the  head  of  the  British  ministry.  He  had  received  this  ap- 
pointment in  the  spring  of  the  preceding  year  ;  and  again,  in  the  autumn, 
after  a  short  expulsion  from  office,  was  reinstated  in  it  more  firmly  than 
before.  The  strenuous  vigor  and  enlarged  capacity  of  this  extraordinary 
man,  whose  faculties  were  equally  fitted  to  rouse  the  spirit  and  to  wield  the 
strength  of  a  great  nation,  produced  a  dawn  of  hope  and  joy  throughout  the 
whole  British  empire.  His  elevation  was  hailed  with  enthusiasm,  as  the 
pledge  of  retributive  triumph  to  his  country;  and  in  effect  it  speedily  checked 
the  fortune  of  the  enemy  and  occasioned  a  signal  revolution  in  the  relative 
power  and  predicament  of  France  and  England.  Lord  Loudoun,  whether 
from  his  general  slackness  and  indistinctness  in  the  conduct  of  business,  or 
from  personal  or  political  dislike  to  the  minister,  conducted  his  correspond- 
ence with  him  in  a  very  negligent  manner  ;  and  Pitt  is  reported  to  have  as- 
signed as  the  reason  for  superseding  this  commander,  that  he  could  never 
ascertain  what  Lord  Loudoun  was  doing. 

The  same  express  which  brought  the  tidings  of  Loudoun's  recall  con- 
veyed a  circular  letter  from  Pitt  to  the  provincial  governors,  acquainting 
them  with  the  resolution  of  the  British  cabinet  to  send  a  powerful  arma- 
ment to  operate  by  sea  and  land  against  the  French  in  America,  and  in- 
viting them  to  raise  as  numerous  levies  of  auxiliary  troops  as  the  popula- 
tion of  their  respective  provinces  could  afford.  Arms,  ammunition,  tents, 
provisions,  and  boats,  it  was  announced,  would  be  furnished  by  the  crown  ; 
and  the  provincial  governors,  meanwhile,  were  desired  to  levy,  clothe,  and 
pay  their  troops,  and  appoint  the  officers  of  their  various  regiments.  They 
w^ere  assured  that  it  was  the  king's  determination,  by  the  most  vigorous  and 
expensive  efforts,  to  repair  the  losses  and  disappointments  of  the  last  inac- 
tive and  unhappy  campaign,  and  to  repel,  by  the  blessing  of  God  upon  his 
arms,  the  dangers  impending  over  his  people  and  possessions  in  North 
America  ;  that,  for  this  purpose,  the  war,  which  had  been  hitherto  defensive 
on  the  part  of  the  British,  was  now  to  be  carried  into  the  heart  of  the 
enemy's  territory  ;  and  that,  to  encourage  the  colonists  to  cooperate  in  this 
great  and  important  design,  his  Majesty  would  recommend  to  his  parliament 
to  grant  to  the  several  provinces  such  compensation  for  the  expenses  they 
might  incur,  as  their  vigor  and  activity  should  appear  justly  to  merit.  At 
this  intelligence,  the  Americans,  and  especially  the  people  of  New  England, 
were  aroused  to  a  generous  emulation  with  the  awakened  spirit  of  the  parent 
state  ;  mutual  jealousy  and  distrust  were  swallowed  up,  for  a  season,  in  com- 
mon ardor  for  the  honor  of  Britain  and  the  safety  of  America  ;  and,  with 
the  most  cheerful  confidence  and  alacrity,  all  the  States  of  New  England 
vied  in  exertions  i  to  strengthen  by  their  cooperation  the  promised  British 
armament.  In  Massachusetts  there  were  raised  seven  thousand  men  ;  in 
Connecticut,  five  thousand  ;  and  in  New  Hampshire,  nine  hundred.  The 
numbers  of  the  Rhode  Island,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey  levies  have  not 
been  specified.  These  troops  were  ready  to  take  the  field  early  in  May, — 
previously  to  which  time.  Admiral  Boscawen  arrived  at  Halifax  with  a  con- 

*  In  aid  of  the  public  funds  appropriated  by  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  a  voluntary  sub- 
scription for  the  encouragement  of  recruits  was  opened  at  Boston,  where,  in  one  day,  twenty 
thousand  pounds  were  subscribed.  • 


272  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

siderable  fleet,  and  twelve  thousand  British  troops,  conducted  by  General 
Amherst,  an  officer  of  distinguished  skill  and  ability,  and  under  whom  a 
subordinate  command  was  exercised  by  General  Wolfe,  one  of  the  most 
heroic  and  magnanimous  spirits  of  the  age.^  Abercrombie,  on  whom  the 
chief  command  of  the  entire  forces  employed  in  this  quarter  of  the  world 
devolved,  was  now  at  the  head  of  the  most  powerful  army  that  had  ever 
been  assembled  in  America,  consisting  of  fifty  thousand  men,  of  whom 
twenty-two  thousand  were  regular  troops.^  He  was  a  person  of  slender 
abilities,  and  utterly  devoid  of  energy  and  resolution  ;  and  Pitt  too  late  re- 
gretted the  error  he  committed  in  intrusting  a  command  of  such  importance 
to  one  so  little  known  to  him,  and  who  proved  so  unfit  to  sustain  it. 

The  increased  interest  in  the  affairs  of  America  which  the  British  people 
began  to  exhibit,  and  the  purpose  which  the  nation  and  the  ministry  now 
cherished,  of  vigorous  and  extensive  warfare  in  that  quarter,  were  not  a  lit- 
tle promoted  by  circumstances  of  which  we  must  seek  for  the  springs  in  the 
particular  history  of  Pennsylvania.  Captain  Denny,  whose  appointment  to 
the  government  of  this  province  we  have  already  noticed,  possessed  none 
of  that  taste  for  disputation  which  characterized  his  predecessor.  Governor 
Morris.  He  was  exceedingly  desirous  to  enjoy  an  easy,  quiet  administra- 
tion ;  but,  unfortunately,  the  attainment  of  this  object  was  incompatible  with 
his  adherence  to  the  instructions  communicated  to  him  by  the  proprietaries. 
As  a  substitute  for  popular  measures,  he  was  directed  by  his  constituents 
to  cultivate  the  friendship,  and,  if  possible,  secure  the  services  of  popular 
men,  and  particularly  of  Dr.  Frankhn,  the  most  respected  and  distinguished 
inhabitant  of  Pennsylvania  ;  but  Franklin  firmly  rejected  the  ensnaring 
offers  which  Denny  addressed  to  him,  and  declared  that  he  would  accept 
no  favors  from  the  proprietaries,  as  he  was  determined  to  give  them  no 
farther  support  than  their  measures  should  justly  merit.  An  administration 
which  commenced  in  this  manner  was  not  likely  to  be  attended  with  a  satis- 
factory issue.  The  old  dispute  respecting  the  liabihty  of  the  proprietary 
possessions  to  taxation  was  revived  with  more  violence  than  ever  ;  and  a 
bill  having  passed  the  assembly,  granting  for  the  service  of  the  king  sixty 
thousand  pounds,  of  which  ten  thousand  were  to  be  placed  at  the  command 
of  Lord  Loudoun,  was  disallowed  by  the  governor,  because  the  estates  of 
the  proprietaries  were  not  exempted  from  the  assessment  it  imposed.  Lord 
Loudoun  endeavoured  to  mediate  between  the  disputants,  whose  respective 
pleas  were  discussed  before  him  by  the  governor  for  himself  and  his  con- 
stituents, and  by  Franklin  on  the  part  of  the  assembly.  Denny  declared 
that  the  proprietaries  held  his  bond  by  which  he  was  engaged  under  a  high 
penalty  to  conform  to  all  their  instructions  ;  yet  he  was  prepared  to  incur 
the  hazard  of  opposing  their  will  in  this  instance,  if  Lord  Loudoun  would 
advise  him  to  pass  the  bill.  This,  however,  Loudoun  declined  to  do  ;  and 
preferably  chose  to  recommend  that  the  assembly  should  yield  to  the  wishes 
of  the  proprietaries.  As  the  money  was  urgently  wanted  for  the  defence 
of  the  Pennsylvanian  frontier  against  the  incursions  of  the  French  and  their 
Indian  allies,  Franklin  prevailed  with  the  assembly  to  pass  the  bill  in  the 
terms  required  by  Denny  and  recommended  by  Lord  Loudoun,  after  voting, 

*  The  Americans  compared  Amherst  to  Fabius,  and  Wolfe  to  the  Scipios. 
"  Wolfe,  where'er  he  fought, 

Put  so  much  of  his  heart  into  his  act, 

That  his  example  had  a  magnet's  force."  —  Cowper. 
■  Trumbull.    Minot.    Hutchinson.    Smollett.    Belknap.    Holmes. 


CHAP,  v.]  FRANKLINS  MISSION  TO  ENGLAND.  273 

however,  a  preliminary  resolution  that  they  meant  not  to  relinquish  the  pre- 
tensions they  had  asserted,  but  were  driven  by  force  to  suspend  the  ex- 
ercise of  them  on  the  present  occasion. 

For  the  more  effectual  vindication  of  these  pretensions,  the  assembly  forth- 
with composed  a  petition  to  the  king,  in  which  they  represented  the  injury 
which  accrued  both  to  his  Majesty's  service  in  general,  and  to  the  province 
in  particular,  from  the  conduct  of  the  proprietaries ;  and  Franklin  was  de- 
spatched to  England,  as  the  agent  of  the  province,  in  order  to  present  and  sup- 
port this  application.  On  his  arrival  at  London  [July,  1757], he  found  the 
success  of  his  mission  obstructed  by  various  obstacles,  some  of  which  were 
created  by  the  art  and  industry  of  the  parties  who  had  an  interest  in  preju- 
dicing the  public  mind  against  the  cause  which  he  supported.  To  this  end, 
the  English  newspapers  were  continually  supplied  with  paragraphs  bearing 
the  title  of  Intelligence  from  Pennsylvania,  but  in  reality  fabricated  in 
London,  and  conveying  the  most  injurious  reflections  on  the  inhabitants  and 
assembly  of  the  province,  who  were  represented  as  actuated  by  selfish  nio- 
tives  and  a  mutinous  and  refractory  spirit,  because  they  persisted  in  with- 
standing the  claim  of  the  proprietaries  to  an  exemption  from  that  taxation 
which  was  necessary  to  the  defence  of  the  proprietary  estates.  It  was 
pretended  that  the  Quakers  still  retained  the  command  of  the  assembly, 
and  that,  from  a  real  or  affected  regard  to  their  sectarian  principles,  they 
obstructed  every  preparation  even  for  defensive  war,  and  suffered  the  fron^- 
tiers  of  the  province  to  be  desolated  by  Indian  rage  and  cruelty  ;  and  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  colony,  but  the  Quakers  in  an  especial  degree,  were 
charged  with  the  blackest  ingratitude  to  the  founder  of  Pennsylvania  and  his 
descendants.  If  William  Penn  could  have  foreseen  this,  he  would,  per- 
haps, have  regretted,  not  indeed  his  exertions  to  colonize  Pennsylvania, 
but  that,  in  making  those  exertions,  he  had  ever  proposed  to  himself  and 
his  family  any  other  reward  except  the  consciousness  of  beneficence  and  the 
glory  of  the  enterprise. 

The  disadvantage  arising  from  this  preoccupation  of  the  public  mind  was 
increased  by  the  strong  interest  still  prevailing  among  the  politicians  of  Eng- 
land in  the  progress  of  the  war  in  Germany,  which  rendered  it  a  task  of  no 
ordinary  difiiculty  to  remove  the  impressions  already  produced  by  interested 
individuals  against  the  equitable  claims  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  colonial  settle- 
ment in  a  distant  part  of  the  world.  Franklin's  ardor,  nevertheless,  was  ani- 
mated rather  than  depressed  by  the  prospect  of  difficulties  which  it  was  in 
the  power  of  genius  and  intelligence  to  overcome  ;  and,  accepting  the  defence 
of  his  country's  interest,  he  pursued  it  with  equal  zeal,  abihty,  and  success. 
He  inserted  replies  in  the  public  prints  to  the  representations  conveyed  by 
the  proprietaries,  in  which  he  demonstrated  with  brief  and  perspicuous 
statement  and  reasoning,  united  with  the  hveliest  wit  and  keen  but  elegant 
satire,  the  unjust  and  sordid  policy  of  the  proprietaries,  the  wrongs  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  the  utter  groundlessness  of  the  present  charges  against  the 
Quakers,  who  actually  formed  but  a  small  proportion  of  the  total  population 
of  the  province,  who  no  longer  retained  their  ancient  ascendant  in  the  pro- 
vincial assembly,  and  of  whom,  indeed,  very  few  were  now  members  of  that 
body.  While  the  graces  of  his  style  attracted  general  attention  to  these 
publications,  the  force  of  his  reasoning  and  the  spirit  of  his  pleading  pro- 
duced as  general  conviction  and  sympathy.  An  indignant  concern  was 
awakened  in  the  public  mind   for   the  inhabitants  of  a  British  provin6t> 

VOL.  II.  30 


274  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  ^  [BOOK  X. 

whose  exertions  to  defend  themselves  against  the  common  enemy,  and  to 
cooperate  with  the  general  service  of  the  empire,  were  obstructed  by  the 
insolence  and  selfishness  of  a  single  wealthy  family.  Whether  from  unwil- 
lingness to  render  the  proprietaries  irreconcilably  hostile  to  himself,  or  be- 
cause he  judged  such  compositions  unsuitable  to  his  character  of  agent  for 
the  province,  Franklin  declined  avowing  the  authorship  of  them,  and  caused 
them  to  be  published  either  anonymously,  or  in  the  name  of  William  Frank- 
lin, his  illegitimate  son. 

To  prevent  the  necessity  of  again  recurring  to  this  controversy,  we 
shall  anticipate  a  httle  the  pace  of  time,  and  here  record  its  issue.  While 
It  was  still  in  progress.  Governor  Denny,  foreseeing  the  defeat  of  his  con- 
stituents, ventured  to  assent  to  a  bill  framed  in  conformity  with  the  senti- 
ments of  the  assembly  ;  but  as  the  proprietaries  still  refused  to  make  any 
general  concession  on  this  subject,  and  still  persisted  in  calumniating  that  pro- 
vincial body,  and  not  only  the  present,  but  every,  generation  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Pennsylvania,  —  calling  the  reputation  of  their  illustrious  ancestor 
to  their  aid,  and  hoping,  by  its  dazzling  glare,  to  cast  a  deeper  shade  on  the 
objects  of  their  malevolence,  —  Franklin  determined  to  make  one  decisive 
effort  to  disabuse  the  British  public,  and  applied  himself  to  the  composition 
of  a  treatise,  which  was  not  published  till  the  beginning  of  the  year  1759, 
when  it  appeared  under  the  title  of  A  Historical  Review  of  the  Constitution 
of  Pennsylvania.  This  admirable  work,  which  combines  all  the  felicities  of 
Franklin's  genius,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  most  masterly  production  of  his  pen, 
appearing  anonymously,  was  long  ascribed  to  James  Ralph,  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  political  writers  of  that  period.  It  was  read  with  the  live- 
liest interest  in  England,  and  not  only  rendered  the  existing  proprietaries 
generally  odious  and  contemptible  to  their  countrymen,  but  dissipated  con- 
siderably the  illusion  that  had  prevailed  with  regard  to  the  unmixed  virtue 
and  disinterestedness  of  the  founder  of  Pennsylvania. i  Franklin  judged 
that  now  was  the  time  to  present  the  petition  of  the  provincial  assembly, 
and  to  have  their  cause  discussed  before  the  privy  council ;  where,  in  spite 
of  the  art  and  interest  exerted  in  behalf  of  the  proprietaries,  a  judgment  was 
about  to  have  been  pronounced  against  them,  when  they  deemed  it  expe- 
dient to  avert  this  disgrace  by  proposing  a  compromise.  With  simulated 
moderation  and  palpable  subterfuge,  they  offered  tor  consent  to  the  subjec- 
tion of  their  estates  to  the  provincial  taxes,  provided  Franklin  would  engage 
for  his  constituents  that  these  estates  should  not  be  assessed  beyond  their  due 
proportion  of  liability.  The  point  in  dispute  was  thus  entirely  conceded 
by  the  stipulation  of  a  condition  which  never  had  been  nor  could  be  re- 
fused ;  and  by  the  address  and  abihty  of  Franklin,  a  victory  of  the  highest 
importance  was  achieved  for  his  countrymen.  The  controversy  had  excited 
much  interest  throughout  America  ;  and  the  conduct  and  issue  of  it  recom- 
mended Franklin  so  highly  to  the  confidence  and  esteem  of  the  American 
colonists,  that  he   was,  shortly  after,  appointed  agent  for  the  colonies  of 

*  Mr.  Clarkson,  in  his  Life  of  William  Penn,  has  taken  some  notice  of  this  production  of 
t'ranklin ;  on  which  occasion  he  has  been  betrayed  into  a  very  strange  mistake  by  erroneous 
information  and  too  partial^egard  for  the  Quaker  patriarch.  He  states  that  the  object  of  the 
publication  was  to  obtain  a  change  of  the  provincial  government  from  proprietary  to  royal,  and 
that  the  failure  of  this  design  "laid  the  foundation  of  his  (Franklin's)  animosity  to  Great  Brit- 
ain, which  was  so  conspicuous  afterwards."  This  is  an  entire  misrepresentation,  into  which 
nothing  but  defective  materials  and  the  jealousy  of  Mr.  Clarkson's  aifection  for  Penn  could 
have  betrayed  him.  Franklin's  design  was  perfectly  different,  and,  instead  of  failing,  was 
crowned  with  complete  success.     P«?^  Note  XlX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  ',.;..    , 


CHAP,  v.]  POLITICAL  VIEWS  OF  PITT  AND  FRANKLIN.  275 

Massachusetts,  Maryland,  and  Georgia,  and  on  his  return  to  Pennsylvania, 
in  1762,  was  rewarded  with  five  thousand  pounds  for  his  services  in  Eng- 
land. It  was  a  circumstance  additionally  gratifying  to  the  Pennsylvanians, 
that  Denny  was  removed,  in  the  year  1759,  from  the  government  of  their 
province,  and  replaced  by  James  Hamilton,  whom  we  have  seen  once  be- 
fore in  the  possession  of  this  office. 

But  a  consequence,  earlier  and  more  important  than  that  which  we  have 
now  considered,  though  collateral  to  the  proper  object  of  Franklin's  mission 
from  America,  resulted  from  his  residence  in  England  at  this  period.  Ap- 
proximated to  each  other,  and  inhabiting  the  same  metropolis,  were  now, 
at  an  interesting  crisis  of  British  and  American  history,  the  most  illustrious 
statesman  and  minister  in  England,  and  the  most  distinguished  philosopher 
and  politician  of  America.  It  might  naturally  be  supposed  that  a  close 
and  intimate  intercourse  must  have  arisen  between  these  remarkable  men, 
and  that,  from  their  united  genius  and  deliberation,  the  wisest  and  most  mas- 
terly scheme  of  British  policy  must  have  been  engendered.  Pitt  was  strong- 
ly opposed  to  the  system  which  had  hitherto  staked  so  much  of  the  blood 
and  treasure  of  England  on  the  issue  of  German  hostilities,^  sometimes  dis- 
graceful, always  barren  of  real  advantage  and  glory  to  England  ;  and  Frank- 
lin, whether  from  the  efficacy  of  Pitt's  eloquence,  or  from  his  own  unassisted 
meditation,  had  espoused  the  same  opinion.  Both  were  united  in  thinking 
that  more  energetic  hostilities  should  be  pursued  in  America  ;  but  the  pre- 
cise point  to  which  hostilities  in  this  quarter  should  actually  be  pushed,  in 
order  to  vindicate  the  honor  without  compromising  the  interest  of  Britain, 
was  a  question  on  which  these  men  might  be  expected  to  entertain  differ- 
ent opinions.  From  the  extent  and  precision  of  political  information  for 
which  Pitt  was  so  highly  renowned,  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  him  unac- 
quainted with  the  doubts  which  had  been  openly  expressed,  both  in  Britain 
and  America,  of  the  expediency  of  attempting  the  entire  conquest  of  the 
French  settlements  in  the  New  World  ;  and  it  is  equally  incredible  that 
Franklin  was  ignorant  of  the  conviction  that  prevailed  with  many  Ameri- 
can politicians,  that  this  conquest  would  destroy  the  firmest  pledge  which 
Britain  possessed  of  the  obedience  of  her  transatlantic  colonies.^  Pitt,  un- 
doubtedly, would  never  have  consented  to  embrace  any  measure,  of  which 
the  result,  however  flattering  in  immediate  appearance,  seemed  to  him  prob- 
ably to  threaten  or  even  materially  to  facilitate  the  dismemberment  of  the 
British  empire  ;  and  Franklin,  we  may  with  almost  equal  certainty  affirm, 
was  at  this  time,  and  long  after,  strongly  opposed  to  the  idea,  that  either 
Britain  or  America  could  derive  advantage  from  a  political  separation.  He 
used  to  compare  the  British  empire  to  a  grand  porcelain  vase,  of  which,  were 
it  broken,  the  fractional  parts,  however  equally  or  unequally  distributed,  could 
never  possess  the  same  magnificent  value  which  belonged  to  their  incorpo- 
ration and  combined  existence.  But  Pitt,  wielding  all  the  resources  of 
Britain,  was  liable  to  be  seduced  by  views  of  immediate  glory ;  and  Frank- 
lin, however  guihless  he  may  have  been  of  projecting,  at  this  period,  the 
independence  of  America,  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  contemplated,  as 
cautiously  and  jealously  as  a  native  EngHshman  would  have  done,  events, 

>  Some  time  after  Pitt  became  minister,  the  views  which  he  entertained  (or  at  least  express- 
ed) of  the  interest  of  Britain  in  German  wars  underwent  a  very  signal  modification.  Able,  ac- 
tive, eloquent,  haughty,  and  violent,  this  eminent  statesman  was  little  regardful  of  honest  con 
sistency. 

V  •  .4n<«,  Chap.  II.      ^ ,  ^' ■  .    ':^.  ^:~^^^..^:.:riir-  -    ..    ....;.:;.:,;•,.■     :.:^J^    ■^^'^    -r;-^; 


276  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

which,  by  strengthening  America,  must  necessarily  render  her  independ- 
ence more  easily  attainable.  Pitt  was  incited  by  principle,  inclination,  and 
interest  to  prosecute  the  war  in  America  more  actively  than  his  official  pre- 
decessors. Still,  it  would  seem  that  he  doubted  the  wisdom,  and  perhaps 
hesitated  between  the  wisdom  and  the  glory,  of  an  entire  subjugation  of  the 
French  empire  in  America.  Franklin,  on  the  contrary,  was  conducted  by 
his  own  reasoning,  or  enticed  by  patriotic  zeal  and  passion,  to  the  conclusion, 
that  the  interests  both  of  Britain  and  America  would  be  promoted  by  such 
conquest ;  and  yet  it  is  certain  that  his  views  were  materially  affected  by  the 
consideration,  more  or  less  just,  which  he  entertained  of  the  probable  effect 
of  this  enterprise  on  the  minds  of  the  British  colonists  towards  their  own 
parent  state.  It  was,  he  declared,  his  opinion,  that  the  independence  of  the 
British  colonies,  however  reasonable  or  probable,  was  a  contingency  too  dis- 
tant to  be  permitted  to  influence  present  calculations  ;  that  discontent  and 
disaffection  were  maintained  in  British  America  by  the  vicinity,  the  power, 
and  the  encroachments  of  the  French  ;  and  that  loyalty  to  the  parent  state 
would  be  promoted  by  the  removal  of  this  cause  of  apprehension  and  anxiety. 
Pitt,  who  was,  doubtless,  aware  of  Franklin's  eminence  in  America  as  a 
politician,  and  of  his  celebrity  in  the  world  as  a  philosopher,  appears  to 
have  regarded  him  with  sincere,  but  cold  and  condescending  esteem  ; 
while  Franklin,  as  yet  a  novice  in  great  and  brilliant  scenes,  biased,  partly 
by  the  influence  of  artificial  distinctions  to  which  he  was  unaccustomed,  and 
partly  by  an  excess  of  admiration  incident  to  real  genius,  contemplated 
Pitt  with  enthusiastic  estimate  and  unbounded  reverence.  Yet  while  Frank- 
lin, in  all  the  native  dignity  and  generous  confidence  of  a  superior  though 
unpractised  soul,  entertained  an  ardent  desire  to  see  and  converse  with  the 
British  minister, — Pitt,  governed  by  the  aristocratical  prejudices  which  he 
cherished  at  least  as  fondly  as  he  did  the  principles  of  liberty,  regarded  an 
American  postmaster  and  provincial  agent  as  a  person  with  whom  he  could 
not  directly  associate  without  derogation  from  his  own  dignity.  All  the 
efforts  of  Franklin  to  obtain  an  interview  with  Pitt  proved  unsuccessful ; 
and  he  was  obliged  to  content  himself  with  the  complimentary  intelhgence, 
that  this  minister  considered  him  a  respectable  person^  and  with  the  more 
solid"  advantage  of  communicating  with  him  through  the  medium  of  two  of 
his  under-secretaries.  Pitt,  at  this  time,  though  too  haughty  and  supercil- 
ious to  converse  personally  with  Franklin,  was  too  wise  to  permit  the  op- 
portunity of  consulting  so  able  a  politician  to  pass  wholly  unimproved.  Per- 
haps, if  he  had  freely  and  directly  admitted  Franklin's  conversation,  the 
strain  and  tenor  he  imparted  to  the  policy  of  Britain  had  been  different ;  his 
natural  sagacity,  aided  by  the  advantage  of  close  and  immediate  intercourse 
with  a  mind  as  enlarged  as  his  own,  might  have  enabled  him  to  detect  some 
fallacy  in  the  reasoning  by  which  the  conquest  of  Canada  was  recommended. 
But  the  zealous,  undoubting  conviction  of  an  arguer  disguises  to  ordinary 
capacities  the  logical  unsoundness  which  it  sometimes  explains  and  accounts 
for  to  firmer  and  more  comprehensive  minds  ;  and  Pitt,  communicating  with 
this  acute  and  ingenious,  though  doubtless  passionate  American,  only  through 
the  medium  of  his  own  subordinate  officers,  was,  perhaps  too  readily,  im- 
pressed with  the  idea  that  that  acquisition  would  conduce  to  the  general 
benefit  of  the  British  empifts.  An  immediate  conquest  of  the  settlements 
of  the  French  seemed  to  be  requisite  to  the  vindication  of  British  honor. 
How  far  such   conquest,  if  achieved,  ought,  in  policy,  to  be  preserved, 


CHAP,  v.]  SIEGE  OF  L0UISBUR6.   '^'''  fff 

was  a  more  perplexing  question  ;  and  on  the  whole,  the  British  minister 
was  rather  animated  to  prosecute  hostilities,  than  fixed  in  decisive  purpose 
with  regard  to  their  ultimate  issue,  by  his  correspondence  with  Franklin.^ 

Quitting  the  cabinet  for  the  field,  we  now  resume  the  progress  of  the 
war  in  America.  The  conquest  of  Canada  was  the  object  to  which  the 
most  ardent  wishes  of  the  British  colonists  were  directed  ;  but  they  quickly 
perceived  that  the  gratification  of  this  hope,  if  ever  realized,  must  be  defer- 
red at  least  till  the  succeeding  year  ;  as  the  cabinet  of  England  had  deter- 
mined, for  the  protection  of  the  English  commerce  against  the  cruisers  and 
privateers  of  France,  to  employ  a  considerable  part  of  the  assembled  forces 
in  an  attack  upon  Louisburg,  and  to  commence  its  new  system  of  operations 
by  the  reduction  of  that  place.  Three  expeditions  were  proposed  for  the 
present  year  [1753]  :  the  first,  against  Louisburg  ;  the  second,  against  Ticon- 
deroga  and  Crown  Point ;  and  the  third,  against  Fort  Duquesne.  In  prose- 
cution of  the  first  of  these  enterprises.  Admiral  Boscawen,  sailing  from  Hali- 
fax [May  28]  with  a  fleet  of  twenty  ships  of  the  line  and  eighteen  frigates, 
conveying  an  army  of  fourteen  thousand  men  conducted  by  Amherst,  of 
which  but  a  small  proportion  were  provincial  troops,  arrived  before  Louisburg 
on  the  second  of  June.  The  garrison  of  this  place,  commanded  by  the 
Chevalier  de  Drucourt,  an  intrepid  and  experienced  officer,  was  composed 
of  two  thousand  five  hundred  regulars,  aided  by  six  hundred  militia.  The 
condition  of  the  harbour,  secured  by  five  ships  of  the  line,  one  fifty-gun  ship, 
and  five  frigates,  three  of  which  were  sunk  across  the  mouth  of  the  basin, 
rendered  it  necessary  for  the  invaders  to  land  at  some  distance  from  the 
town.  From  the  defensive  precautions  which  the  enemy  had  adopted,  this 
operation  was  attended  with  considerable  difficulty  ;  but,  by  the  heroic  res- 
olution and  resistless  intrepidity  of  General  Wolfe,  it  was  accomplished  with 
success  and  little  loss  ;  and  the  troops  having  been  landed  at  the  creek  of 
Cormoran  [June  8] ,  and  the  artillery  stores  brought  on  shore,  Wolfe  was 
detached  with  two  thousand  men  to  seize  a  post  which  was  occupied  by  the 
enemy  at  the  Lighthouse  Point,  and  was  calculated  to  affiard  advantage  to 
the  besiegers  by  enabling  them  to  annoy  the  ships  in  the  harbour  and  the  for- 
tifications of  the  town.  On  the  appearance  of  Wolfe,  the  post  was  aban- 
doned ;  and  there  the  British  soon  erected  a  formidable  battery.  [June  12.] 
Approaches  were  also  made  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  town  ;  and  the  siege 
was  pressed  with  a  resolute  activity  characteristic  of  the  English  command- 
ers, and  yet  with  a  severe  and  guarded  caution,  inspired  by  the  strength  of 
the  place  and  the  reputation  of  its  governor  and  garrison,  who  fully  supported 
the  high  idea  that  was  entertained  of  them,  by  the  skilful  and  obstinate  valor 
they  exerted  in  its  defence.  In  all  the  operations  of  the  siege,  the  dauntless 
courage  and  indefatigable  energy  of  Wolfe  were  signally  preeminent.  A 
heavy  cannonade  having  been  maintained  against  the  town  and  harbour,  a 
bomb,  exploding,  set  fire  to  one  of  the  large  ships,  which  soon  blew  up  ; 
and  the  flames  were  communicated  to  two  others,  which  shared  the  same 
fate.  The  English  admiral,  in  consequence  of  this  success,  despatched  boats 
manned  with  six  hundred  men  into  the  harbour  to  make  an  attempt  during  the 
night  on  the  two  ships  of  the  line  which  still  remained  to  the  enemy.  In 
spite  of  a  tremendous  fire  of  cannon  and  musketry,  the  assailants  success- 
fully performed  this  perilous  feat ;  and  one  of  the  ships,  which  happened 
to  be  aground,  was    destroyed,   while   the    other   was   towed    off   in    tri 

'Proud.    Smollett.    Fran>.lin 's  .Vcmcir*.'       " 

X 


278  HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

umph.i  By  this  gallant  exploit  the  English  gained  complete  possession  of 
the  harbour  ;  and  already  more  than  one  practicable  breach  in  the  works 
was  produced  by  their  batteries.  The  governor  now  judged  the  place  no 
longer  defensible,  and  offered  to  capitulate  ;  but  his  propositions  were  re- 
fused ;  and  it  was  required  that  the  garrison  should  surrender  at  discretion, 
or  abide  the  issue  of  an  assault  by  sea  and  land.  These  severe  terms,  though 
at  first  rejected,  were  finally  embraced  ;  and  in  accordance  with  them, 
Louisburg,  with  all  its  artillery,  provisions,  and  military  stores,  together  with 
Isle  Royale,  St.  John's,  and  their  dependencies,  was  surrendered  on  the 
26th  of  July  to  the  English,  who  without  farther  difficulty  took  entire  pos- 
session of  the  island  of  Cape  Breton.  Four  hundred  of  the  besiegers  and 
fifteen  hundred  of  the  garrison  were  killed  or  wounded  during  the  siege ; 
and  the  town  of  Louisburg  was  reduced  to  nearly  a  heap  of  ruins.  In  this 
town  the  conquerors  found  two  hundred  and  twenty-one  pieces  of  cannon, 
eighteen  mortars,  and  a  vast  quantity  of  stores  and  ammunition.  The  in- 
habitants of  Cape  Breton  were  transported  to  France  in  English  ships  ; 
but  the  French  garrison  and  their  naval  auxiliaries  were  carried  prisoners  of 
war  to  England,  where  the  unwonted  tidings  of  victory  and  conquest  were 
hailed  with  demonstrations  of  the  liveliest  triumph  and  joy.  The  French 
colors  taken  at  Louisburg  were  carried  in  grand  possession  from  Kensington 
Palace  to  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Paul's ;  and  a  form  of  thanksgiving  was  ap- 
pointed to  be  used  on  the  occasion  in  all  the  churches  of  England.  The 
sentiments  of  the  parent  state  were  reechoed  in  America  ;  where  the  peo- 
ple of  New  England,  more  especially,  partook  of  the  warmth  of  an  exulta- 
tion that  revived  the  glory  of  their  own  previous  achievement  in  the  first 
conquest  of  Cape  Breton.^ 

Before  this  conquest  was  completed,  the  expedition  against  Ticonderoga 
and  Crown  Point  occurred  to  checker  the  new  and  victorious  career  of 
the  British  arms  in  America.  This  enterprise  was  conducted  by  General 
Abercrombie,  who  on  the  5th  of  July  embarked  his  troops  on  Lake  George 
in  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  whaleboats  and  nine  hundred  batteaux.  His 
army  consisted  of  sixteen  thousand  effective  men,  of  whom  nine  thousand 
were  provincials,  and  was  attended  by  a  formidable  train  of  artillery. 
Among  other  oflScers,  he  was  accompanied  by  Lord  Howe,  a  young  Eng- 
lish nobleman,^  who  exhibited  the  most  promising  military  talents,  and  whose 
valor,  virtue,  courtesy,  and  good-sense  had  greatly  endeared  him  both  to 
the  English  and  the  provincial  troops.  The  mass  of  mankind  are  always 
prone  to  regard  with  veneration  those  titular  distinctions,  which,  having  no 
real  substance,  afford  unbounded  scope  to  the  exercise  of  fancy ;  and  al- 
most universal  suffrage  is  won,  when  the  possessor  of  such  lofty,  though 
unsolid,  pretensions  appears  to  justify  them  by  merit  and  mitigate  them  by 

*  The  renowned  Captain  Cook,  then  serving  as  a  petty  officer  on  board  of  a  British  ship  of 
war,  cooperated  in  this  exploit,  and  wrote  an  account  of  it  to  a  friend  in  England.  That  he 
honorably  distinguished  himself  may  be  inferred  from  his  promotion  to  the  rank  of  lieutenant 
in  the  royal  navy,  which  followed  soon  after. 

The  Marquis  de  Gouttes,  who  commanded  the  French  squadron  at  Louisburg,  was  con- 
demned in  France  to  be  degraded  from  his  rank  of  nobility,  to  have  his  patent  burned  by  the 
common  hangman,  and  to  be  imprisoned  for  twenty-one  years. 

2  Minot.  Trumbull.  Smollett.  Annual  Register  for  1758.  Holmes.  Nothing  can 
be  more  entertaining,  and  at  the  same  time  more  instructive,  than  Dr.  Johnson's  fanciful  con- 
trast between  a  British  and  a  French  account  of  the  second  capture  of  Louisburg.  See  /d/er, 
No.  20. 

'  He  was  grandson  of  George  the  First ;  his  mother  being  the  natural  daughter  of  that  mon- 
arcn  and  his  mistress,  Lady  Darlington.     Stuart's  Three  Years  in  North  America.    -  -  "—- 


CHAP,  v.]  REPULSE  AT  TICONDEROGA.  279^^ 

generosity,  instead  of  arrogating  them  with  stern  insolence  or  reposing  on 
them  with  indolent  pride.  Lord  Howe  seemed  to  regard  his  titular  dis- 
tinction less  as  a  proof  of  noble  nature  than  an  incentive  to  noble  action, 
and  as  facilitating  the  indulgence  of  an  amiable  politeness  by  exempting  him 
from  all  suspicion  of  mean,  obsequious  servility.  From  the  day  of  his  arri- 
val in  America,  he  conformed  himself,  and  caused  his  regiment  to  conform, 
to  the  style  of  service  which  the  country  required.  He  was  the  first  to 
encounter  the  danger  to  which  he  conducted  others,  and  to  set  the  example 
of  every  sacrifice  he  required  them  to  incur.  While  the  strict  discipline 
he  maintained  commanded  respect,  the  kind  and  graceful  benevolence  of  his 
manners  conciliated  affection.     He  was  the  idol  and  soul  of  the  army. 

The  first  operations  of  Abercrombie  were  directed  against  Ticonderoga. 
Having  disembarked  at  the  landing-place  in  a  cove  on  the  western  side  of 
the  lake,  the  troops  were  formed  into  four  colunms,  of  which  the  centre 
was  occupied  by  the  British,  and  the  flanks  by  the  provincials.  In  this 
order  they  marched  against  the  advanced  guard  of  the  French,  which, 
consisting  of  one  battalion  only,  destroyed  its  encampment  and  made  a 
precipitate  retreat.  Proceeding  from  the  abandoned  post  against  Ticon- 
deroga, the  British  columns,  bewildered  by  tangled  thickets,  and  misled  by 
unskilful  guides,  were  thrown  into  confusion  and  commingled  in  a  disor- 
derly manner.  At  this  juncture.  Lord  Howe,  advancing  at  the  head  of  the 
right  centre  column,  unexpectedly  encountered  the  fugitive  battalion  of  the 
French,  who  had  lost  their  way  in  the  woods,  and  now  stumbled  upon  the 
enemy  from  whom  they  were  endeavouring  to  escape.  They  consisted  of 
regulars  and  a  few  Indians  ;  and,  notwithstanding  their  surprise  and  inferi- 
ority of  numbers,  displayed  a  promptitude  of  action  and  courage  that  had 
nearly  reproduced  the  catastrophe  of  Braddock.  With  audacious  temerity, 
which  in  war  is  easily  mistaken  for  deliberate  confidence,  and  frequently 
prevails  over  superior  strength,  they  attacked  their  pursuers  ;  and  at  the 
first  fire  Lord  Howe  with  a  number  of  his  soldiers  fell.  [July  6.]  The  sud- 
denness of  the  assault,  the  terror  inspired  by  the  Indian  yell,  and  the  grief 
and  astonishment  created  by  the  death  of  Lord  Howe,  excited  a  general 
panic  among  the  British  regulars  ;  but  the  provincials,  who  flanked  them, 
and  who  were  better  acquainted  with  the  mode  of  fighting  practised  by  the 
enemy,  stood  their  ground  and  soon  defeated  their  opponents,  with  a  slaugh- 
ter, compared  to  which,  the  loss  of  the  British  in  point  of  numbers  was 
inconsiderable.  But  the  death  of  Lord  Howe  had  depressed  the  spirit  and 
enfeebled  the  councils  of  the  army  ;  and  to  this  circumstance  its  subsequent 
misfortunes  were  mainly  ascribed.  The  loss  of  that  brave  and  accom- 
plished officer  was  generally  deplored  in  America  ;  and  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts,  not  long  after,  caused  a  monument  to  be  erected  to  his 
memory  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

The  British  forces,  without  farther  opposition,  took  possession  of  a  post 
situated  within  two  miles  of  Ticonderoga  [July  7],  previously  occupied  by 
an  advanced  guard  commanded  by  Colonel  Bradstreet,  a  provincial  officer 
distinguished  by  his  valor,  intelligence,  and  activity.  The  general,  under- 
standing that  the  garrison  at  Ticonderoga  consisted  of  about  six  thousand 
men  (French,  Canadians,  and  Indians),  and  that  a  reinforcement  of  three 
thousand  more  was  daily  expected,  resolved  on  an  immediate  assault  of  the 
place.  He  directed  his  engineer  to  reconnoitre  the  position  and  intrench- 
raents  of  the  enemy ;  and,  trusting  to  a  hasty  survey  and  a  rash  report  of  their 


280  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

weakness,  embraced  the  dangerous  purpose  of  forcing  them  without  the  as- 
sistance of  cannon.  The  troops,  having  received  orders  to  march  up 
briskly,  to  rush  upon  the  enemy's  fire,  and  to  reserve  their  own  until  they 
had  passed  a  breastwork  which  was  represented  as  easily  superable,  advanced 
to  the  attack  with  the  highest  intrepidity.  [July  8.]  But  unlooked-for  im- 
pediments resisted  their  progress.  The  breastwork  proved  much  more  for- 
midable than  had  been  reported,  and  in  front  of  it,  to  a  considerable  distance, 
trees  were  felled  with  their  branches  protruding  outward  and  sharpened  to  a 
point  ;  by  which  obstruction  the  assailants  were  not  only  retarded  in  their 
advance,  but,  becoming  entangled  among  the  boughs,  were  exposed  in  help- 
less embarrassment  and  disorder  to  a  galling  and  destructive  fire.  The  pro- 
vincials, who  were  posted  behind  the  regulars,  inflamed  with  impatience, 
and  not  sufficiently  restrained  by  discipline,  could  not  be  prevented  from 
firing  ;  and,  notwithstanding  their  expertness  as  marksmen,  their  fire  was 
supposed  to  have  proved  more  fatal  to  their  friends  than  their  enemies. 
This  sanguinary  conflict  was  protracted  during  four  hours.  Of  the  assail- 
ants there  were  killed  and  wounded  about  two  thousand  men,  including 
four  hundred  of  the  provincials.  One  half  of  a  Highland  regiment  com- 
manded by  Lord  John  Murray,  with  twenty-five  of  its  officers,  were  either 
killed  or  desperately  wounded.  The  loss  of  the  enemy,  covered  as  they 
were  from  danger,  was  comparatively  trifling.  At  length  Abercrombie 
gave  the  signal  to  desist  from  the  desperate  enterprise  ;  and  to  an  ill- 
concerted  assault  succeeded  a  retreat  no  less  precipitate  and  injudicious. 
The  British  army,  still  amounting  to  nearly  fourteen  thousand  men,  greatly 
outnumbered  the  enemy  ;  and,  if  the  artillery  had  been  brought  up  to  their 
assistance,  might  have  overpowered  with  little  difficulty  the  French  forces 
and  their  defences  at  Ticonderoga.  But  Abercrombie,  dismayed  by  his 
disastrous  repulse,  and  heedless  of  the  remonstrances  of  the  provincial  offi- 
cers, carried  the  army  back  by  a  hasty  march  to  the  southern  extremity  of 
Lake  George.  Next  to  the  defeat  of  Braddock,  this  was  the  most  dis- 
graceful catastrophe  that  had  befallen  the  arms  of  Britain  in  America. 

As  Abercrombie  showed  himself  destitute  of  the  vigor  that  was  requisite 
to  repair  his  misfortune.  Colonel  Bradstreet  conceived  the  idea  of  at  least 
counterbalancing  it  by  an  effiart  in  a  different  quarter,  and,  with  this  view, 
suggested  to  the  general  a  substitutional  expedition  which  he  offered  to  con- 
duct against  Fort  Frontignac.  Approving  the  proposal,  and  willingly  re- 
linquishing his  designs  against  Ticonderoga  and  Cro^n  Point,  Abercrombie 
despatched  Bradstreet  at  the  head  of  three  thousand  men,  of  whom  all  but 
the  trifling  handful  of  a  hundred  and  fifty-five  were  provincials,  together 
with  eight  pieces  of  cannon  and  three  mortars,  to  attempt  the  reduction 
of  Fort  Frontignac.  Bradstreet  marched  to  Oswego,  embarked  on  Lake 
Ontario,  and,  on  the  evening  of  the  25th  of  August,  landed  within  a  mile  of 
the  fort.  Before  the  lapse  of  two  days,  his  batteries  were  opened  at  so 
short  a  distance,  that  almost  every  shot  took  effect ;  and  the  French  com- 
mandant, finding  his  force  overpowered,  was  compelled  to  surrender  at  dis- 
cretion. [August  27.]  The  Indian  auxiliaries  of  the  French  having  previ- 
ously deserted,  the  prisoners  were  but  a  hundred  and  ten.  But  the  captors 
found  in  the  fort  sixty  pieces  of  cannon,  sixteen  small  mortars,  together  with  a 
prodigious  collection  of  military  stores,  provisions,  and  merchandise.  Nine 
armed  vessels  also  fell  into  their  hands.  Bradstreet,  after  destroying  the 
fort  and  vessels,  and  such  stores  as  he  could  not  carry  away,  returned  to 
exhilarate  the  main  army  with  this  ray  of  success. 


CHAP,  v.]  RPDUCTiON  OF  FORT  DtaUESNE.  ggj 

The  reduction  of  Fort  Frontignac  facilitated  the  enterprise  against  Fort 
Duquesne,  of  which  the  garrison  awaited,  from  the  post  thus  unexpectedly 
subdued,  a  large  reinforcement  of  stores  and  ammunition.  General  Forbes, 
to  whom  the  expedition  against  Fort  Duquesne  was  intrusted,  marched 
with  his  troops  early  in  July  from  Philadelphia  ;  but  his  progress  was  so 
much  retarded  by  various  obstructions,  that  it  was  not  until  two  months 
after,  that  the  Virginian  forces,  commanded  by  Washington,  were  sum-r 
moned  to  join  the  British  army  at  Raystown.  Among  other  provincial 
troops  which  participated  in  this  expedition  was  a  detachment  of  the  militia 
of  North  Carolina,  conducted  by  Major  Waddell,  a  brave  and  active  officer 
and  highly  respected  inhabitant  of  that  State,  and  accompanied  by  a  body 
of  Indian  auxiliaries.  Before  the  combined  army  advanced  from  Rays- 
town,  Major  Grant,  an  English  officer,  was  detached  with  eight  hundred 
men,  partly  British  and  partly  provincials,  to  reconnoitre  the  condition  of 
Fort  Duquesne  and  of  the  adjacent  coimtry.  Rashly  inviting  «n  attack 
from  the  French  garrison,  this  detachment  was  surrounded  by  the  enemy, 
and,  after  a  gallant  but  ineffectual  defence,  in  which  three  hundred  men 
were  killed  and  wounded.  Major  Grant  and  nineteen  other  officers  were 
taken  prisoners.  It  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  the  French  were 
able  to  rescue  these  officers  from  the  sanguinary  ferocity  of  their  own  In- 
dian auxiliaries,  who  butchered  the  greatest  part  of  the  wounded  and  the 
prisoners.  The  whole  residue  of  the  detachment  would  have  shared  the 
same  fate,  if  Captain  Bullet,  a  provincial  officer,  with  tlje  aid  of  a  small 
troop  of  Virginians,  had  not,  partly  by  stratagem,  and  partly  by  the  most 
desperate  efforts  of  valor,  checked  the  advance  of  the  pursuing  Indians,  and 
finally  conducted  the  fugitives  to  the  main  army,  by  e  skiJful,  but  pro- 
tracted and  laborious  retreat.  General  Forbes,  with  this  army,  amounting 
to  at  least  eight  thousand  men,  at  length  advanced  against  Fort  Duquesne  ; 
but,  in  spite  of  the  most  strenuous  exertions,  was  not  able  to  reach  it  till 
near  the  close  of  November.  Enfeebled  by  th^ir  toilsonae  inarch,  the  Brit- 
ish now  approached  the  scene  of  Braddock's  defeat,  and  beheld  the  field 
on  which  the  mouldering  corpses  of  Grant's  troops  still  lay  unburied.  Anx- 
ious to  know  the  condition  of  the  fort  and  the  po&ition  of  the  enemy's 
troops,  Forbes  offered  a  reward  of  forty  pounds  to  any  man  who  would 
make  prisoner  of  a  hostile  Indian.  This  service  was  performed  by  a  serv 
geant  in  the  North  Carolina  militia  ;  when  the  intelligence  that  was  ob- 
tained from  the  captive  showed  Forbes  that  his  labors  were  already  crowned 
with  unexpected  success.  The  approach  of  the  British  force,  which  was 
attended  with  all  those  precautions  of  which  the  neglect  proved  so  fatal 
to  Braddock,  had  struck  the  Indians  with  such  terror,  that  they  withdrew 
from  the  assistance  of  the  garrison  of  Fort  Duquesne,  declaring  that  the 
Great  Spirit  had  evidently  withdrawn  his  favor  from  the  French  and  his 
protection  from  their  fortress  ;  and  the  French  themselves,  infected  with 
the  fears  and  weakened  by  the  desertion  of  their  allies,  as  well  as  disap- 
pointed of  the  stores  which  they  had  expected  to  obtain  from  Fort  Frontig- 
nac, judged  their  post  untenable,  and,  abandoning  it  on  the  evening  before 
the  arrival  of  Forbes's  army,  made  their  escape  in  boats  down  the  Ohio. 
The  British  now  took  unresisted  possession  of  this  important  fortress  [No- 
vember 25] ,  which  had  been  the  immediate  occasion  of  the  existing  war ; 
and,  in  compliment  to  the  great  statesman  whose  administration  had  already 
given  a  new  complexion  to  the  fortune  of  their  country  and  brought  back 

VOL.  II.  36  X* 


232  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

departed  victory  to  her  side,  they  bestowed  upon  it  the  name  of  Pittsburg. 
No  sooner  was  the  British  flag  hoisted  on  its  walls,  than  deputations  arrived 
from  the  numerous  tribes  of  the  Ohio  Indians,  tendering  their  adherence 
and  submission  to  the  victors.  With  the  assistance  of  some  of  these  In- 
dians, a  party  of  British  soldiers  were  sent  to  explore  the  thickets  where 
Braddock  was  attacked,  and  to  bestow  the  rites  of  sepulture  on  the  bones 
of  their  countrymen  which  yet  strewed  the  ground.^  *Forbes,  having  con- 
cluded treaties  of  friendship  with  the  Indians,  left  a  garrison  of  provincials 
in  the  fort,  and  was  reconducting  his  troops  to  Philadelphia,  when  he  died, 
worn  out  by  the  ceaseless  and  overwhelming  fatigues  he  had  undergone. 

The  French,  in  concert  with  some  of  their  Indian  allies,  made  an  at- 
tempt in  the  autumn  to  subdue  a  frontier  fort  and  ravage  a  frontier  set- 
tlement of  New  England.  Their  design,  to  which  they  were  invited  by 
the  absence  of  the  provincial  forces,  engaged  in  the  distant  operations  of 
the  campaign,  was  defeated  by  the  vigorous  and  spirited  exertions  of  Gov- 
ernor Pownall,  who,  for  his  conduct  on  this  occasion,  received  from  Pitt  a 
letter  expressive  of  the  king's  approbation. 

The  campaign  which  thus  terminated  was,  in  the  main,  highly  honorable 
and  propitious  to  Britain,  notwithstanding  the  disgraceful  defeat  sustained  at 
Ticonderoga.  In  consequence  of  this  last  event,  Abercrombie,  as  he  ex- 
pected, was  deprived  of  a  command  he  no  longer  desired  to  retain  ;  and 
Amherst  was  appointed  commander-in-chief  of  the  forces  in  America.^ 
If  France,  whose  American  policy  was  the  offspring  of  a  vaulting,  unmeas- 
ured ambition,  had  been  capable  of  profiting  by  the  lessons  she  had  latterly 
received,  perhaps  the  repulse  of  the  British  at  Ticonderoga  was  an  unfor- 
tunate circumstance  for  her.  It  was  certainly  unfortunate,  if  it  deluded 
her  with  the  hope  of  pursuing  with  advantage  the  contest  she  had  provok- 
ed ;  and  not  less  so  in  its  influence  on  a  powerful  and  indignant  foe,  in  the 
first  moments  of  vindictive  exertion.  It  inspired  the  rulers  of  Britain  with 
the  same  persuasion  which  prevailed  among  the  Americans,  that  more  must 
yet  be  done  to  redeem  the  honor  of  the  British  empire  ;  and  it  stimulated 
the  particular  appetite  which  the  English  people  had  now  contracted  for 
trophies  and  conquests  in  America.  Meanwhile  the  increased  vigor  and 
success  with  which  the  arms  of  Britain  were  exerted  in  other  parts  of  the 
world  rendered  it  the  more  difficult  for  France  to  afford  succour  to  her 
American  possessions. 

Among  other  advantages  which  the  British  reaped  from  the  late  cam- 
paign was  the  influence  it  exercised  on  the  sentiments  of  a  great  number 
of  the  Indian  tribes,  who  began  to  suspect,  that,  by  the  civilities  and  vaunt- 
ing representations  of  the  French,  they  had  been  induced  to  espouse  a  cause 
which  fortune  was  likely  to  forsake.  Many  of  these  savages  had  hastily 
concluded,  from  the  polite,  obliging  manners  of  the  French  in  peace,  and 
their  promptitude  and  celerity  in  war,  that,  of  the  two  European  races, 
they  were  the  more  eligible  friends  and  the  more  formidable  enemies  ;  but 
their  opinion  began  to  waver,  from  a  longer  experience  of  the  justice  of 
British  traffic  and  the  steadiness  of  British  valor.  In  the  close  of  this 
year,  a  grand  assembly  of  Indian  nations  was  held  at  Easton,  about  sixty 
miles  from  Philadelphia,  and  a  formal  treaty  of  friendship  was  concluded 
between  Great  Britain  and  fifteen  Indian  tribes  inhabiting  the  vast  territory 

»  See  Note  XX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
:   '  Burk.    Wynne.    Trumbull.    Hutchinson.    Smollett.    Minot..  Williamson.    Campbell. 


CHAP,  v.]      SALT  MANUFACTURE;  — BANKRUPT  LAW.         283 

extending  from  the  Appalachian  Mountains  to  the  lakes.  The  confer- 
ences were  managed,  on  the  part  of  Britain,  by  Denny,  the  governor  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  Francis  Bernard  (successor  of  Belcher,  who  died  in 
1757),  the  governor  of  New  Jersey,  together  with  Sir  William  Johnson, 
the  royal  superintendent  of  Indian  affairs,  a  number  of  the  members  of 
council  and  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey,  and  a  great  many 
citizens  of  Philadelphia,  chiefly  of  the  Quaker  persuasion.  Much  time 
was  spent  by  the  British  commissioners  in  accommodating  various  feuds 
and  disputes  that  had  recently  arisen  or  been  exasperated  between  the  tribes 
with  which  they  contracted.  The  Indians  also  demonstrated  a  surprising 
tenacity  and  precision  of  memory,  in  enumerating  every  past  and  unsatisfied 
cause  of  offence  which  had  been  afforded  to  any  of  their  race  by  the  English; 
and  a  feudal  nicety  and  exactitude  in  defining  the  pecuniary  composition 
appropriate  to  every  one  of  their  relative  claims.  At  length,  after  confer- 
ences which  endured  for  eighteen  days,  all  the  disputes  between  the  two 
races  were  satisfactorily  compounded  ;  and  the  treaty  of  friendship  which 
ensued  gave  so  much  contentment  to  all  parties,  that  the  Indians  promised 
to  use  their  utmost  endeavours  to  extend  its  influence  still  more  widely 
among  their  race.  There  was  purchased  by  the  British  a  tract  of  about 
three  thousand  acres  of  land,  which  received  the  name  of  Brother  ton,  and 
was  vested  in  the  persons  of  the  New  Jersey  commissioners  and  their  suc- 
cessors, in  trust  for  the  use  of  the  Indian  natives  of  New  Jersey,  southward 
of  the  river  Raritan.^ 

In  the  course  of  this  year,  a  petition  was  presented  to  the  British  House 
of  Commons  by  Robert  Hunter  Morris,  formerly  governor  of  Pennsylva- 
nia, who  represented,  that,  as  no  salt  was  made  in  the  British  colonies  in 
America,  they  were  reduced  to  depend  on  a  precarious  supply  of  that  com- 
modity from  foreigners  ;  and  that  he  was  now  willing  to  undertake  the  man- 
ufacture of  marine  salt,  at  a  moderate  price,  in  one  of  those  colonies,  at 
his  own  hazard  and  charge,  on  condition  of  obtaining  a  monopoly  of  this 
manufacture  for  such  a  term  of  years  as  the  house  might  deem  a  proper 
and  adequate  compensation  for  the  risk  attending  so  large  an  adventure. 
This  petition  was  referred  to  a  committee,  which  never  made  any  report : 
—  ''A  circumstance,"  says  an  ingenious  English  historian,  *'not  easily  ac- 
counted for,  unless  we  suppose  the  House  of  Commons  were  of  opinion 
that  such  an  enterprise  might  contribute  towards  rendering  our  colonies  too 
independent  of  their  mother  country.  ^^  But  though  royal  and  parliamentary 
patronage  of  schemes  for  the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  the  Amer- 
ican colonists  was  denied,  a  liberal  encouragement  was  afforded  by  British 
affluence  and  generosity,  exerted  through  humbler,  and,  perhaps,  more 
proper  organs,  to  the  development  of  American  genius  and  enterprise.  A 
society,  which  was  formed  at  London  some  years  before,  for  the  promotion 
of  arts  and  manufactures  in  Britain,  now  extended  its  notice  and  premi- 
ums to  the  colonial  possessions  of  the  parent  state  in  America.^ 

A  statute  analogous  to  the  bankrupt  law  of  England  was  enacted  this 
year  by  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  where  a  great  many  merchants  were 
plunged  into  a  state  of  insolvency  by  the  war  ;  but  it  was  disallowed  by  the 
king,  as  unsuitable  to  the  circumstances  of  a  community  where  a  great  ma- 
jority of  the  debts  ordinarily  contracted  by  the  people  were  due,  not  to  their 
own  fellow-citizens,  but  to  creditors  resident  in  Europe.^ 

•  '  S.  Smith.    Wynne.      ~~     »  Smollett.    See  Note  XXL,  at  the  eqd  of  the  volume.        '. 
*  Minot.    See  Note  XXIL,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


234  HlSt^Itt  6f  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X, 

The  British  nation,  first  aroused  by  resentment,  which  was  not  yet  sa- 
tiated, and  now  inflamed  with  success  and  ambition,  regarded  the  recent 
American  campaign  as  the  pledge  and  harbinger  of  farther  and  more  signal 
triumph  in  the  same  quarter.  [1759.]  Whatever  hesitation  to  attempt  the 
entire  overthrow  of  the  French  colonial  empire  might  yet  linger  in  the  minds 
of  the  ministers  was  overpowered  by  the  force  of  the  predicament  in  which 
they  were  placed,  and  the  difficulty  of  pausing  in  a  career  of  immediate  con- 
quest and  glory.  The  parliament  addressed  the  throne  in  terms  that  de- 
noted the  highest  approbation  of  the  measures  and  policy  of  the  cabinet ; 
they  applauded  the  recent  conduct  of  the  war,  and  pledged  themselves  zeal- 
ously and  cheerfully  to  support  its  farther  prosecution.  In  reply  to  a  mes- 
sage from  the  king,  recommending  to  their  consideration  the  vigorous  and 
spirited  efforts  which  his  faithful  subjects  in  North  America  had  exerted  in 
defence  of  his  rights  and  possessions,  they  voted  two  hundred  thousand 
pounds  for  enabling  his  Majesty  to  give  proper  compensation  to  the  several 
American  provinces  for  their  expenses  in  levying  and  maintaining  troops 
for  the  public  service.  One  sentiment  of  eagerness  to  advance  the  glory 
of  England,  and  humble  or  destroy  the  American  empire  of  France,  per- 
vaded every  part  of  the  British  dominions  ;  and  the  officers  by  whom  the 
forces  serving  in  America  were  now  commanded  were  equally  zealous  and 
qualified  to  promote  their  country's  wishes  and  enlarge  her  empire  and  re- 
liown.  The  eampargn  which  they  had  concerted,  and  now  prepared  to  com- 
mence, embraced  the  great  design  of  an  entire  and  immediate  conquest  of 
Canada  ;  and  the  plan  of  operations  by  which  this  object  was  to  be  pur- 
sued was,  that  three  powerful  armies  should  enter  Canada  by  different  routes, 
and  attack,  at  nearly  the  same  time,  all  the  strongholds  of  the  French  in 
that  country.  At  the  head  of  one  division  of  the  army,  consisting  princi- 
pally of  English  troops,  and  aided  by  an  English  fleet,  General  Wolfe,  who 
had  gained  so  much  distinction  at  the  recent  siege  of  Louisburg,  was  to  as- 
cend the  river  St.  Lawrence,  as  soon  as  its  navigation  should  cease  to  be 
obstructed  by  ice,  and  attempt  the  siege  of  Quebec,  the  capital  of  Canada. 
General  Amherst,  the  commander-in-chief,  was  to  march  against  Ticon- 
deroga  and  Crown  Point,  and,  after  reducing  these  places,  and  establishing 
a  naval  force  on  Lake  Champlain,  was  to  penetrate,  by  the  way  of  Riche- 
lieu River  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  to  Quebec,  in  order  to  form  a  junction 
with  the  forces  of  Wolfe.  The  third  army,  conducted  by  General  Pri- 
deaux,  and  consisting  chiefly  of  provincials,  reinforced  by  a  strong  body 
of  friendly  Indians,  assembled  by  the  influence  and  placed  under  the  special 
command  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  was  to  attack  the  French  fort  near  the 
Falls  of  Niagara,  Which  commanded,  in  a  manner,  all  the  interior  parts  of 
North  America,  and  was  a  key  to  the  whole  continent.  As  soon  as  this  fort 
should  be  carried,  Prideaux  was  to  embark  on  Lake  Ontario,  descend  the 
river  St.  Lawrence,  make  himself  master  of  Montreal,  and  then  unite  his 
forces  with  those  of  Wolfe  and  Amherst.  General  Stanwix  commanded  a 
smaller  detachment  of  troops,  which  was  employed  in  reducing  the  French 
forts  on  the  Ohio  and  scouring  the  banks  of  Lake  Ontario.  It  was  ex- 
pected, that,  if  Prideaux's  operations,  in  addition  to  their  ow^n  immediate  ob- 
ject, should  not  facilitate  either  of  the  two  other  capital  undertakings,  it 
would  probably  (as  Niagara  was  the  most  important  post  which  the  enemy 
possessed  in  this  quarter  of  America)  induce  the  French  to  draw  together 
all  tb«ir  troops  which  were  Stationed  on  the  borders  of  the  lakes  in  order  to 


aiAP.  v.]     PREPARATiaiVS  TOR  THE  INVASION  OF  CANADA.  285 

attempt  it$  relief,  which  would  leave  the  forts  on  these  lakes  exposed  ;  and 
this  etfect  was  actually  produced.^ 

:  Kager  as  the  Americans  were  to  cooperate  with  the  martial  purposes  of 
Britain,  they  found  it  difficult  to  keep  pace  with  her  profuse  expenditure  ; 
and  some  reluctance  was  expressed  by  the  people  of  New  England  to  the 
additional  levies  required  from  the  provincial  governments  for  the  operations 
of  the  present  campaign.  They  had  been  assured,  in  the  commencement 
of  the  preceding  year,  that  a  single  campaign  would  doubtless  be  sufficient 
to  terminate  the  war.  The  same  assurance,  now  repeated,  was  no  longer 
able  to  produce  the  same  effect.  They  were  already  laboring  under  the 
weight  of  heavy  burdens  occasioned  by  their  former  exertions  ;  the  compen- 
sations decreed  to  them  by  the  British  parliament  from  time  to  time  were 
greatly  inferior  to  their  actual  expenses  ;  and  much  disgust  and  discourage- 
ment had  been  created  by  the  delays,  certainly  impolitic,  though  perhaps 
not  easily  avoided,  by  which  the  public  officers  in  England  retarded  the  ap- 
portionment and  payment  of  the  parliamentary  grants.  It  was  unwise  of  the 
British  government,  while  pursuing  a  course  of  which  the  policy  required  to 
be  justified  by  the  hope  of  promoting  at  once  the  advantage  and  the  grate- 
ful loyalty  of  the  Americans,  to  suffer  any  thing  to  be  done  which  could 
diminish  their  sense  of  the  obligation.  Britain  would,  perhaps,  have  adopted 
a  wiser  and  more  magnanimous  course,  if  she  had  arrogated  to  herself  the 
whole  conduct,  expense,  and  honor  of  the  war.  By  the  course  which 
she  actually  pursued,  she  trained  many  of  the  colonists  to  military  exer- 
cises, and  familiarized  them  with  the  idea  of  a  contest  with  one  of  the  most 
powerful  empires  in  Europe  ;  she  relieved  them  all  from  the  dangers  of  a 
French  vicinity  ;  and  she  disgusted  them  by  the  scanty  and  dilatory  com- 
pensation by  which  she  repaid  their  exertions.  Connecticut,  with  some 
difficulty,  was  induced  to  refurnish  her  last  year's  contingent  of  five  thou- 
sand men.  In  the  records  of  this  colony  we  find  for  the  first  time  the  name 
of  Israel  Putnam,  one  of  the  most  heroic  and  determined  patriots  in  Amer- 
ica, as  the  colonel  of  one  of  the  Connecticut  regiments.  Massachusetts  at 
first  declined  to  raise  more  than  five  thousand  men  ;  but  at  length,  in 
compliance  with  the  instances  of  General  Amherst,  who  was  much  respected 
by  the  colonists,  consented  to  furnish  an  additional  force  of  fifteen  hundred.^ 
New  Hampshire,  however,  surpassed  its  exertions  of.  the  preceding  year, 
and  raised  a  thousand  men.' 

Early  in  the  spring,  Amherst  transferred  his  head-quarters  from  New 
York  to  Albany,  where  his  troops,  amounting  to  twelve   thousand  men, 

*  "By  so  many  different  attacks^"  says  Trumbull,  "it  was  designed,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
divide  and  distract  the  enemy,  and  to  prevent  their  making  an  effectual  defence  at  any  place." 
—  "A  plan  was  pursued,"  says  Minot,  "to  assail  the  French  in  America  in  every  direction, 
and,  by  a  connection  of  all  the  parts,  to  transfuse  throughout  the  whole  system  the  effect  of  the 
success  which  could  not  well  fail  to  happen  in  some  quarter."  I  pretend  to  no  better  judg- 
ment of  the  merit  of  military  plans  than  a  civilian  may  presume  to  form  ;  but  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  expressing  my  concurrence  with  the  opinion  of  Smollett  (a  far  superior  judge  in  such 
matters),  that  the  plan  of  this  campaign  was  a  great  deal  too  arduous  and  multifarious. 
Though  crowned  in  every  part  with  partial  success,  it  miscarried  in  some  capital  points ;  and 
without  the  heroic  efforts  and  astonishing  success  of  Wolfe,  the  actual  campaign  wouM  have 
been  regarded  as  a  failure.  Polybius  exhorts  his  readers  to  make  allowance  for  the  influence 
of  "  fortune  and  accident  in  all  human  affairs,  and  especially  in  those  that  relate  to  war.*' 
One  of  the  most  successful  commanders  in  the  world,  with  a  grandeur  of  sentiment  which 
showed  that  his  genius  was  superior  to  his  fortune,  chose  to  be  designated  by  the  title  of  Sylla 
the  Fortunate.     "  fn  rebus  hellicis^'*  says  Tacitus,  "  maxime  dominatur  foituna.*' 

*  See  Note  XXIII.,    at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

^  Annual  Register  for  nhQ.    Smollett.    Minot.    Trumbull.    Wynne.    Belknap.  . ,  , 


286  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

were  assembled  in  the  end  of  May  ;  yet  the  summer  was  far  advanced  be- 
fore the  state  of  his  preparations  enabled  him  to  cross  Lake  George  ;  and 
it  was  not  till  the  close  of  July,  that  he  reached  Ticonderoga.  At  first  the 
enemy  seemed  determined  to  defend  this  fortress,  and  Colonel  Townsend, 
a  brave  and  accomplished  English  officer,  who  advanced  to  reconnoitre  it, 
was  killed  by  a  cannon-ball.  But  perceiving  the  determined  yet  cautious 
resolution,  and  the  overwhelming  force,  with  which  Amherst  was  preparing 
to  undertake  the  siege,  and  having  received  strict  orders  to  retreat  from 
post  to  post  towards  the  centre  of  operations  at  Quebec,  rather  than  incur 
the  risk  of  being  made  prisoners,  the  garrison,  a  few  days  after,  dismantled 
a  part  of  the  fortifications,  and,  evacuating  Ticonderoga  during  the  night, 
retired  to  Crown  Point.  Amherst,  directly  occupying  the  important  post 
thus  abandoned,  which  effectually  covered  the  frontiers  of  New  York  and 
secured  himself  a  safe  retreat,  caused  the  works  to  be  repaired  and  allotted 
a  strong  garrison  for  its  defence.  Thence  advancing. to  Crown  Point, 
with  a  cautious  and  guarded  circumspection  which  the  event  showed  to 
have  been  unnecessary,  but  which  he  was  induced  to  observe  by  remember- 
ing how  fatal  a  confident  security  had  proved  to  other  British  commanders 
in  this  quarter  of  the  world,  he  took  possession  of  this  fortress  with  the  same 
facility  which  attended  his  first  acquisition,  in  consequence  of  a  farther  ret- 
rogression of  the  enemy,  who  retired  from  his  approach  and  intrenched 
themselves  in  a  fort  at  Isle-aux-Noix,  on  the  northern  extremity  of  Lake 
Champlain.  At  this  place  the  French,  as  he  was  informed,  had  collected 
three  thousand  five  hundred  men,  with  a  numerous  train  of  artillery,  and 
possessed  the  additional  resource  of  four  large  armed  vessels  on  the  lake. 
Amherst  exerted  the  utmost  activity  to  create  a  naval  force,  without  which 
it  was  impossible  for  him  to  attack  the  enemy's  position  ;  and  with  a  sloop 
and  a  radeau,  which  were  built  with  great  despatch,  he  succeeded  in  de- 
stroying two  of  their  vessels,  —  an  achievement,  in  which  the  bold,  adven- 
turous spirit  of  Putnam  was  conspicuously  displayed  ;  but  a  succession  of 
storms  and  the  advanced  season  of  the  year  compelled  him  reluctantly  to 
postpone  the  farther  prosecution  of  his  scheme  of  operations.  He  estab- 
lished his  troops  in  winter  quarters  at  Crown  Point,  in  the  end  of  October, 
and  confined  his  attention  to  strengthening  the  works  of  this  fortress  and  of 
Ticonderoga.  Thus,  the  first  of  the  three  simultaneous  expeditions  em- 
braced in  the  plan  of  this  year's  campaign,  though  attended  with  successful 
and  important  consequences,  failed  to  produce  the  full  result  which  had  been 
anticipated  by  its  projectors.  Amherst,  so  far  from  being  able  to  penetrate 
into  Canada  and  form  a  junction  with  Wolfe,  was  unable  to  maintain  the 
slightest  communication  with  him  ;  and  only  by  a  letter  from  Montcalm,  in 
relation  to  an  exchange  of  prisoners,  obtained  information  that  Wolfe  was 
besieging  Quebec.  With  the  army  which  undertook  the  siege  of  Niagara, 
indeed,  his  communication  was  uninterrupted  ;  and  intelligence  of  its  success 
had  reached  him  before  he  advanced  from  Ticonderoga  against  Crown  Point. 
While  Amherst's  army  was  thus  employed,  General  Prideaux,  with  his 
European,  American,  and  Indian  troops,  embarking  on  Lake  Ontario,  ad- 
vanced without  loss  or  opposition  to  the  fortress  at  Niagara,  which  he  reached 
about  the  middle  of  July,  and  promptly  invested  on  all  sides.  He  was 
conducting  his  approaches  with  great  vigor,  when,  on  the  twentieth  of  the 
month,  during  a  visit  he  made  to  the  trenches,  he  lost  his  life  by  the  unfor- 
tunate bursting  of  a  cohorn.     Amherst  was  no  sooner  informed  of  this  acci- 


CHAP,  v.]  BATTLE  OF  NIAGARA.         '  287 

dent,  than  he  detached  General  Gage  from  Ticonderoga  to  assume  the  com- 
mand of  Prideaux's  army  ;  but  it  devolved,  in  the  mean  time,  upon  Sir 
William  Johnson,  who  exercised  it  with  a  success  that  added  a  new  laurel 
to  the  honors  which  already  adorned  his  name.  The  enemy,  alarmed  with 
the  apprehension  of  losing  a  post  of  such  importance,  resolved  to  make  an 
effort  for  its  relief.  From  their  forts  of  Detroit,  Venango,  and  Presque 
Isle,  they  drew  together  a  force  of  twelve  hundred  men,  which,  with  a  troop 
of  Indian  auxiliaries,  were  detached  under  the  command  of  an  officer  named 
D'Aubry,  with  the  purpose  of  raising  the  siege  or  reinforcing  the  garrison 
of  Niagara.  Johnson,  who  had  been  pushing  the  siege  even  more  vigor- 
ously than  his  predecessor,  learning  the  design  of  the  French  to  relieve  the 
garrison,  made  instant  preparation  to  intercept  it.  As  they  approached, 
he  ordered  his  light  infantry,  supported  by  a  body  of  grenadiers  and  other 
regulars,  to  occupy  the  road  from  Niagara  Falls  to  the  fortress,  by  which  the 
enemy  were  advancing,  and  covered  his  flanks  with  numerous  troops  of  his 
Indian  allies.  At  the  same  time,  he  posted  a  Strong  detachment  of  men 
in  his  trenches,  to  prevent  any  sally  from  the  garrison  during  the  ap- 
proaching engagement.  About  nine  in  the  morning  [July  24] ,  the  two  armies 
being  in  sight  of  each  other,  the  Indians  attached  to  the  English,  advanc- 
ing, proposed  a  conference  with  their  countrymen  who  served  under  the 
French  banners  ;  but  the  proposition  was  declined.  The  French  Indians 
having  raised  the  fierce,  wild  yell  called  the  war-whoop,  which  by  this  time 
had  lost  its  appalling  effect  on  the  British  soldiers,  the  action  began  by 
an  impetuous  attack  from  the  enemy  ;  and  while  the  neighbouring  cataract 
of  Niagara  pealed  forth  to  inattentive  ears  its  everlasting  voice  of  many 
waters^  the  roar  of  artillery,  the  shrieks  of  the  Indians,  and  all  the  martial 
clang  and  dreadful  revelry  of  a  field  of  battle,  mingled  in  wild  chorus  with 
the  majestic  music  of  nature.  The  French  conducted  their  attack  with 
the  utmost  courage  and  spirit,  but  were  encountered  with  such  firm,  delib- 
erate valor  in  front  by  the  British  regulars  and  provincials,  and  so  severely 
galled  on  their  flanks  by  the  Indians,  that  in  less  than  an  hour  their  army 
was  completely  routed,  their  general  with  all  his  officers  taken  prisoners, 
and  the  fugitives  from  the  field  pursued  with  great  slaughter  for  many  miles 
through  the  woods.  This  was  the  second  victory  gained  in  the  course  of 
the  present  war  by  Sir  William  Johnson,  a  man  who  had  received  no  mili- 
tary education,  and  whose  fitness  for  command  was  derived  solely  from  nat- 
ural courage  and  sagacity.^  Both  his  victories  were  signaHzed  by  the 
capture  of  the  enemy's  commanders.  On  the  morning  after  the  battle, 
Johnson  sent  an  officer  to  communicate  the  result  of  it  to  the  commandant 
of  the  garrison  at  Fort  Niagara,  and  recommend  an  immediate  surrender 
before  more  blood  was  shed,  and  while  it  was  yet  in  his  power  to  restrain 
the  barbarity  of  the  Indians  ;  and  the  commandant,  having  ascertained  the 
truth  of  the  tidings,  capitulated  without  farther  delay.  The  garrison,  con- 
sisting of  between  six  and  seven  hundred  effective  men,  marched  out  with 
the  honors  of  war,  and  were  conveyed  prisoners  to  New  York.     They  were 

*  "  The  war  in  general  was  distinguished  by  the  singular  success  of  Sir  William  John- 
son and  the  celebrated  Lord  Clive,  two  self-taught  generals,  who,  by  a  series  of  shining 
actions,  have  demonstrated  that  uninstructed  genius  can,  by  its  own  internal  light  and  efficacy, 
rival,  if  not  eclipse,  the  acquired  advantages  of  discipline  and  experience."  Smollett.  In 
all  the  conflicts  between  the  two  rival  European  races,  in  America,  the  French  displayed  the 
livelier  and  more  impetuous  bravery ;  the  British  the  more  sustained  fortitude  and  deter- 
mination. "Speed,"  says  Tacitus,  "borders  upon  panic  and  timidity ;  slow  toovements  are 
more  akin  to  steady  valor." 


288  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

allowed  to  retain  their  baggage,  and,  by  proper  escort,  were  protected 
from  the  ferocity  and  rapacity  of  the  Indians.  Though  eleven  hundred  of 
these  savages  (chiefly  of  the  confederacy  of  the  Six  Nations)  followed 
Johnson  to  Niagara,  so  effectually  did  he  restrain  them,  that  not  an  incident 
occurred  to  rival  or  retaliate  the  scenes  at  Oswego  and  FortWilham  Henry. 
The  women,  of  whom  a  considerable  number  were  found  at  Fort  Niagara, 
were  sent,  at  their  own  request,  with  their  children  to  Montreal ;  and  the 
sick  and  wounded,  who  could  not  sustain  the  fatigue  of  removal,  were 
treated  with  humane  attention.  Although  the  army  by  which  this  success 
was  achieved,  whether  from  ignorance  of  the  result  of  Wolfe's  enterprise, 
or  from  some  other  cause  more  easily  conjectured  than  ascertained,  made 
no  attempt  to  pursue  the  ulterior  objects  which  had  been  assigned  to  its 
sphere  of  operation,  and  so  far  failed  <o  fulfil  its  expected  share  of  the 
campaign  ;  yet  the  actual  result  of  its  exertions  w^as  gratifying  and  impor- 
tant in  no  ordinary  degree.  The  reduction  of  Niagara  effectually  inter- 
rupted the  communication,  so  much  dreaded  by  the  English,  between  Can- 
ada and  Louisiana  ;  and  by  this  blow,  one  of  the  grand  designs  of  the  French, 
which  had  long  threatened  to  produce  war,  and  which  finally  contributed  to 
provoke  the  present  contest,  was  completely  defeated.^ 

General  Wolfe,  meanwhile,  was  engaged  in  that  capital  enterprise  of  the 
campaign  which  aimed  at  the  reduction  of  Quebec.  The  army  which  he 
conducted,  amounting  to  eight  thousand  men,  having  embarked  at  Louis- 
burg,  under  convoy  of  an  English  squadron  commanded  by  Admirals  Saun- 
ders and  Holmes,  after  a  successful  voyage,  disembarked,  in  the  end  of 
June,  on  the  Isle  of  Orleans,  a  large,  fertile  island  surrounded  by  the  waters 
of  the  St.  Lawrence,  situated  a  little  below  Quebec,  well  cultivated,  pro- 
ducing plenty  of  grain,  and  abounding  with  inhabitants,  villages,  and  planta- 
tions. Soon  after  his  landing,  Wolfe  distributed  a  manifesto  among  the 
French  colonists,  acquainting  them  that  the  king,  his  master,  justly  exas- 
perated against  the  French  monarch,  had  equipped  a  powerful  armament  in 
order  to  humble  his  pride,  arid  was  determined  to  reduce  the  most  consid- 
erable settlements  of  France  in  America.  He  declared  that  it  was  not 
against  industrious  peasants  and  their  families,  nor  against  the  ministers  of 
religion,  that  he  desired  or  intended  to  make  war  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  la- 
mented the  misfortunes  to  which  they  were  exposed  by  the  quarrel ;  he 
offered  them  his  protection,  and  promised  to  maintain  them  in  their  tem- 
poral possessions,  as  well  as  in  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion,  provided 
they  would  remain  quiet,  and  abstain  from  participation  in  the  controversy 
between  the  two  crowns.  The  English,  he  proclaimed,  were  masters  of  the 
river  St.  Lawrence,  and  could  thus  intercept  all  succours  from  France ; 
and  they  had,  besides,  the  prospect  of  a  speedy  reinforcement  from  th^ 
army  which  General  Amherst  was  conducting  to  form  a  junction  with  them. 
The  line  of  conduct  which  the  Canadians  ought  to  pursue,  he  affirmed,  was 
neither  difficult  nor  doubtful  ;  since  the  utmost  exertion  of  their  valor  must 
be  useless,  and  could  serve  only  to  deprive  them  of  the  advantages  which 
they  might  reap  from  their  neutrality.  He  protested  that  the  cruelties  al- 
ready exercised  by  the  French  upon  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain  in  Amer- 
ica would  sanction  the  most  severe  reprisals  ;  but  that  Britons  were  too 
generous  to  follow  such  barbarous  example.  While  he  tendered  to  the 
Canadians  the  blessings  of  peace  amidst  the  horrors  of  war,  and  left  them 
*  See  Note  XXIV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volunje. 


CHAP,  v.]  SIEGE  OF  QUEBEC.  289 

by  their  own  conduct  to  determine  their  own  fate,  be  expressed  his  hope 
that  the  world  would  do  him  justice,  and  acquit  him  of  blame,  should  the 
objects  of  his  solicitude,  by  rejecting  these  favorable  terms,  oblige  him  to 
have  recourse  to  measures  of  violence  and  severity.  Having  expatiated  oa 
the  strength  and  power  of  Britain,  whose  indignation  they  might  provoke, 
he  urged  them  to  recognize  the  generosity  with  which  she  now  held  forth 
the  hand  of  humanity,  and  tendered  to  them  forbearance  and  protection, 
at  the  very  time  when  France,  by  her  weakness,  was  compelled  to  abandon 
them.  This  proclamation  produced  no  immediate  effect ;  nor,  indeed,  did 
the  Canadians  place  much  dependence  on  the  assurances  of  a  people  whom 
their  priests  industriously  represented  to  them  as  the  fiercest  and  most 
faithless  enemy  upon  earth.  Possessed  with  these  notions,  they  disregarded 
the  offered  protection  of  Wolfe,  and,  abandoning  their  habitations,  joined 
the  scalping  parties  of  the  Indians  who  skulked  among  the  woods,  and 
butchered  with  the  most  inhuman  barbarity  all  the  English  stragglers  they 
could  surprise.  Wolfe,  in  a  letter  to  Montcalm,  remonstrated  against  these 
atrocities  as  contrary  to  the  rules  of  war  between  civilized  nations,  and  dis- 
honorable to  the  service  of  France.  But  either  the  authority  of  Montcalm 
was  not  sufficient,  or  it  was  not  exerted  with  sufficient  energy,  to  bridle  the 
ferocity  of  the  savages  ;  who  continued  to  scalp  and  butcher  with  such 
increase  of  appetite  for  blood  and  revenge,  that  Wolfe,  in  the  hope  of  in- 
timidating the  enemy  into  a  cessation  of  this  style  of  hostility,  judged  it  ex- 
pedient to  connive  at  some  retahatory  outrages,  from  which  the  nobleness 
of  his  disposition  would  otherwise  have  revolted  with  abhorrence. 

From  his  position  in  the  Isle  of  Orleans,  the  English  commander  had  a 
distinct  view  of  the  danger  and  difficulty  by  which  his  enterprise  was  ob- 
structed. Quebec  is .  chiefly  built  on  a  steep  rock  on  the  northern  bank 
of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  additionally  defended  by  the  river  St.  Charles, 
which,  flowing  past  it  on  the  east,  unites  with  the  St.  Lawrence  immedi- 
ately below  the  town,  and  consequently  incloses  it  in  a  peninsular  locality. 
Besides  its  natural  barriers,  the  city  was  tolerably  fortified  by  art,  secured 
with  a  numerous  garrison,  and  plentifully  supplied  with  provisions  and  am- 
munition. In  the  St.  Charles,  whose  channel  is  rough,  and  whose  borders 
are  intersected  with  ravines,  there  were  several  armed  vessels  and  floating 
batteries  ;  and  a  boom  was  drawn  across  its  mouth.  On  the  eastern  bank 
of  this  stream,  a  formidable  body  of  French  troops,  strongly  intrenched, 
extended  their  encampment  along  the  shore  of  Beaufort  to  the  falls  of  the 
river  Montmorency,  having  their  rear  covered  by  an  impenetrable  forest. 
At  the  head  of  this  army  was  the  skilful,  experienced,  and  intrepid  Mont- 
calm, the  ablest  commander  that  France  had  employed  in  America  since 
the  death  of  Count  Frontignac,  and  who,  though  possessed  of  forces  supe- 
rior in  number  to  the  invaders,  prudently  determined  to  stand  on  the  defen- 
sive, and  mainly  depend  on  the  natural  strength  of  the  country,  which,  in- 
deed, appeared  almost  insurmountable.  He  had  lately  reinforced  his  troops 
with  five  battalions  embodied  from  the  flower  of  the  colonial  population  ; 
he  had  trained  to  arms  all  the  neighbouring  inhabitants,  and  collected 
around  him  a  numerous  band  of  the  most  ancient  and  attached  Indian  allies 
of  France.  To  undertake  the  siege  of  Quebec,  against  such  opposing 
force,  was  not  only  a  deviation  from  the  established  maxims  of  war,  but  a 
rash  and  romantic  enterprise.  But  great  actions  are  commonly  transgres- 
sions of  ordinary  rules  ;  and  Wolfe,  though  fully  awake  to  the  hazard  and 

VOL.    11.  '  37  Y 


290  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

difficulty  of  the  achievement,  was  not  to  be  deterred  from  attempting  it. 
He  knew  that  he  should  always  have  it  in  his  power  to  retreat,  in  case  of 
emergency,  while  the  British  squadron  maintained  its  station  in  the  river  ; 
he  cherished  the  hope  of  being  joined  by  Amherst ;  and,  above  all,  though 
his  body,  yet  in  the  bloom  of  manhood,  was  oppressed  and  consumed  by 
a  painful,  lingering,  mortal  malady,  his  mind  was  burning  with  the  resist- 
less fever  of  renown,  and  his  genius  supported  by  the  force  of  collected 
judgment  and  determined  will.  His  ardor  was  partaken  and  his  efforts  ably 
seconded  by  many  gallant  officers  who  served  under  him,  and  particularly 
by  the  three  brigadier-generals,  Monckton,  Townsend,  and  Murray,  men  of 
patrician  rank  and  in  the  prime  of  life,  whom  neither  affluent  fortune  nor  the 
choicest  domestic  felicity  could  restrain  from  chasing  glory  with  severe 
delight  amidst  the  dangers  and  hardships  of  war.  The  safety  of  the  fleet, 
on  whose  cooperation  he  relied,  was  twice  menaced,  —  first,  by  a  violent 
storm,  which,  however,  it  happily  surmounted  with  little  damage  ;  and  af- 
terwards by  a  number  of  fire-ships,  which  the  French  sent  down  the  river, 
but  which,  by  the  skill  and  vigilance  of  Admiral  Saunders,  were  all  inter- 
cepted, towed  ashore,  and  rendered  harmless. 

Resolved  to  attempt  whatever  was  practicable  for  the  reduction  of  Que- 
bec, Wolfe  took  possession,  after  a  successful  skirmish,  of  Point  Levi, 
on  the  southern  bank  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  there  erected  batteries 
against  the  town  ;  but  his  fire  from  this  position,  though  it  destroyed  many 
houses,  made  little  impression  upon  the  works,  which  were  too  strong  and 
too  remote  to  be  essentially  affected  by  it,  and,  at  the  same  time,  too  el- 
evated to  be  reached  by  a  cannonade  from  the  ships  of  war.  Perceiving 
that  his  artillery  could  not  be  efficiently  exerted,  except  from  batteries  con- 
structed on  the  opposite  side  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  Wolfe  soon  decided  on 
more  daring  and  impetuous  measures.  The  northern  shore  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, to  a  considerable  extent  above  Quebec,  is  so  rocky  and  precipitous, 
as  to  render  a  landing,  in  the  face  of  an  enemy,  impracticable.  An  offensive 
attempt  below  the  town,  though  less  imprudent,  was  confronted  by  formida- 
ble obstructions.  Even  if  the  river  Montmorency  were  passed,  and  the 
French  driven  from  their  intrenchments,  the  St.  Charles  must  still  present  a 
new  and  less  superable  barrier  against  the  assailants.  Wolfe,  acquainted 
with  every  obstacle,  but  heroically  observing  that  "a  victorious  army  finds 
no  difficulties,"  resolved  to  pass  the  Montmorency  and  bring  Montcalm  to 
an  engagement.  For  this  purpose,  thirteen  companies  of  English  grena- 
diers and  a  part  of  the  second  battahon  of  royal  Americans  were  landed  at 
the  mouth  of  that  river,  while  two  divisions,  under  Generals  Townsend  and 
Murray,  prepared  to  cross  it  by  a  ford  which  was  discovered  farther  up  the 
stream.  Wolfe's  plan  was  to  attack,  in  the  first  instance,  a  redoubt  close 
to  the  water's  edge,  and  apparently  beyond  reach  of  shot  from  the  ene- 
my's intrenchments,  in  the  hope  that  the  French,  by  attempting  to  support 
that  fortification,  would  enable  him  to  bring  on  a  general  engagement ;  or 
that,  if  they  should  submit  to  the  loss  of  the  redoubt,  he  could  thence  take 
an  accurate  survey  of  their  position,  and  regulate  with  advantage  his  subse- 
quent operations.  On  the  approach  of  the  British  troops,  the  redoubt  was 
evacuated  ;  and  Wolfe,  observing  some  confusion  in  the  French  camp, 
instantly  changed  his  original  plan,  and  determined  to  attack  the  hostile 
intrenchments  without  farther  delay.  Townsend  and  Murray  were  now 
commanded  to  hold  their  divisions  in  readiness  for  fprding  the  river,  and  the 


CHAP,  v.]  SIEGE  OF  QUEBEC.  291 

grenadiers  and  royal  Americans  were  directed  to  form  on  the  beach,  and 
await  there  the  reinforcement  which  was  requisite  to  sustain  their  exertions  ; 
but,  flushed  with  ardor  and  negligent  of  support,  these  troops  made  a  pre- 
cipitate charge  upon  the  enemy's  intrenchments,  where  they  were  received 
with  so  steady  and  sharp  a  fire  from  the  French  musketry,  that  they  were 
presently  thrown  into  disorder,  and  compelled  to  take  refuge  in  the  aban- 
doned redoubt.  Here  it  proved,  unexpectedly,  that  they  were  still  exposed 
to  an  effective  fire  from  the  enemy,  and  several  brave  officers,  exposing 
their  persons  in  attempting  to  reform  and  rally  the  troops,  were  killed.  A 
thunder-storm,  which  now  broke  out,  contributed  to  baffle  the  efforts  of 
the  British,  without  depressing  the  spirit  of  the  French,  who  continued  to 
fire,  not  only  upon  the  troops  in  the  redoubt,  but  on  those  who  were  lying 
wounded  and  disabled  on  the  field,  near  their  own  intrenchments.^  The 
English  general,  finding  that  his  plan  of  attack  was  completely  disconcerted, 
ordered  his  troops  to  repass  the  river  and  return  to  the  Isle  of  Orleans. 
Besides  the  mortifying  check  which  he  had  received,  he  lost,  in  this  rash, 
ill-considered  attempt,  nearly  five  hundred  of  the  bravest  men  in  his  army. 

Some  experience,  however,  though  dearly  bought,  had  been  gained  ;  and 
Wolfe  — .  now  assured  of  the  impracticability  of  approaching  Quebec  on  the 
side  of  the  Montmorency,  while  Montcalm  retained  his  station,  which  he 
seemed  determined  to  do,  till,  from  the  advance  of  the  season,  the  elements 
should  lend  their  aid  in  destroying  the  invaders  —  detached  General  Mur- 
ray, with  twelve  hundred  men  in  transports,  to  cooperate  with  Admiral 
Holmes  above  the  town  in  an  attempt  upon  the  French  shipping,  and  to 
distract  the  enemy  by  descents  on  the  banks  of  the  river.  [August  25.]  After 
twice  endeavouring  without  success  to  land  on  the  northern  shore,  Murray, 
by  a  sudden  descent  which  he  accomplished  at  Chambaud,  gained  the  oppor- 
tunity of  destroying  a  valuable  magazine,  filled  with  clothing,  arms,  ammu- 
nition, and  provisions  ;  but  the  French  ships  were  secured  in  such  a  manner, 
as  to  defy  the  approach  either  of  the  fleet  or  the  army.  On  his  return  to 
the  British  camp,  he  brought  the  consolatory  intelligence,  obtained  from  his 
prisoners,  that  Fort  Niagara  was  taken  ;  that  Ticonderoga  and  Crown 
Point  had  been  occupied  without  resistance  ;  and  that  General  Amherst 
was  making  preparations  to  attack  the  enemy  at  Tsle-aux-Noix.  This  intel- 
ligence, though  in  itself  grateful,  afforded  no  prospect  of  speedy  assistance, 
and,  indeed,  proclaimed  the  failure  of  Amherst  in  seasonably  executing  the 
plan  of  cooperation  concerted  between  the  two  armies.  Nothing,  however, 
could  shake  the  resolution  of  Wolfe,  or  induce  him  to  abandon  the  enter- 
prise which  he  had  commenced.  Instead  of  being  disheartened,  he  was 
roused  to  additional  energy  of  purpose  and  effort  by  the  conviction  that 
success  now  depended  exclusively  on  himself  and  his  present  force,  and 
that  it  had  become  absolutely  essential  to  his  reputation,  already  vvounded 
and  endangered  by  the  disaster  at  Montmorency.  In  a  council  of  his  prin- 
cipal officers,  assembled  at  this  critical  juncture,  it  was  resolved  to  transfer 
the  scene  of  operations  to  the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence  above  the  town. 
[September  3.]  The  camp  at  the  Isle  of  Orleans  was  consequently  aban- 
doned ;  and  the  whole  army  having  embarked  on  board  the  fleet,  a  part  of  it 
was  landed  at  Point  Levi,  and  a  part  at  a  spot  farther  up  the  river.  Admiral 
Holmes,  meanwhile,  for  several  days  successively,  manoeuvred  with  his  fleet 

'  When  General  Townsend,  in  the  sequel,  expostulated  with  the   French  officers  on  this 
inhumanity,  they  declared  that  the  fire  did  not  proceed  from  the  reffulars,  but  from  the  Can 
adians  and  the  savages,  whom  it  was  impossible  to  restrain  by  discipline. 


29^"  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [60OK  X. 

iri  i  manner  calculated  to  engage  tlie  attention  of  the  enemy  on  the  northern 
shore,  and  draw  their  observation  as  far  as  possible  from  the  city.  These 
movements  had  no  other  effect  than  to  induce  Montcalm  to  detach  fifteen 
hundred  men,  under  the  command  of  Bougainville,  one  of  his  officers,  from 
the  main  camp,  to  watch  the  motions  of  the  English  fleet  and  army,  and 
prevent  a  landing  from  being  accomphshed. 

Wolfe  was  now  confined  to  bed  by  a  severe  fit  of  the  disease  under  which 
he  labored,  aggravated  by  incessant  fatigue  and  by  the  anxiety  inseparable 
from  a  combination  of  difficulties  sufficient  to  have  appalled  the  stoutest 
courage  and  perplexed  the  most  resolute  and  intelligent  commander.  In 
this  situation,  his  three  brigadier-generals,  whom  he  invited  to  concert  some 
plan  of  operations,  projected  and  proposed  to  him  a  daring  enterprise,  of 
which  the  immediate  object  was  to  gain  possession  of  the  lofty  eminences 
beyond  Quebec,  where  the  enemy's  fortifications  were  comparatively  slight. 
It  was  proposed  to  land  the  troops  by  night  under  the  Heights  of  Abra- 
ham^ at  a  small  distance  from  the  city,  and  to  scale  the  summit  of  these 
heights  before  daybreak.  This  attempt  manifestly  involved  extreme  diffi- 
culty and  hazard.  The  stream  was  rapid,  the  shore  shelving,  the  bank  of 
the  river  lined  with  French  sentinels,  the  landing-place  so  narrow  as  easily 
to  be  missed  in  the  dark,  and  the  cliff  which  must  afterwards  be  surmounted 
so  steep  that  it  was  difficult  to  ascend  it  even  in  open  day  and  without  op- 
position. Should  the  design  be  promulgated  by  a  spy  or  deserter,  or  sus- 
pected by  the  enemy  ;  should  the  disembarkation  be  disordered,  through 
the  darkness  of  the  night,  or  the  obstructions  of  the  shore  ;  the  landing- 
place  be  mistaken,  or  but  one  sentinel  alarmed,  —  the  Heights  of  Abraham 
would  instantly  be  covered  with  such  numbers  of  troops  as  would  render 
the  attempt  abortive  and  defeat  inevitable.  Though  these  circumstances 
of  danger  could  not  escape  the  penetration  of  Wolfe,  yet  he  hesitated  not 
a  moment  to  embrace  a  project  so  congenial  to  his  ardent  and  enterprising 
disposition,  as  well  as  to  the  hazardous  and  embarrassing  predicament  in  which 
he  was  placed,  and  from  which  only  some  brilliant  and  soaring  effort  could 
extricate  him  to  his  own  and  his  country's  satisfaction.  He  reposed  a  gal- 
lant confidence  in  the  very  magnitude  and  peril  of  his  attempt ;  and  fortune 
extended  her  proverbial  favor  to  the  brave.  His  active  powers  revived 
with  the  near  prospect  of  decisive  action  ;  he  soon  recovered  his  health  so 
far  as  to  be  able  to  conduct  in  person  the  enterprise  on  which  he  was  re- 
solved to  stake  his  fame  ;  and  in  the  execution  of  it,  displayed  a  force  of 
judgment,  and  a  deliberate  valor  and  intrepidity,  that  rivalled  and  vindi- 
cated the  heroism  of  its  conception. 

The  necessary  orders  having  been  communicated,  and  the  preparatory 
arrangements  completed,  the  whole  fleet,  upon  the  12th  of  September, 
moved  up  the  river  several  leagues  above  the  spot  allotted  for  the  assault, 
and  at  various  intervening  places  made  demonstrations  of  an  intention  of 
landing  the  troops  ;  as  if  the  movement  had  been  merely  experimental,  and 
no  decisive  purpose  of  attack  were  yet  entertained.  But,  an  hour  after 
midnight,  the  troops  were  embarked  in  flat-bottomed  boats,  which,  aided  by 
the  tide  and  the  stream,  drifted  with  all  possible  caution  down  the  river 
towards  the  intended  place  of  disembarkation.  They  were  obliged  to  keep 
close  to  the  northern  shore,  in  order  to  diminish  the  danger  of  passing  the 
landing-place  (which,  nevertheless,  very  nearly  happened)  in  the  dark  ;  and 
yet  escaped  the  challenge  of  all  the  French  sentinels  except  one  or  two, 


CHAP.  V  ]  BATTLE  OF  THE  HEIGHTS  OF  ABRAHAM.  293 

whose  vigilance,  however,  was  baffled  by  the  presence  of  mind  and  inge- 
nuity with  which  a  Scotch  officer  replied  to  the  call,  and  described  the 
force  to  which  he  belonged  as  a  part  of  Bougainville's  troops  employed  in 
exploring  the  state  of  the  river  and  motions  of  the  English.  Silence  was 
commanded  under  pain  of  death,  which  was,  indeed,  doubly  menaced  ;  and 
a  death-like  stillness  was  preserved  in  every  boat,  except  the  one  which 
conveyed  the  commander-in-chief,  where,  in  accents  barely  audible  to  the 
profound  attention  of  his  listening  officers,  Wolfe  repeated  that  noble  effiision 
of  solemn  thought  and  poetic  genius,  Gray's  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church- 
yard, which  had  been  recently  published  at  London,  and  of  which  a  copy 
was  conveyed  to  him  by  the  last  packet  from  England.  When  he  had 
finished  his  recitation,  he  added,  in  a  tone  still  guardedly  low,  but  earnest 
and  emphatic,  —  "  Now,  Gentlemen,  I  w^ould  rather  be  the  author  of  that 
poem,  than  take  Quebec":^  —  perhaps  the  noblest  tribute  ever  paid  by 
arms  to  letters,  since  that  heroic  era  when  hostile  fury  and  havoc  were  rem- 
edied or  intercepted  by  respect  for  the  genius  of  Aristotle  and  for  the 
poetry  of  Pindar  and  Euripides.  About  an  hour  before  daybreak,  a  landing 
was  effected.  Wolfe  was  one  of  the  first  who  leaped  ashore  ;  and  when 
he  beheld  the  precipitous  height  whose  ascent  still  remained  to  crown  the 
arduous  enterprise  thus  far  advanced  in  safety  through  the  jaws  of  fate, 
he  coolly  observed  to  an  officer  near  him,  — "I  doubt  if  you  will  get  up  ; 
but  you  must  do  what  you  can."  A  detachment  of  Scotch  Highlanders  and 
of  light  infantry,  commanded  by  Colonel  Howe  (brother  of  the  nobleman 
who  perished  at  Ticonderoga)  led  the  way  up  the  dangerous  cliff,  which  was 
ascended  by  the  aid  of  the  rugged  projection  of  the  rocks  and  the  branches 
of  some  bushes  and  plants  that  protruded  from  their  crevices.  The  rest 
of  the  troops,  emulating  this  gallant  and  skilful  example,  followed  their  com- 
rades up  the  narrow  path  ;  and  by  break  of  day,  the  whole  army  reached 
the  summit.      [September  13.] 

When  Montcalm  received  intelligence  that  the  British  force,  which  he 
supposed  wandering  on  the  river,  had  sprung  up  like  a  mine  on  the  summit 
of  the  Heights  of  Abraham,  he  could  not  at  first  credit  the  full  import  of 
the  tidings.  Accounting  it  impossible  that  a  whole  army  had  ascended  such 
a  rugged  and  abrupt  precipice,  he  concluded  that  the  demonstration  was 
merely  a  feint,  undertaken  by  a  small  detachment,  in  order  to  induce  him 
to  abandon  the  position  he  had  hitherto  maintained.  Convinced,  however, 
by  farther  observation,  of  his  mistake,  he  conceived  that  an  engagement 
could  no  longer  be  avoided  ;  and  instantly  quitting  his  camp  at  Montmo- 
rency, crossed  the  river  St.  Charles,  with  the  purpose  of  attacking  the  Eng- 
lish army.  In  thus  consenting  to  give  battle,  Montcalm  was  rather  con- 
founded by  the  genius  and  daring  than  overruled  by  the  actual  success  and 
position  of  his  adversary.  Had  he  retired  into  Quebec,  he  might,  especially 
at  such  an  advanced  period  of  the  year,  and  wnth  so  numerous  a  garrison, 
have  securely  defied  a  siege.  Wolfe,  observing  the  movement  of  the' ene- 
my, began  to  form  his  own  line,  which  consisted  of  six  battalions  and  the 
Louisburg  grenadiers.     The  right  wing  was  commanded  by  Monckton  ;  the 

*  This  anecdote  was  related  by  the  late  celebrated  John  Robison,  Professor  of  Natural  Phi- 
losophy in  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  who,  in  his  youth,  was  a  midshipman  in  the  British 
navy,  and  was  in  the  same  boat  with  Wolfe.  His  son,  my  kinsman,  Sir  John  Robison,  com- 
municated it  to  me,  and  it  has  since  been  recorded  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Edinburgh.  "The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave"  is  one  of  the  lines  which  Wolfe 
must  have  recited,  as  he  strikingly  exemplified  its  application. 


294  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

left  by  Murray  ;  the  right  flank  was  covered  by  the  Louisburg  grenadiers  ; 
and  the  rear  and  left  by  Howe's  hght  infantry,  which  had  shortly  before 
achieved  the  easy  conquest  of  a  four-gun  battery.  As  the  form  in  which 
the  French  advanced  indicated  the  purpose  of  outflanking  the  left  of  the 
English  army,  Tovvnsend  was  sent  to  this  part  of  the  line,  with  the  regi- 
ment of  Amherst  and  the  two  battahons  of  royal  Americans,  which  were 
formed  in  such  disposition  as  to  present  a  double  front  to  the  enemy.  One 
regiment,  drawn  up  in  eight  divisions,  with  large  intervals,  formed  the  Eng- 
lish body  of  reserve.  Montcalm's  dispositions  for  the  attack  were  not  less 
skilful  and  judicious.  The  right  and  left  wings  of  his  army  were  composed 
almost  equally  of  European  and  of  colonial  troops  ;  the  centre  consisted  of 
a  column  formed  of  two  battahons  of  regulars.  Fifteen  hundred  Indians 
and  Canadians,  expert  and  deadly  marksmen,  advancing  in  front,  and  screened 
by  adjoining  thickets,  began  the  battle.  Their  irregular  fire  proved  fatal  to 
many  officers,  whom  they  preferably  aimed  at ;  but  it  was  soon  silenced  by 
the  steady  fire  of  the  British.  Both  armies  were  destitute  of  artillery,  ex- 
cept two  small  pieces  on  the  side  of  the  French,  and  a  single  gun  which  the 
English  seamen  contrived  to  hoist  up  from  the  landing-place,  and  which  they 
employed  during  the  action  with  considerable  effect. 

A  strong  and  cheering  presentiment  of  victory  was,  doubtless,  entertained 
by  troops  who  had  already  exerted  so  much  valor,  and  vanquished  so  many 
obstacles,  in  order  to  meet  the  enemy  on  a  fair  field  of  battle.  Their 
leader  had  courted  Fortune  not  with  languid  aspiration,  but  with  confident 
pursuit ;  while  their  enemy's  studious  precautions  against  her  possible  hostil- 
ity announced  little  reliance  on  her  probable  favor.  About  nine  in  the 
morning,  the  main  body  of  the  French  advanced  vigorously  to  the  charge, 
and  the  conflict  soon  became  general.  Montcalm  having  chosen  for  his 
own  station  the  left  of  the  French  army,  and  Wolfe,  for  his,  the  right  of 
the  English,  the  two  commanders  directly  confronted  each  other  in  the 
quarter  where  arose  the  hottest  encounter  of  this  memorable  day.  The 
English  troops  reserved  their  fire  till  the  French  were  within  forty  yards 
of  their  line  ;  and  then,  by  a  terrible  discharge,  spread  havoc  among  the 
adverse  ranks.  Their  fire  was  continued  with  a  vigor  and  dehberation 
which  effectually  checked  the  advance  and  visibly  abated  the  audacity  of 
the  French.  Wolfe,  who,  early  in  the  action,  was  wounded  in  the  wrist, 
betraying  no  symptom  of  pain,  wrapped  a  handkerchief  round  his  arm,  and 
continued  to  direct  and  animate  his  troops.  Soon  after,  he  received  a  shot 
in  the  groin  ;  but,  concealing  the  wound,  he  was  leading  his  grenadiers  to  the 
charge,  when  a  third  ball  pierced  his  breast,  and  brought  him  to  the  ground. 
His  troops,  incensed  rather  than  disconcerted  by  the  fall  of  their  general, 
continued  the  action,  with  unabated  vigor,  under  Monckton,  on  whom  the 
command  now  devolved,  but  who  was  soon  obliged,  by  a  dangerous  wound, 
to  resign  it  to  Townsend.  Montcalm,  about  the  same  time,  while  animating 
the  fight,  in  front  of  his  battalion,  was  pierced  with  a  mortal  wound  ;  and 
General  Senezergus  also,  the  second  in  command  on  the  same  side,  shortly 
after  fell.  While  the  fall  of  Wolfe  seemed  to  impart  a  higher  temper  to 
the  courage  of  the  English,  and  infused  a  spirit  in  their  ranks  that  rendered 
them  superior  to  almost  any  opposing  force,  the  loss  of  Montcalm  produced  a 
contrary  and  depressing  effect  on  the  French.  The  British  right  wing  now 
pressed  on  with  fixed  bayonets,  determined  on  vengeance  and  victory. 
General  Murray,  at   the  same  critical  instant,  advancing  swiftly  with  the 


CHAP,  v.]       DEATH  AND  CHARACTER  OF  WOLFE.  995 

troops  under  his  direction,  broke  the  centre  of  the  French  army  ;  and  their 
confusion  was  completed  by  a  charge  of  the  Highlanders,  who,  drawing 
their  broadswords,  rushed  upon  them  with  resistless  fury,  and  drove  them, 
with  great  slaughter,  partly  into  Quebec,  and  partly  over  the  St.  Charles. 
On  the  left  of  the  British  position,  the  combat  was  less  violent  and  sangui- 
nary ;  but  here,  also,  the  attack  of  the  French  was  repulsed,  and  their  at- 
tempt to  outflank  the  British  defeated.  At  this  juncture,  Bougainville,  with 
a  body  of  two  thousand  fresh  troops,  approached  the  rear  of  the  victorious 
English  ;  but  observing  the  complete  rout  and  dispersion  of  Montcalm's 
forces,  he  did  not  venture  to  attempt  a  renewal  of  the  action.  The  victory 
was  decisive.  About  a  thousand  of  the  French  were  made  prisoners,  and 
nearly  an  equal  number  fell  in  the  battle  and  the  pursuit  ;  of  the  remainder, 
the  greater  number,  unable  to  gain  the  shelter  of  Quebec,  retired  first  to 
Point-au-Tremble,  and  afterwards  to  Trois  Rivieres  and  Montreal.  The  loss 
of  the  English,  both  in  killed  and  wounded,  w^as  less  than  six  hundred  men. 
But  the  fate  of  Wolfe  was  deeply  and  universally  deplored.  After  his 
last  wound,  finding  himself  unable  to  stand,  he  leaned  upon  the  shoulder  of  a 
lieutenant,  w^ho  sat  down  in  order  to  support  him.  This  officer,  seeing  the 
French  give  w^ay,  exclaimed,  "  They  run  !  they  run  !  "  "  Who  run  ?  " 
cried  Wolfe,  with  eagerness  ;  for  his  glazing  eye  could  no  longer  discern 
the  fortune  of  the  day.  Being  informed  that  it  was  the  enemy,  he  replied  with 
animation,  "  Then  I  die  happy  !  "  —  and  almost  instantly  after  expired  in 
the  blaze  of  his  fame .^  Intensely  studious,  and  yet  promptly  and  vigorously 
active  ;  heroically  brave  and  determined,  adventurous  and  persevering  ;  of 
a  temper  lively  and  even  impetuous,  yet  never  reproached  as  violent  or 
irascible  ;  generous,  indulgent,  courteous,  and  humane,  —  Wolfe  was  the 
pattern  of  his  officers  and  the  idol  of  his  soldiers.  The  force  and  com- 
pass of  his  genius  enabled  him  practically  to  distinguish,  what  inferior  minds 
never  discover  at  all,  the  difference  between  great  difficulties  and  impossi- 
bilities ;  and  being  undiscouraged  by  what  was  merely,  however  mightily, 
difficult,  he  undertook  and  achieved  what  others  would  have  accounted  and 
found  to  be  impossible.^  His  life  (as  was  said  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney)  was, 
indeed,  poetry  in  action.      He  was,  for  a  time,  the  favorite  hero  of  England 

*  "  Thou  strik'st  the  young  hero,  a  glorious  mark  I 
He  falls  in  the  blaze  of  his  fame." 
If  the  recollection  of  any  individual  hero  inspired  this  glowing  expression  of  the  poet  Burns, 
it  was  probably  Wolfe.  From  the  period  of  his  death  till  the  time  when  Burns  wrote,  no 
British  officer  had  fallen  in  so  remarkable  a  manner.  With  him,  indeed,  "Victory  smiled  on 
life's  last  ebbing  sands."  It  was,  perhaps,  also  from  Wolfe's  heroic  and  successful  daring  that 
Burns  derived  the  bold  sentiment,  that 

"  Wha  does  the  utmost  that  he  can 
Will  whyles  do  mair." 
Wolfe  deserved  every  tribute  from  the  Muse,  to  whom  he  rendered  one  of  the  most  striking 
instances  of  homage  that  have  ever  been  recorded.     He  had  not  yet  attained  the  age  of  thirty- 
three,  when  he  fell  in  the  arms  of  victory.     The  poet  Wordsworth  makes  a  beautiful  allusion 
to  the  plain,  —  . 

"Where  breathed  the  gale  that  caught  Wolfe's  happiest  sigh." 
Thomas  Paine  first  distinguished  himself  by  a  poetical  effusion  on  the  death  of  Wolfe  ;  Gold- 
smith celebrated  Wolfe's  achievement  in  some  verses  of  little  merit,  entitled,  Stanzas  on  the 
Takinar  of  Quebec. 

2  The  conduct  of  Wolfe  afforded,  if  ever  human  conduct  did,  an  illustration  of  Shakspeare'a 
remark,  that 

"  Things  out  of  hope  are  compassed  ofl  with  vent'ring,"  — 
and  of  this  maxim  of  Rochefoucault :  —  "Rien  n'est  impossible:  il  y  a  des  voies  qui  con- 
duisent  a  toutes  choses  ;  et  si  nous  avion?  assez  de  volonte,  nous  aurions  toujours  assez  de 
moyens."     I  know  not  if  Wolfe  had  read  Rochefoucault ;  he  was  more  likely  to  be  acquamted 
with  the  gallant  English  proverb,  "  Where  there  *s  a  will,  there  's  a  way." 


296  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

as  well  as  of  America  ;  and  monumental  statues,  erected  at  the  public  ex- 
pense, attested  his  glory,  both  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New.  A  marble 
statue,  in  particular,  was  decreed  to  his  memory  by  the  assembly  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. His  rival,  Montcalm,  survived  him  but  a  few  hours,  and  met 
his  fate  with  the  most  undaunted  and  enduring  courage.  When  he  was 
informed  that  his  wound  was  mortal,  his  reply  was,  ''  I  am  glad  to  hear 
it  ";  and  when  the  near  approach  of  death  was  announced  to  him,  he  added, 
"  So  much  the  better  :  —  I  shall  not,  then,  live  to  see  the  surrender  of 
Quebec."  He  was  buried,  by  his  own  direction,  in  an  excavation  that  had 
been  produced  by  the  explosion  of  a  bomb.  Unfortunately  for  his  fame, 
the  extent  to  which  he  is  justly  responsible  for  the  treacherous  cruelties  of 
the  Indian  allies  of  his  countrymen,  on  various  occasions,  still  remains 
doubtful.  It  is  pretended  by  some  English  writers,  that  Amherst  had  de- 
clared his  purpose  of  treating  Montcalm,  if  he  should  happen  to  take  him 
alive,  not  as  an  honorable  warrior,  but  as  a  bandit  or  robber.  But  if  such 
sentiments  were  ever  entertained,  they  w^ere  erased  from  the  minds  of  vic- 
torious enemies  by  the  heroical  circumstances  of  Montcalm's  death,  and  the 
remembrance  of  his  talent  and  intrepidity,  —  merits,  which  a  wise  regard  to 
his  own  fame,  and  even  more  generous  sentiment,  must  ever  prompt  a  con- 
queror to  recognize,  and  perhaps  exaggerate,  in  a  vanquished  foe  ;  and 
when,  some  time  after,  the  French  government  desired  leave  to  erect  a 
monument  to  his  memory  in  Canada,  the  request  was  granted  by  the  English 
minister,  Pitt,  in  terms  expressive  of  a  high  admiration  of  Montcalm's 
character.  Monckton  recovered  of  his  wound  at  New  York.  It  was  un- 
fortunate, perhaps,  for  the  fame  of  all  the  officers  who  distinguished  them- 
selves on  either  side  in  these  hostilities,  that  the  European  states  to  which 
they  respectively  belonged  were  very  soon  tempted  to  regret  the  effects  of 
the  prowess  they  had  exerted  In  America., 

General  Townsend,  who  now  commanded  the  army  of  Wolfe,  proceeded 
to  fortify  his  camp,  and  to  construct  lines  and  take  other  necessary  meas- 
ures for  the  investment  of  Quebec  ;  but  his  operations,  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  greatly  protracted,  if  not  entirely  defeated,  were  happily 
abridged  by  a  proposition  of  the  garrison  within  five  days  of  the  late  victory 
to  surrender  the  place  to  the  English  forces.  [September  17.]  The  dis- 
comfiture of  Montcalm's  plan  of  defence,  and  the  loss  of  this  commander, 
whose  active  genius  and  despotic  authority  had  rendered  him  not  merely 
the  leader  of  the  French,  but  the  main  spring  of  all  their  counsels  and  con- 
duct, seemed  to  have  confounded  the  spirit  and  paralyzed  the  vigor  of  the 
garrison,  whose  early  surrender  excited  general  surprise,  and  was  equally 
grateful  to  their  enemies  and  mortifying  to  their  countrymen.  The  terms 
of  the  capitulation  were  the  more  favorable  for  the  besieged,  as  the  enemy 
was  assembling  a  large  force  in  the  rear  of  the  British  army  ;  as  the  season 
had  become  wet,  cold,  and  stormy,  threatening  the  troops  with  sickness  and 
the  fleet  with  danger  ;  and  as  a  considerable  advantage  was  to  be  gained 
from  taking  possession  of  the  town  while  the  walls  were  yet  In  a  defensible 
condition.  It  was  stipulated,  that  the  Inhabitants,  during  the  war,  should  be 
protected  In  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion  ;  their  future  pohtical  destiny 
was  left  to  be  decided  at  the  return  of  peace.  This  treaty  occurred  very 
seasonably  for  the  British,  who  learned  Immediately  after  that  the  enemy's 
army  had  rallied  and  been  reinforced  beyond  Cape  Rouge  by  two  regular 
battahons  which  General  de  Levi  had  conducted  to  their  aid  from  Montreal ; 


CHAP,  v.]        APPREHENDED   RESTORATION  OF  CONQUESTS.  297 

and  that  Bougainville,  with  eight  hundred  men  and  a  convoy  of  provisions, 
was  prepared  to  throw  himself  into  the  town  on  the  very  day  of  its  surrender. 
[September  18.]  The  capitulation  was  no  sooner  ratified,  than  the  British 
forces  took  possession  of  Quebec,  which,  besides  its  garrison,  contained  a 
population  of  ten  thousand  persons.  Next  day,  about  a  thousand  prisoners 
were  embarked  on  board  of  transports  to  be  conveyed  to  Europe. 

The  capital  of  New  France,  thus  reduced  to  the  dominion  of  Great 
Britain,  received  a  garrison  of  five  thousand  troops  commanded  by  General 
Murray,  whose  security  was  farther  promoted  by  the  conduct  which  the 
French  colonists  in  the  neighbourhood  now  thought  proper  to  adopt  ;  for 
they  repaired  in  great  numbers  to  Quebec,  and,  delivering  up  their  arms, 
pledged  themselves  by  oath  to  observe  a  strictly  passive  neutrality  during 
the  continuance  of  the  war.  The  British  fleet,  shortly  after,  took  its  de- 
parture from  the  St.  Lawrence,  carrying  with  it  General  Townsend,  who 
returned  to  England. 

The  operations  which  had  been  intrusted  to  General  Stanwix  were  at- 
tended with  complete  success.  By  his  conduct  and  prudence,  the  British 
interest  and  empire  were  established  so  firmly,  to  all  appearance,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio,  that  the  emigrants  from  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Penn- 
sylvania were  very  soon  after  enabled  securely  to  resume  and  advantageously 
to  extend  the  settlements  in  this  quarter,  from  which  the  French  had  expelled 
them  in  the  commencement  of  the  war.^ 

Thus  brilliantly  ended  the  campaign  of  1759.  In  England  its  results 
were  hailed  with  the  most  enthusiastic  triumph  and  applause.  In  America, 
though  these  sentiments  were  warmly  and  justly  reciprocated,  the  public 
satisfaction  was  yet  depressed  by  a  prevalent  apprehension  that  the  recent 
victories  would  be  attended  whh  merely  a  transient  advantage,  and  that  the 
conquests  of  Britain  would  again  be  restored  to  France  by  the  next  treaty 
of  peace.  This  notion  (justified  by  many  previous  occurrences,  as  well  as 
by  calculations  of  the  British  policy  to  which  we  have  already  adverted) 
prevailed,  besides,  among  many  of  the  Indian  tribes,  and  proved  injurious 
to  the  British  interest  with  this  savage  race,  whose  untamed  ferocity  did  not 
render  them  altogether  unsusceptible  of  politic  impressions.  About  a  month 
after  the  conquest  of  Quebec,  two  Indians,  belonging  to  the  confederacy 
of  the  Six  Nations  and  attached  to  the  English  interest,  repaired  to  Canada 
for  the  ostensible  purpose  of  visiting  a  portion  of  their  tribe  which  had  been 
gained  over  to  the  cause  of  France  and  now  inhabited  the  Canadian  tertito- 
ry.  The  visitors  endeavoured  to  persuade  their  ancient  kinsmen  to  make 
a  timely  secession  from  the  French,  und  to  return  to  their  original  country ; 
telling  them,  in  Indian  style,  "  that  the  English,  formerly  women,  were  now 
all  turned  into  men,  and  were  growing  as  thick  in  the  country  as  the  trees 
in  the  woods  ;  that  they  had  taken  the  French  forts  at  Ohio,  Ticonderoga, 
Louisburg,  and  Quebec,  and  would  soon  eat  the  remainder  of  the  French 
in  Canada  together  with  all  the  Indians  that  adhered  to  them."  But  the 
French  Indians  answered,  *'  Brothers,  you  are  deceived  ;  the  English 
cannot  eat  up  the  French  ;  their  mouth  is  too  little,  their  jaws  too  weak, 
and  their  teeth  not  sharp  enough.  Our  father,  Onontio  (by  this  name  they 
distinguished  the  governor  of  Canada),  has  told  us,  and  we  believe  him,  that 
the  English,  like  a  thief,  have  stolen  Louisburg  and  Quebec  from  the  great 

'  Jinnual  Register  for  1760  and  1762^     Smollett.    Wynne.    Trumbull.    Campbell.     Holmes 
Rogers's  American  Biographical  Dictionary.     Playfair  a  Memoir  of  Professor  Robison. 
VOL.    II.  38 


298  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

king,  whilst  his  back  was  turned  and  he  was  looking  another  way  ;  but  now 
that  he  has  turned  his  face,  and  sees  what  the  English  have  done,  he  is 
going  into  their  country  with  a  thousand  great  canoes  and  all  his  warriors  ; 
and  he  will  take  the  little  Enghsh  king  and  pinch  him,  till  he  make  him  cry 
out  and  give  back  what  he  has  stolen,  as  he  did  about  ten  summers  ago  ; 
and  this  your  eyes  will  soon  see."  This  representation  appears  to  have  pro- 
duced a  considerable  impression  on  the  Indian  race,  and  especially  on  the 
Six  Nations,^  who,  recalling  former  instances  in  which  British  policy  had 
been  reproached  by  them  as  faithless  and  inconsistent,  experienced  an  abate- 
ment of  zeal  in  behalf  of  alhes,  who,  they  feared,  might  ultimately  abandon 
them  to  the  vengeance  of  their  common  enemy.  The  French  industriously 
fomented  in  the  minds  of  the  savages  every  sentiment  unfavorable  towards 
Britain  ;  and  the  Cherokee  war,  which  broke  out  not  many  months  after, 
rewarded  the  address  and  assiduity  of  their  intrigues. 

Both  in  the  recent  and  the  previous  campaign,  which  had  been  distin- 
guished by  the  revived  lustre  of  the  British  arms,  the  provincial  troops 
merited  and  obtained  an  ample  share  of  the  general  praise.  By  the  pru- 
dence and  liberality  of  the  English  commanders,  the  invidious  distinctions 
enjoined  by  the  king  were  disregarded  or  relaxed  ;  and  in  the  field  only  a 
generous  emulation  prevailed  between  the  regulars  and  the  provincials.  This 
emulation  was  strikingly  evinced  at  Niagara,  and  contributed  materially  to 
the  success  of  Sir  WiUiam  Johnson.  Massachusetts,  this  year,  in  addition 
to  her  contingent  of  six  thousand  five  hundred  men  (of  whom  two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  served  in  garrison  at  Louisburg  and  Nova  Scotia,  several 
hundreds  on  board  the  king's  ships,  and  the  remainder  along  with  Amherst's 
army),  at  the  request  of  General  Wolfe,  raised  three  hundred  more,  and 
despatched  them  to  Quebec,  where  they  served  as  pioneers.^ 

The  legislature  of  Massachusetts  having  passed  a  stamp  act,  in  which 
newspapers  were  included,  a  petition  w^as  presented  by  the  printers  of  the 
province  against  this  impost,  which  was  accordingly  withdrawn,  in  consid- 
eration that  newspapers  were  not  only  vehicles  of  knowledge,  but  instru- 
ments of  Hberty.  In  the  records  of  the  legislature  of  this  as  well  as  of 
the  other  American  provinces,  we  find  the  pernicious  instrumentality  of 
lotteries  frequently  sanctioned  and  adopted  for  the  collection  of  funds  for 
purposes  of  public  utility.  The  example  of  the  parent  state  communicated 
this  vile  and  demoralizing  engine  of  finance  to  her  colonies.  Previous  to 
the  final  rupture  between  Britain  and  America,  the  American  colonists 
commonly  purchased  every  year  an  eighth  part  of  the  tickets  of  the  British 
state  lottery.^ 

This  year  died  Sir  William  Pepperell,  who  distinguished  himself  so 
highly  as  commander  of  the  expedition  by  which  Cape  Breton  was  con- 
quered in  1745.  Pepperell  and  another  individual  of  the  same  name'* 
were  the  only  natives  of  New  England  on  whom  the  British  title  of  baronet 
was   ever  conferred.     Sir  John  Yeamans  and   Sir  William  Johnson,^  the 

'  Annual  Register  for  1759.  ^  Minot.     Hutchinson. 

•*  Holmes.     Annual  Recrist.er  for  1769. 

*  William  Pepperell,  of  Boston  (probably  a  relative  of  the  conqueror  of  Cape  Breton),  was 
created  a  baronet  of  Great  Britain  in  the  year  1774,  two  years  before  the  revolt  of  America 
from  the  British  empire.       Annual  Register  for  1774. 

*  On  the  death  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  in  1774,  his  title  was  inherited  by  his  son,  Sir 
John  Johnson,  who  was  born  in  America,  and  who,  espousing  the  quarrel  of  Britain  in  the 
War  of  Independence,  committed,  at  the  head  of  a  band  of  Indians,  the  most  barbarous  de- 
vastation of  the  American  settlements.     Dwight's  Travels. 


CHAP,  v.]    DISLIKE   OF  TITULAR  HONORS  BY  THE  AMERICANS.         299 

only  other  of  the  American  colonists  to  whom  the  same  titular  dignity  was 
extended,  were  natives  of  the  parent   state.      Sir  William  Phips  was  the 
only  American  whose  advancement  to  the  inferior  dignity  of  knighthood  has 
been  recorded.^     So  sparingly  did  Britain    distribute    among   her  colonial 
offspring  those  fanciful  decorations  which  France  had  lavishly  bestowed 
upon  the  Canadians,  and  successfully  employed  to  nourish  and  sustain  their 
prejudices  in  favor  of  royalty  and  aristocracy.     If  Britain  (always  suppos- 
ing, though  contrary  to  probability,  that  her  policy  was  the  result  of  consist- 
ent and  prospective  system)  hoped  to  impress  her  American  subjects  with 
additional  reverence  for  a  parent    state  which  was   not  only  the  fountain 
but  the  sole  depositary  of  titulary  honors,  she  failed  in  her  design.     If  her 
purpose  was  to  cherish  among  the  colonists  habits  of  industry  and  sobri- 
ety, she  unquestionably  succeeded  ;  though  at  the  expense  of  diminishing 
their  esteem  for  some  of  her  own  most  ancient  and  characteristic  institu- 
tions.    Generally  trained  to  useful  labor,  and   habituated  to  regard  it  as 
almost   the  sole,  and  certainly  the  worthiest  and  most  accessible,  path  to 
distinction,  the  colonists  entertained  a  jealousy  of  every  system  and  principle 
that  encroached  on  the  respect  or  diminished  the  reward  due  to  industrious 
pursuits.     They  regarded  feudal  titles  as  arrogant  assumptions,  under  which 
the  pride  of  favorite  vassals  aped  the  grandeur  of  their  prince  and  cloaked 
the  humiliation  of  their  servitude.      Some  of  the  noblemen,  whom  the  parent 
state  deputed  to  administer  royal  prerogative  or  to  exercise  other  conspic- 
uous  functions  in  America,  were  persons  of  worth  and  honor  ;    but  none 
of  them  justified  his  titular  pretension  to  superiority  over  the  rest  of  man- 
kind by  his  personal  achievements  ;  and  the  majority  excited  the  aversion 
and  contempt  of  the  colonists.     The  insolent  pretensions  and  the  sordid  or 
insignificant  characters  of  the  inheritors  of  proprietary  rights  in  America, 
together  with  the  abortive  attempt  of  the  proprietaries  of  Carolina  to  in- 
troduce a  subordinate  species  of  titular  nobility  into  this  province,  combined 
to  give  a  keener  edge  to  the  general  dislike  of  a  hereditary  tenure  of  honor 
and  authority.     There  had,  indeed,  been  always  some  individuals,  and  now 
there  was  a  party,  among  the  colonists,  certainly  not  considerable  in  num- 
bers, who  longed  for  such  an  assimilation  of  the  colonial  institutions  to  those 
of  the  parent  state,  as  might  enable  themselves  to  indulge  the  pride  and  par- 
take the  splendor  and  enrichment  of  the  titles,  trappings,  and  pensions  of 
Europe,  even  at  the  expense  of  exalting  the  royal  prerogative  in  America, 
and  proportionally  restricting  and  depressing  the  liberties  of  their  country- 
men.^   This   party,  which,  doubtless,  included  among  its  members   some 
dexterous  and  unprincipled  knaves,  contained,  perhaps,  a  larger  admixture 
of  men  in  whom  a  blind  but  honest  zeal  for  British  and  monarchical  power 
was  combined  with  a  sincere  devotion  to  their  own  private  interests,  in  va- 
rious,  and,   to  human  eyes,  inscrutable  proportions.     Jealous  of  popular 
rights,  and  exclaiming  against  the  dangerous  aim  and  tendency  of  popular  sen- 
timent in  America,  this  party  easily  gained  the  ear  and  at  least  the  partial 
confidence  of  the  royal  court ;  and  probably  conceived,  as  well  as  conveved, 
an  exaggerated  idea  of  its  own  influence,  from  the  occasional  support  which 
it  received  from  wealthy  colonists,  who,  though  warmly  attached  to  liberty 
and  their  country,  overvalued  the  superior  riches  of  Britain,  dreaded  change 

*  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson  (better  known  by  the  title  of  Count  Rumford)  was  a  native  of 
Massachusetts.  But  he  did  not  receive  his  title  of  knighthood  till  after  the  revolt  of  America 
from  Britain,  when  it  was  bestowed  on  him  as  the  reward  of  his  adherence  to  the  parent  state. 

*  Franklin's  Memoirs  and  Correspondence.     Holmes,     Belknap. 


300  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

and  hazard,  and  believed,  because  they  desired,  the  infallible  efficacy  of 
temperate  and  submissive  demeanour  in  preserving  the  relations  of  friendship 
and  the  blessings  of  peace.  The  zealots  of  monarchical  and  republican 
principles  —  the  one  relying  on  British  support,  the  other  on  their  own  su- 
perior numbers  in  America  —  were  more  disposed  both  by  word  and  ac- 
tion to  hurry  their  controversy  to  an  extremity.  The  conduct  of  both  was 
influenced  at  the  present  crisis  by  the  state  of  public  affairs,  and  the  de- 
meanour of  the  moderate  party,  which  at  once  excited  the  ardor  of  the 
partisans  of  prerogative  and  dictated  caution  to  the  advocates  of  liberty. 
However  disposed  the  British  court  or  any  portion  of  it  might  have  been, 
at  this  period,  to  second  the  wishes  of  a  party  devoted  to  the  interests  of 
the  crown,  it  was  no  easy  matter  to  alter  the  long  prevailing  usages  and  es- 
tablished constitutions  of  the  American  provinces  ;  in  opposition,  especially, 
to  that  strong  current  of  repubhcan  sentiment  and  opinion  by  which  all  these 
provinces  were  pervaded,  and  of  which,  even  at  a  crisis  like  the  present,  the 
most  unfavorable  for  its  manifestation,  there  broke  forth  many  unequivocal 
symptoms. 

The  present  contest  between  the  French  and  English  in  America  was 
signahzed,  from  time  to  time,  by  various  predatory  inroads  of  the  Indian 
allies  of  France  upon  the  frontiers  of  Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire. 
In  this,  as  in  the  previous  war,  the  provincial  annalists  confess  the  forbear- 
ance and  tenderness  generally  demonstrated  by  the  savages  for  their  captives, 
but  no  longer  hesitate  to  determine  whether  such  altered  treatment  was  the 
offspring  of  policy  or  humanity.  For  it  was  found  that  the  Indians  were  en- 
gaged to  dehver  all  their  prisoners  alive  into  the  hands  of  the  French,  who 
indemnified  themselves  for  the  subsidies  which  they  paid  to  their  savage 
allies,  by  the  ransoms  they  exacted  from  the  families  and  kinsmen  of  the 
captives.^ 


CHAPTER   VI 


Progress  of  Hostilities  in  America. —  Entire  Conquest  of  Canada.  —  War  with  the  Cherokees. 

—  Affairs  of  Massachusetts.  — Death  of  George  the  Second.  —  Conclusion  of  the  Cherokee 
War.  —  Affairs  of  South  Carolina.  —  Discontents  in  Massachusetts  —  and  in  North  Carolina. 

—  Peace  of  Paris.  —  Affairs  of  Virginia  —  Patrick  Henry.  —  Indian  War.  —  Affairs  of  Penn- 
sylvania. 

The  inhabitants  of  North  America  had  eagerly  indulged  the  hope  that 
the  reduction  of  Quebec  not  only  betokened,  but  actually  imported,  the 
entire  conquest  of  Canada ;  but  they  were  speedily  undeceived  ;  and, 
aroused  by  the  spirhed  and  nearly  successful  attempt  of  the  French  to 
retrieve  this  loss,  they  consented  the  more  willingly  to  a  renewed  exer- 
tion of  their  resources  for  the  purpose  of  securing  and  improving  the  vic- 
torious posture  of  their  afi^airs.  The  New  England  levies  this  year  [1760] 
were  as  numerous  as  they  had  ever  been  during  the  war  ;  the  Virginian 
levies  (augmented  by  the  emergency  of  a  war  with  the  Cherokees)  amounted 

to  two  thousand  men.  ^^ 

'  Belknap.    "  Vendere  cum  possis  captivum,  occidere  noli."     Horace. 


CHAP.  VI.]        EFFORT  TO  RECAPTURE  QUEBEC.  3()| 

No  sooner  had  the  English  fleet  retired  from  the  St.  Lawrence,  than 
Levi,  who  succeeded  to  Montcalm's  command,  resolved  to  attempt  the 
recovery  of  Quebec.  The  land  forces  he  possessed  were  more  numerous 
than  the  army  of  Wolfe,  by  which  the  conquest  of  the  place  had  been 
achieved,  and  he  enjoyed  the  cooperation  of  some  frigates,  which  afforded 
him  the  entire  command  of  the  river,  as  the  English  had  imprudently  with- 
drawn every  one  of  their  vessels,  on  the  supposition  that  they  could  not 
be  useful  in  winter.  He  had  hoped  that  a  sudden  attack  might  enable  him 
to  take  Quebec  by  surprise,  during  the  winter ;  but,  after  some  preparatory 
approaches  which  were  repulsed,  and  a  survey  which  convinced  him  that 
the  outposts  were  better  secured  and  the  governor  more  active  and  alert 
than  he  had  expected,  he  was  induced  to  postpone  his  enterprise  till  the  ar- 
rival of  the  spring.  In  the  month  of  April,  when  the  St.  Lawrence  afford- 
ed a  navigation  freed  from  ice,  the  artillery,  military  stores,  and  heavy 
baggage  of  the  French  were  embarked  at  Montreal,  and  carried  down  the 
river  under  the  protection  of  six  frigates  ;  and  Levi  himself,  after  a  march 
of  ten  days,  arrived  with  his  army  at  Point-au- Tremble,  within  a  few  miles 
of  Quebec.  General  Murray,  to  whom  the  preservation  of  the  English 
conquest  was  intrusted,  took  prompt  and  skilful  measures  for  its  security  ; 
but  his  troops  had  suffered  so  much  from  the  extreme  cold  of  the  winter 
and  the  want  of  vegetables  and  fresh  provisions,  that  instead  of  five  thou- 
sand, the  original  number  of  his  garrison,  he  could  now  count  on  the  ser- 
vices of  no  more  than  three  thousand  men.  Impelled  by  overboiling 
courage,  rather  than  guided  by  sound  judgment,  and  relying  more,  perhaps, 
on  the  reputation  than  the  strength  of  his  army,  he  determined,  with  this 
once  victorious  and  still  valiant,  though  diminished  force,  to  meet  the  ene- 
my in  the  field,  although  their  numbers  amounted  to  more  than  twelve  thou- 
sand ;  and,  accordingly,  marching  out  to  the  Heights  of  Abraham,  he  at- 
tempted to  render  this  scene  once  more  tributary  to  the  glory  of  Britain, 
by  an  impetuous  assault  on  the  neighbouring  position  of  the  French  at  Sil- 
lery.  [April  28,  1760.]  But  his  attack  was  firmly  sustained  by  the  enemy, 
and,  after  a  sharp  encounter,  finding  himself  outflanked,  and  in  danger  of 
being  surrounded  by  superior  numbers,  he  withdrew  his  troops  from  the 
action  and  retired  into  the  city.  In  this  conflict  the  British  lost  the  greater 
part  of  their  artillery  and  nearly  a  thousand  men.  The  French,  though 
their  loss  in  killed  and  wounded  was  more  than  double  that  number,  had 
nevertheless  gained  the  victory,  which  their  general  lost  no  time  in  improv* 
ing.  On  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  the  battle  took  place,  Lev' 
opened  trenches  against  the  town  ;  yet,  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts,  it  was  not 
till  the  11th  of  May  that  his  batteries  were  so  far  advanced  as  to  commence 
an  effectual  fire  upon  the  garrison.  But  Murray  had  now,  by  indefatigable 
exertion,  in  which  he  was  assisted  with  alacrity  by  his  soldiers,  completed 
some  outworks,  and  planted  so  powerful  an  artillery  on  the  ramparts,  that 
his  fire  was  far  superior  to  that  of  the  besiegers,  and  nearly  silenced  their 
batteries.  Quebec,  notwithstanding,  would  most  probably  have  reverted  to 
its  former  masters,  if  an  armament  which  was  despatched  from  France  had 
not  been  outsailed  by  a  British  squadron,  which  succeeded  in  first  gaining 
the  entrance  and  the  command  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  French  frigates, 
which  had  descended  from  Montreal,  were  now  attacked  by  the  British 
ships,  and,  part  of  them  having  been  destroyed,  the  rest  betook  themselves 
to  a  hasty  retreat  up  the  river.     Levi  instantly  raised  the  siege,  and,  retiring 

z 


302  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

with  a  precipitation  that  obliged  him  to  abandon  the  greater  part  of  his 
baggage  and  artillery,  reconducted  his  forces  (with  the  exception  of  a  party 
of  Canadians  and  Indians  who  became  disheartened  and  deserted  him  by 
the  way)  to  Montreal.  Here  the  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil,  governor-general 
of  Canada,  had  fixed  his  head-quarters,  and  determined  to  make  his  last 
stand  in  defence  of  the  French  colonial  empire,  —  thus  reduced,  from  the 
attitude  of  preponderance  and  conquest  which  it  presented  two  years  be- 
fore, to  the  necessity  of  a  defensive  and  desperate  effort  for  its  own  preser- 
vation. For  this  purpose  Vaudreuil  called  in  all  his  detachments  and  col- 
lected around  him  the  whole  force  of  the  colony.  Though  little  chance 
of  success  remained  to  him,  he  preserved  an  intrepid  countenance,  and  in 
all  his  dispositions  displayed  the  firmness  and  foresight  of  an  accomplished 
commander.  To  support  the  drooping  courage  of  the  Canadians  and  their 
Indian  allies,  he  had  even  recourse  to  the  artifice  of  circulating  among  them 
feigned  intelligence  of  the  successes  of  France  in  other  quarters  of  the 
world,  and  of  her  approaching  succour. 

Amherst,  in  the  mean  time,  was  diligently  engaged  in  concerting  and 
prosecuting  measures  for  the  entire  conquest  of  Canada.  During  the  winter, 
he  had  made  arrangements  for  bringing  all  the  British  forces  from  Quebec, 
Lake  Champlain,  and  Lake  Ontario,  to  join  in  a  combined  attack  upon 
Montreal.  Colonel  Haviland,  by  his  direction,  sailing  with  a  detachment 
from  Crown  Point,  took  possession  of  Isle-aux-Noix,  which  he  found  aban- 
doned by  the  enemy,  and  thence  proceeded  towards  Montreal ;  while 
Amherst,  with  his  own  division,  consisting  of  about  ten  thousand  regulars 
and  provincials,  left  the  frontiers  of  New  York,  and  advanced  to  Oswego, 
where  his  force  received  the  addition  of  a  thousand  Indians  of  the  Six  Na- 
tions, marching  under  the  command  of  Sir  William  Johnson.  Embarking 
with  his  entire  army  on  Lake  Ontario,  he  reduced  the  fort  of  Isle  Royale, 
one  of  the  most  important  posts  which  the  French  possessed  on  the  river 
St.  Lawrence  ;  and  thence,  after  a  difficult  and  dangerous  passage,  conduct- 
ed his  troops  to  Montreal,  where,  on  the  very  day  of  their  arrival  [Septem- 
ber 6,  1760],  they  were  met  by  the  forces  commanded  by  General  Murray. 
In  his  progress  up  the  river,  Murray  distributed  proclamations  among  the 
Canadians  inhabiting  its  southern  shore,  which  produced  such  an  effect  that 
almost  all  the  parishes  in  this  quarter,  as  far  as  the  river  Sorel,  declared 
their  submission  to  Britain,  and  took  the  oath  of  neutrality  ;  and  Lord  Rollo, 
meanwhile,  advancing  along  the  northern  shore,  disarmed  all  the  inhabitants 
as  far  as  Trois  Rivieres,  which,  though  the  capital  of  a  large  district,  being 
merely  an  open  village,  was  taken  without  resistance.  By  a  happy  concert 
in  the  execution  of  a  well  digested  plan,  the  armies  of  Amherst  and  Murray, 
on  the  day  after  their  own  simultaneous  arrival  [September  7],  were  joined 
by  the  detachment  confided  to  Colonel  Haviland.  Amherst  had  already 
made  preparation  for  investing  Montreal  ;  but  Vaudreuil,  perceiving,  from 
the  strength  of  the  combined  armies,  and  the  skilful  dispositions  of  their 
commanders,  that  resistance  must  be  ineffectual,  hastened  to  demand  a  ca- 
pitulation ;  and  on  the  following  day  [Septembers],  Montreal,  Detroit,  and 
all  the  other  places  of  strength  within  the  government  of  Canada  were  sur- 
rendered to  the  British  crown.  After  the  capitulation.  General  Gage  was 
appointed  governor  of  Montreal,  with  a  garrison  of  tw^o  thousand  men  ; 
and  Murray  returned  to  Quebec,  where  his  garrison  was  augmented  to  four 
thousand. 


CHAP.  VI.]         WAR  WITH  THE  CHEROKEES.  3()3 

Thus  fell  the  colonial  empire  of  France  on  the  continent  of  North  Amer- 
ica, —  the  victim  of  overweening  ambition,  and  of  the  rage  of  a  rival  state, 
transported  by  insult  and  injury  beyond  the  usual  channel  of  its  policy  and 
the  limits  of  the  system  it  had  hitherto  pursued.  On  the  south  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi, the  French  still  possessed  the  Infant  colony  of  Louisiana  ;  but  this 
settlement,  far  from  being  powerful  or  formidable,  was  so  thinly  peopled  and 
so  ill-conditioned,  that  it  could  scarcely  have  preserved  its  existence,  without 
the  provisions  of  food  and  other  supplies  it  obtained  by  a  contraband  trade 
with  the  British  provinces.^  The  downfall  of  the  French  dominion  was 
completed  by  the  fate  of  the  armament,  which,  as  we  have  already  re- 
marked, was  despatched  this  year  from  France  for  the  assistance  of  Canada. 
The  commander  of  this  force,  consisting  of  one  frigate  of  thirty  guns,  two 
large  store-ships,  and  nineteen  smaller  vessels,  having  ascertained  before 
his  arrival  on  the  coast  that  a  British  squadron  had  already  sailed  up  the 
St.  Lawrence,  took  refuge  in  the  Bay  of  Chaleurs,  on  the  coast  of  Nova 
Scotia.  Captain  Byron,  who  commanded  the  British  vessels  stationed  at 
Louisburg,  receiving  Intelligence  of  the  enemy's  position.  Instantly  sailed 
with  five  ships  of  war  to  the  Bay  of  Chaleurs,  and  easily  succeeded  in 
destroying  the  hostile  armament,  as  well  as  in  dismantling  two  batteries 
which  the  French  had  erected  on  shore. ^ 

During  the  progress  of  these  decisive  operations  in  the  North,  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  Southern  States  of  America  were  infested  with  the  calamity 
of  an  Indian  war,  occasioned  partly  by  their  own  inconsiderate  violence  and 
cruelty,  and  partly  by  the  address  and  intrigues  of  the  French.  The  Cher- 
okees,  in  co;iformIty  with  subsisting  treaties,  had  sent  considerable  parties 
of  their  warriors  to  assist  the  British  in  their  expeditions  against  Fort  Du- 
quesne.  In  their  return  homew^ards  through  the  bacl?  parts  of  Virginia, 
many  of  the  Indian  warriors,  having  lost  their  horses,  made  no  scruple  to 
supply  the  want  from  the  herds  of  these  animals  which  they  found  roaming 
in  the  woods  ;  — regardless,  and  perhaps  Ignorant,  of  the  rights  they  violated. 
The  Virginians,  to  whom  the  horses  belonged,  resenting  this  injury,  killed 
twelve  or  fourteen  of  the  unsuspecting  Indians,  and  made  prisoners  of  sev- 
eral more.  Incensed  at  such  ungrateful  usage  from  allies  in  defence  of 
whose  frontiers  they  had  been  so  recently  engaged,  the  Cherokees  med- 
itated revenge  ;  and  were  inflamed  in  their  vindictive  purpose  by  the  as- 
surances of  the  French,  that  the  English  intended  to  kill  every  man  of 
them,  and  to  make  slaves  of  their  wives  and  children.  The  insidious 
counsels  of  the  French  being  reinforced  by  a  liberal  subsidy  of  arms  and 
ammunition,  the  Cherokees  were  tempted  to  court  their  own  destruction 
by  plunging  into  a  war  with  the  British,  which  they  accordingly  commenced 
by  a  furious  and  desolating  incursion  upon  the  frontiers  of  Virginia  and 
the  Carolinas.  These  three  provinces  combined  for  their  common  defence  ; 
a  body  of  Virginian  mihtla,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Bird,  and  of  the 
militia  of  North  Carolina,  commanded  by  Colonel  Waddell,  were  despatched 
to  unite  themselves  with  a  force,  consisting  partly  of  regulars  and  partly  of 
militia,  which  Littleton,  the  governor  of  South  Carolina,  in  the  close  of  the 
preceding  year,  conducted  into  the  country  of  the  Cherokees,  where,  with- 
out  further  bloodshed,  the  quarrel  was   seemingly  accommodated,  and  a 

*  Pitt,  in  a  circular  letter  to  the  British  provincial  governments  in  the  present  year,  indig- 
nantly remarked  the  subsistence  of  this  contraband  trade  during  the  war,  and  directed  that  the 
severest  measures  should  be  employed  to  suppress  it. 

2  Jlnnual  Register  for  1760.      Smollett.     Wynne.     Trumbull.     Minot.     Holmes. 


304  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

treaty  was  concluded  and  guarantied  by  the  delivery  of  twenty-four  Indian 
hostages.  A  lasting  peace  might  have  ensued  from  this  treaty  but  for  the 
folly  of  Governor  Littleton,  who  treated  the  Indian  chiefs  with  the  most  in- 
sulting arrogance,  and  laughed  at  the  wise  remonstrances  of  Bull,  the  lieu- 
tenant-governor, on  the  impolicy  of  offending  the  self-respect  of  this  proud 
race,  and  the  danger  and  mischief  of  a  quarrel  with  them.  Early  in  the  pres- 
ent year,  the  Cherokees,  having  waited  only  till  the  forces  of  Littleton 
were  withdrawn  and  dispersed,  renewed  their  hostile  inroads  more  furiously 
than  before,  butchered  a  number  of  provincial  traders  who  rashly  ventured 
among  them,  and  besieged  Fort  Prince  George,  with  the  hope  of  recov- 
ering their  hostages  who  were  confined  there. ^  Their  rage  was  increased 
by  the  fate  which  now  befell  these  hostages,  who,  resisting  the  orders  of 
the  commander  of  the  fort,  that  they  should  be  put  in  irons,  and  killing 
one  of  the  soldiers  who  were  attempting  so  to  confine  them,  were  instantly 
assaulted  and  slain  by  his  comrades.  The  warfare  began  to  present  so 
formidable  an  appearance,  that  an  express  was  despatched  from  Carolina 
to  General  Amherst,  to  acquaint  him  with  the  public  danger  and  implore 
immediate  succour.  A  battalion  of  Highlanders  and  four  companies  of  the 
royal  Scots  regiment  were  accordingly  sent,  under  the  command  of  Colonel 
Montgomery  (afterwards  Earl  of  Eglinton),  for  the  relief  of  the  southern 
provinces.  Before  the  end  of  April,  Montgomery  landed  his  troops  in 
Carolina,  and  encamped  at  Monk's  Corner.  A  few  weeks  after  his  arrival, 
he  marched  to  the  Congarees,  where  he  was  joined  by  the  whole  re- 
assembled forces  which  were  engaged  in  the  expedition  of  the  preceding 
year.  Advancing  thence  into  the  Cherokee  country,  he  destroyed  all  the 
towns  of  the  lower  nation  of  the  Cherokees,  killed  or  made  prisoners  of  a 
hundred  of  the  enemy,  and,  marching  to  the  relief  of  Fort  Prince  George, 
compelled  its  assailants  to  abandon  the  blockade  they  had  closely  maintained. 
Most  of  the  Indian  prisoners  taken  in  this  expedition  were  slain  by  the 
troops,  who  were  transported  with  ungovernable  rage  by  finding  in  the  In- 
dian villages  the  mangled  bodies  of  several  of  their  countrymen,  whose 
appearance  proclaimed  the  horrid  tortures  in  which  they  had  expired. 
Finding  the  savages  still  deaf  to  his  proposals  of  accommodation,  Mont- 
gomery marched  forward  through  the  Dismal  Swamp^  where  he  encoun- 
tered many  hardships  and  dangers,  until  he  arrived  within  five  miles  of 
Etchoe,  the  central  town  and  settlement  of  the  Cherokees.  Here  he  found 
himself  at  the  entrance  of  a  deep  valley  covered  with  bushes  and  inter- 
sected by  a  muddy  stream  flowing  between  steep  clayey  banks.  Captain 
Morison,  who  commanded  a  company  of  rangers,  was  ordered  to  advance 
and  scour  the  thicket  ;  but  had  scarcely  entered  it,  when  he  fell,  with  sev- 
eral of  his  men,  by  the  fire  which  the  Indians  from  this  covert  poured  upon 
them.  The  light  infantry  and  grenadiers  now  rushed  into  the  thicket,  and 
essayed  to  dislodge  the  invisible  enemy  ;  but  the  number  of  the  Indians 
proved  to  be  so  great^  their  position  so  commanding  and  difficult  of  ap- 
proach, and  their  resistance  so  valorous  and  obstinate,  that  it  was  necessary 
to  bring  the  whole  British  force  into  action  against  them  ;  and  even  when 
they  gave  way,  they  were  not  put  to  rout,  but  retired  with  undiminished 
show  of  resistance  from  one  strong  position  to  another.     In  this  conflict, 

'  The  inhabitants  of  North  Carolina  were  so  much  incensed  at  the  cruelty  and  treachery 
of  the  Indians,  that  a  statute  of  their  provincial  assembly  ordained,  this  year,  that  all  Indiaa 
prisoners  should  become  slaves  to  their  captors,  and  that  a  premium  should  be  paid  to  every 
colonist  producing  an  Indian  scalp. 


CHAP.  VI.]  WAR  WITH   THE  CHEROKEES.  305 

which  continued  above  an  hour,  twenty  of  the  British  were  killed  anc 
seventy-six  wounded.  Sensible  of  the  difficulty  and  hazard  of  farther  pur- 
suit, and  averse  to  expose  his  wounded  men  to  the  vengeance  of  a  savage 
enemy,  Montgomery  commanded  a  retreat,  which  was  conducted  with 
much  regularity  and  precaution,  to  Fort  Prince  George.  Accounting  that 
his  orders  obliged  him  now  to  rejoin  the  main  British  army,  he  withdrew 
his  regiment  from  Carohna,  to  the  great  disappointment  and  consternation 
of  the  inhabitants  of  this  province,  who  plainly  perceived  that  the  Indians 
were  more  exasperated  than  weakened  by  the  hostilities  they  had  undergone. 

To  revenge  the  calamities  of  this  invasion,  and  improve  the  success  with 
which  they  had  finally  checked  its  progress,  the  Cherokees,  assembling  a 
considerable  force,  laid  siege  to  Fort  Loudoun,  a  small  fortification  situated 
near  the  confines  of  Virginia.  This  post,  whicji  was  occupied  by  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  men  under  the  command  of  Captain  Demere,  was  ill  supplied 
with  provisions,  and  precluded,  by  the  remoteness  of  its  situation  (a  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  distant  from  Charleston)  and  the  blockade  of  the  enemy, 
from  communication  with  the  other  British  settlements  and  forces.  The 
garrison,  having  sustained  a  long  siege,  and  subsisted  for  some  time  on  horse- 
flesh, was  at  length  reduced  to  such  extremity  as  to  be  obliged  to  surrender 
the  place  by  capitulation.  The  Indians,  with  the  most  plausible  show  of 
equity  and  moderation,  declared  that  they  desired  nothing  so  much  as  a 
lasting  peace  and  a  fair  and  regulated  trade  with  the  English  ;  and  they 
engaged  that  the  garrison  should  march  out  with  their  baggage,  and  be 
conducted  by  trusty  guides  to  Virginia  or  Fort  Prince  George.  But  nothing 
was  farther  from  their  intention  than  the  fulfilment  of  this  treaty.  The  troops 
had  marched  scarcely  fifteen  miles  from  the  evacuated  fort,  when  they  were 
deserted  by  their  attendants,  and  surrounded  by  a  numerous  band  of  Indian 
warriors,  who  poured  a  heavy  fire  upon  them  from  all  sides,  and  sprang  for- 
ward to  the  attack  with  their  usual  savage  yell.  Demere  and  all  the  other 
officers,^  together  with  twenty-five  of  the  soldiers,  were  killed  ;  the  rest 
were  made  prisoners,  and  distributed  among  the  different  villages  and  settle- 
ments of  the  enemy  ;  whence,  after  a  miserable  captivity,  they  were  subse- 
quently redeemed  at  a  great  expense  by  the  province  of  South  Carolina. 
Encouraged  by  their  success  at  Fort  Loudoun,  the  savages  next  undertook 
the  siege  of  Fort  Ninety-six,  and  other  small  fortifications  ;  but  retired  pre- 
cipitately, on  the  approach  of  a  body  of  provincial  troops.  This  campaign, 
on  the  whole,  was  calculated  to  raise  the  hopes  of  the  Cherokees,  who,  at 
the  present  period,  were  capable  of  bringing  three  thousand  warriors  into 
the  field.2 

While  the  flames  of  Indian  war  thus  raged  in  the  southern  parts  of  British 
America,  the  Northern  States  beheld  with  satisfaction  the  prospect  of  an  en- 
tire deliverance  from  this  calamity,  —  so  fatal  (from  the  style  of  savage  war- 
fare, and  the  desolation  and  revengeful  rage  which  it  created)  to  the  virtue 
as  well  as  the  happiness  of  their  people.  The  Indian  inhabitants  of  the  east- 
ern parts  of  New  England,  who  had  always  been  dependent  on  the  conduct 
and  fortunes  of  the  two  rival  European  powers,  gradually  submitted  to  Brit- 
ain as  the  ascendency  of  the  French  arms  declined.  Among  these,  the  Pe- 
nobscots,  who  had  dwindled  to  a  very  insignificant  tribe,  in  consequence  of 

'  Except  Captain  Stuart,  whom  an  Indian  chief  named  The  Little  Carpenter^  long  attached 
to  the  English  and  opposed  to  the  war,  generously  ransomed  from  his  countrymen  at  the  ex- 
pense of  all  his  substance,  and  afterwards  conducted  in  safety  to  Virginia. 

*  Hewit.     Williamson.    Annual  Register  for  1760.    Smollett.     Trumbull.     Holmes.         » 

VOL.   II.  39  z* 


306  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

their  adherence  to  France  and  their  vicinity  to  Massachusetts,  sent  deputies 
in  the  commencement  of  this  year  to  Boston,  where  a  treaty  of  peace  was 
concluded,  by  which  they  acknowledged  themselves,  without  restriction  or 
limitation,  subjects  of  the  British  crown.  They  confessed  their  rebellion, 
and  the  consequent  forfeiture  of  their  lands  ;  and  accepted,  as  matter  of 
grace,  the  privilege  of  hunting  upon  them,  and  using  for  tillage  such  portions 
as  might  be  assigned  to  them  by  the  provincial  authorities.  They  engaged 
to  dwell  near  Fort  Pownall,  a  stronghold  lately  erected  by  the  governor  of 
Massachusetts  ;  and  to  deliver  up  all  future  offenders  of  their  tribe  to  be 
judged  by  the  authorities  and  laws  of  this  province. 

Massachusetts  now  witnessed  the  departure  of  the  last  governor  acceptable 
to  her  people  whom  she  was  ever  to  receive  from  the  appointment  of  Britain. 
This  was  Pownall,  who  was  now  promoted  to  the  richer  presidency  of  South 
Carolina,  and  was  succeeded  in  Massachusetts  by  Francis  Bernard,  formerly 
a  proctor  in  the  ecclesiastical  courts  of  England,  and  latterly  governor  of 
New  Jersey.  Pownall  had  been  at  least  as  popular,  and  partly  for  the  same 
reasons,  as  his  predecessor,  Shirley.  The  repute  of  each  of  these  governors 
derived  a  lustre  from  the  vigorous  and  successful  enterprises  against  the 
French,  by  which  their  administrations  were  signalized.  Shirley,  attached 
to  the  cause  of  prerogative,  was  supported  with  pecuhar  zeal  by  the  pro- 
vincial party  which  entertained  the  same  sentiments  ;  and  yet  esteemed  by 
the  opponents  of  this  party,  who  professed  a  preferable  and  jealous  attach- 
ment to  popular  liberty,  for  the  courtesy  with  which  he  treated  their  persons, 
and  the  generous  respect  which  he  demonstrated  for  their  avowed  views  and 
principles.  Pownall  was  equally,  if  not  more,  fortunate  in  a  behaviour 
tempered  by  its  varieties  to  the  liking  of  both  parties.  Whether  from  mere 
disinterested  sympathy  with  the  sentiments  of  the  popular  party,  or  because 
he  perceived  the  prevailing  and  progressive  influence  of  these  sentiments 
and  their  votaries  in  the  province,  and  accounted  that  his  own  future  ad- 
vancement would  depend,  in  a  great  measure,  on  the  reputation  he  might 
acquire  in  Massachusetts,  he  espoused  the  principles  and  courted  the  friend- 
ship of  those  politicians  by  whom  the  interests  of  provincial  liberty  were 
most  warmly  cherished.  Though  perhaps  in  his  official  character  he  was 
less  courteous  towards  his  opponents  than  Shirley  had  been,  he  diminished 
the  warmth  of  opposition  with  many  of  them  by  the  kindred  gayety  of  his 
manners  in  the  social  intercourse  of  private  life  ;  for,  in  general,  the  votaries 
of  pleasure  and  dissipation  were  the  friends  of  royal  prerogative.  The  im- 
portance of  his  connections  and  influence  in  England  favored  his  addresses 
to  all  parties  ;  and  while  he  associated  familiarly  with  the  politicians  by  whom 
the  sentiments  of  the  multitude  were  directed,  and  gained  the  general  esteem 
by  the  liberal  principles  he  professed,  and  the  diligent  attention  he  directed 
to  the  conduct  of  public  business,  and  the  frugal  expenditure  of  public 
money, — he  indulged  a  naturally  jovial  and  sprightly  disposition,  amidst 
the  more  aristocratical  circles  of  fashion  and  pleasure,  with  a  freedom, 
which,  in  those  days  of  remaining  Puritan  strictness,  w^ould  have  attracted 
from  the  generality  a  severe  censure  against  a  less  popular  character.  But 
of  the  two  provincial  parties,  the  one  winked  at  his  manners,  in  considera- 
tion of  his  principles  ;  while  many  of  the  other  pardoned  or  forgot  his 
principles,  in  sympathy  with  his  gayety,  and  participation  of  his  amuse- 
ments. Happily  for  the  peace  of  his  administration,  the  engrossing  con- 
cerns of  the  war  tended  to  withdraw  from    view  the  great   controversial 


CHAP.  VI.]    BERNARD  GOVERNOR  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.         397 

points  respecting  liberty  and  prerogative,  by  which  former  governors  and 
the  assembly  were  usually  divided  ;  and  yet  so  keen  were  the  attacks  he 
experienced  from  Hutchinson,  Oliver,  and  other  leaders  of  the  party  at- 
tached to  royal  prerogative,  that  he  is  said  to  have  ardently  desired  and 
heartily  rejoiced  at  the  termination  of  his  command  in  Massachusetts.  It 
could  not  have  terminated  at  a  period  more  propitious  to  his  reputation  ; 
for  all  that  Britain  was  fated  to  do,  in  order  to  render  her  authority  and  its 
administrators  popular  in  America,  had  now  been  done.  The  most  favor- 
able interpretation  of  Pownall's  motives  is  justified  by  the  consideration  of 
his  subsequent  conduct.  From  Massachusetts,  he  proceeded  directly  to 
England,  and,  gaining  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  never  actually 
took  possessio»of  his  command  in  Carolina  ;  but,  both  as  a  senator  in  the 
British  parliament,  and  a  political  writer  (for  he  was  the  author  of  several 
valuable  works  ^),  warmly  embraced  and  ably  defended  the  cause  of  the  col- 
onies in  their  subsequent  quarrel  with  Britain,  —  predicting,  with  accurate 
but  unheeded  discernment,  the  results  which  w^ere  progressively  unfolded 
by  the  erring  course  of  British  policy.  When  he  embarked  for  England 
[June  3,  1760],  both  houses  of  assembly  attended  him  in  a  body  to  his  barge, 
and  graced  his  departure  with  every  ceremonial  expressive  of  public  favor 
and  respect. 

Bernard,  the  successor  of  Pownall,  commenced  his  administration  under 
very  favorable  auspices.  During  his  short  possession  of  the  government  of 
New  Jersey,  he  earned  so  fair  a  character,  that  the  people  of  Massachusetts 
greeted  his  arrival  with  expressions  of  hope  and  esteem  ;  and  one  of  the 
earliest  communications  which  he  made  to  the  assembly  announced  the  grat- 
ification of  the  wishes  they  had  so  long  and  ardently  cherished  for  the  sub- 
jugation of  the  French  dominion  in  Canada.  Yet  even  on  this  interesting 
occasion,  and  at  a  crisis,  too,  when  the  subsequent  policy  of  Britain  with  re- 
gard to  the  retention  or  cession  of  Canada  excited  the  most  anxious  spec- 
ulation and  apprehension  in  America,  an  expression  employed  by  the  new 
governor  produced  a  remarkable  display  of  that  difference  of  sentiment  by 
which  the  two  political  parties  of  Massachusetts  were  divided.  Bernard 
embraced  the  friendship  and  principles  of  Hutchinson  and  the  politicians  of 
the  same  party  ;  and,  whether  by  their  suggestion,  or  from  his  own  proper 
motion,  in  communicating  the  conquest  of  Canada  to  the  assembly,  he  de- 
sired the  two  houses  to  remember  "the  blessings  they  derive  from  their 
subjection  to  Great  Britain,  without  which  they  could  not  now  have  been 
a  free  people."  Not  even  the  announcement  of  the  conquest  of  Canada 
could  render  this  language  palatable  to  the  people  of  Massachusetts  ;  nor 
could  their  fears  of  the  influence  which  British  jealousy  of  their  spirit  might 
exercise  on  the  articles  of  the  next  treaty  of  peace  altogether  restrain  an 
avowal  of  their  repugnance  to  the  governor's  view  of  their  political  condi- 
tion. The  council,  in  their  responsive  address  to  Bernard's  message,  ac- 
knowledged that  ''  to  their  relation  to  Great  Britain  they  owe  their  present 
freedom"  ;  and  the  House  of  Representatives  declared,  that,  while  they 
were  duly  sensible  of  the  blessings  remarked  by  the  governor,  ''  the  whole 
world  must  be  sensible  of  the  blessings  derived  to  Great  Britain  from  the 
loyalty  of  the  colonies  in  general,  and  from  the  efforts  of  this  province  in 
particular  ;  which  for  more  than  a  century  past  has  been  wading  in  blood, 

1  Viz.  Rights  of  the  Colonics  stated  nvd  defended^  17^.     Speech  in  Favor  of  America,  1761) 
Adnunistration  of  the  British  Colonies^  1774, 


308  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK    X. 

and  laden  with  the  expenses  of  repelling  the  common  enemy  ;  without  w^hich 
efforts,  Great  Britain,  at  this  day,  might  have  had  no  colonies  to  defend."  i 
This  language,  guarded  as  it  is,  appears  deeply  significant,  when  we  con- 
sider all  the  circumstances  of  the  period  at  which  it  was  employed. 

Nor  was  it  in  Massachusetts  alone  that  sparks  and  even  flames  of  contro- 
versy were  produced  by  increasing  collision  between  the  pretensions  of 
royal  or  national  prerogative  and  of  popular  or  provincial  liberty.  Virginia, 
at  this  period,  was  agitated  by  a  controversy  relative  to  the  support  of  the 
clergy,  but  manifestly  involving  the  delicate  question  of  the  degree  of  Amer- 
ican subjection  to  British  control.  As  the  termination  of  the  controversy, 
which  was  far  more  remarkable  than  its  origin  and  progress,  did  not  occur 
till  about  three  years  after,  w^e  shall  content  ourselves,  for  thfe  present,  with 
merely  adverting  to  its  existence,  as  a  proof  of  the  contemporaneous  preva- 
lence of  democratical  sentiment  and  opinion  in  the  various  States  of  Ameri- 
ca. In  North  Carolina,  at  this  juncture,  a  general  ferment  was  excited  by 
the  efforts  of  Dobbs,  the  royal  governor,  so  to  alter  (partly  by  creating  new 
boroughs  and  counties,  and  partly  by  other  measures)  the  system  of  popular 
representation,  as  to  insure  to  the  crown  an  entire  ascendant  over  the 
deliberations  of  the  provincial  assembly.  From  these  measures,  after  pursu- 
ing them  so  far  as  to  kindle  a  high  degree  of  public  spirit  in  the  province, 
he  was  at  last  compelled  to  depart,  by  the  resolute  opposition  of  the  as- 
sembly, accompanied  with  such  expressions  of  popular  indignation  as  strongly 
betokened  a  revolt  against  his  authority.^ 

Towards  the  conclusion  of  the  present  year  [October  25,  1760] ,  George 
the  Second,  king  of  Great  Britain,  at  the  age  of  seventy-seven,  closed,  with 
his  life,  a  reign  of  thirty-four  years  ;  the  last  monarch  who  died  in  possession 
of  regal  authority  over  the  colonial  offspring  of  the  British  empire  in  North 
America.  He  was  succeeded  by  his  grandson,  George  the  Third,  whose 
narrow  capacity,  united  to  an  obstinate  temper,  and  perverted  by  an  educa- 
tion elaborately  purged  of  liberal  wisdom  and  truth,  fitted  him  to  be  the  con- 
fessor and  champion  of  oligarchy  and  the  enemy  of  popular  liberty  in  every 
part  of  the  world.  Inflexibly  selfish,  implacably  vindictive,  self-confident, 
and  imperious,  yet  crafty  and  dissembling,  he  would  justly  have  deserved  to 
be  classed  with  the  worst  of  sovereigns,  if  some  incidents  of  his  life  did  not 
suggest  the  apology,  that  he  was  often,  though  by  fortune  a  powerful,  yet  by 
nature  (even  more  than  by  the  artificial  maxims  of  human  policy)  an  irre- 
sponsible agent.  The  insanity  under  which  he  occasionally  labored  af- 
fords a  better  apology  for  his  errors  than  can  be  derived  from  the  political 
theorem  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong.  As  he  retained,  at  first,  the  min- 
isters of  his  grandfather,  —  whatever  hopes  or  fears  may  have  been  gener- 

*  Yet  Hutchinson  himself,  the  only  writer  by  whom  this  remarkable  proceeding  has  been 
recorded,  hesitates  not  to  declare  at  this  period,  that  "  An  empire  separate  or  distinct  from 
Britain  no  man  then  alive  expected  or  desired  to  see.  From  the  common  increase  of  inhab- 
itants in  a  part  of  the  globe  which  nature  afforded  every  inducement  to  cultivate,  settle- 
ments would  gradually  extend  ;  and,  in  distant  a^es,  an  independent  empire  would  probably  be 
formed.  This  was  the  language  of  that  day.  The  greatest  nopes  from  the  reduction  of  Can- 
ada, as  far  as  could  be  judged  from  the  public  prayers  of  the  clergy,  as  well  as  from  the  con- 
versation of  people  in  general,  were  'to  sit  quiet  under  their  own  vines  and  fig-trees,  and  to 
have  none  to  make  them  afraid.'  "  The  wishes  of  the  sanguine,  no  less  than  the  fears  of  the 
timid,  are  frequently  the  parents  of  their  opinions.  Burnaby,  an  English  writer,  who  trav- 
elled through  North  America  in  the  present  and  the  preceding  year,  declares  that  he  heard  sen- 
timents of  independence  expressed  in  almost  every  State  which  he  visited. 

^  Minot.  Hutchinson.  itVioVs  Biographical  Dictionary  of  JVew  England.  Burnaby's  Tror- 
eh  in  the  Middle  Settlements  of  North  America  in  1759  and  1760.  Williamson.  Wirt's  Life  of 
Henry. 


CHAP.  VI.]      CONCLUSION  OF  THE  CHEROKEE  WAR.  309 

ated  in  Europe  or  America  by  his  assumption  of  royalty,  no  alteration  of 
British  pohcy  was  exhibited  for  a  while  ;  and  doubtless  no  human  eye 
foresaw  the  vast  and  varied  change  in  the  scene  of  human  fortune  that  was 
destined  to  contrast  the  conclusion  with  the  commencement  of  this  reign. 
From  neglect  or  mistake  in  some  official  quarter,  no  formal  intelligence  of 
the  death  of  the  late  king,  or  of  the  accession  of  his  grandson  to  the 
throne,  was  transmitted  to  Massachusetts.  But,  after  waiting  awhile,  the 
provincial  government  resolved,  in  consideration  of  the  notoriety  of  the  fact, 
to  break  through  the  trammels  of  official  etiquette  ;  and  accordingly,  on  nearly 
the  last  day  of  the  year,  proclaimed  the  royal  sway  of  George  the  Third, ^ 
—  the  last  performance,  it  may  be  hoped,  of  any  such  ceremony  in  New 
England. 

All  the  British  provinces  were  now  dehvered  from  immediate  fear  and 
danger  of  hostile  vicinity,  except  the  Southern  States,  which  were  still 
menaced  and  afflicted  with  the  hostilities  of  the  Cherokees.  [1761.]  The 
most  humane  and  respectable  chieftain  of  this  nation,  who  was  distinguished 
by  the  title  of  The  Little  Carpenter^  labored  with  generous  but  unsuccess- 
ful zeal  to  extinguish  the  quarrel.  Every  offer  of  peace  was  spurned  by  the 
majority  of  this  high-spirited  people,  who  now  gained  an  accession  both 
of  strength  and  of  hope  from  the  attitude  of  defiance  and  hostility  which 
the  powerful  tribe  of  the  Creeks,  influenced  by  French  agents,  began  to 
assume  towards  the  British.  South  Carolina  had  already  expended  more 
than  fifty  thousand  pounds  sterhng  in  defence  of  its  frontiers,  without  obtaining 
any  considerable  advantage  over  the  enemy.  Bull,  the  lieutenant-governor 
of  this  province,  applied  again  for  assistance  to  General  Amherst,  who,  as 
Canada  was  now  entirely  reduced,  could  more  conveniently  spare  a  detach- 
ment of  his  forces  adequate  to  the  purpose  of  chastising  the  savages.  Mont- 
gomery having  embarked  for  England,  Colonel  Grant,  on  whom  the  com- 
mand of  the  Highland  regiment  devolved,  received  orders  to  reconduct  it 
to  the  rehef  of  Carolina,  and  arrived  for  this  purpose  at  Charleston  in 
the  commencement  of  the  year.  A  provincial  regiment  was  raised  to  act 
in  conjunction  with  the  British  force  ;  and,  with  the  addition  of  a  troop 
of  Indian  allies.  Grant  was  able  to  muster  a  body  of  two  thousand  six  hun- 
dred men,  which  he  conducted  in  the  month  of  May  to  Fort  Prince  George. 
Here  [May  27]  he  was  met  by  the  Indian  chief  called  The  Little  Carpen- 
ter^ who,  adjuring  the  British  to  remember  how  long  and  how  zealously  he 
had  approved  himself  their  friend,  solicited  yet  a  little  farther  time  to  pacify 
his  countrymen,  and  a  pause  in  the  advance  of  the  invading  force,  till  the 
issue  of  his  last  effort  of  mediation  were  seen.  He  implored  them  in  the 
name  of  the  common  fortune  and  condition  of  mankind  not  to  punish  the 
offending  Indians  with  too  great  severity  ;  but  rather  to  suffer  their  incon- 
siderate rage  and  folly  to  become  a  lasting  monument  of  British  generosity 
and  virtue.  But  Grant  refused  to  hearken  to  the  chief's  desire  ;  and,  having 
completed  the  prehminary  inquiries  and  arrangements  for  the  expedition, 
commenced  his  march  from  Fort  Prince  George  for  the  Cherokee  towns. 

^  Hutchinson.  This  year  a  dreadful  fire  broke  out  in  Boston,  by  which  nearly  a  tenth 
part  of  the  town  was  destroyed.  Besides  the  contributions  in  Massachusetts,  the  assemblies 
of  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  appropriated  a  part  of  their  public  funds  to  the  relief  of  the 
sufferers.     Holmes. 

Among  the  crowd  of  gazers  at  the  pageant  of  the  coronation  of  George  the  Third  was  a 
young  American  named  John  Hancock,  who  was  afterwards  instrumental  in  tearing  a  large 
part  of  the  crown  from  the  monarch's  brow  by  subscribing  the  Declaration  of  American  In- 
dependence, and  subsequently  chief  magistrate  of  his  native  State. 


310  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [  BOOK  X. 

[June  7.]  Captain  Kennedy,  with  ninety  Indians,  and  thirty  wood-men 
painted  like  Indians,  marched  in  front  of  the  army,  and  scoured  the  for- 
ests ;  and  after  them  followed  a  troop  of  two  hundred  light  infantry  and 
rangers.  By  the  vigilance  and  activity  of  these  forerunners,  Grant  designed 
to  secure  his  main  force,  which  followed  in  their  train,  from  annoyance, 
surprise,  and  confusion.  The  troops,  by  forced  marches,  passed  two  nar- 
row and  dangerous  defiles,  without  having  received  a  shot  from  the  enemy  ; 
but  on  the  fourth  day  of  their  march  [June  lOj,  they  encountered  the  forces 
of  the  Cherokees  at  the  same  spot  where  Montgomery  fought  whh  them  in 
the  preceding  year.  The  Indians  had  chosen  their  position  well,  and 
although,  when  they  saw  the  British  approach,  they  forsook  it  in  order  to 
try  the  effect  of  a  sudden  and  furious  attack,  which  was  repulsed,  they  re- 
gained it,  and  used  all  its  advantages  with  a  skill  and  bravery  which  it  re- 
quired the  most  strenuous  exertions  of  Grant's  troops  to  overcome.^  After 
a  spirited  engagement,  which  lasted  for  three  hours,  the  Cherokees  began 
to  give  way,  and  at  lengih  fled  from  the  field  of  battle  with  a  celerity, 
which,  combined  with  their  superior  knowledge  of  the  country,  eluded  pur- 
suit. Between  fifty  and  sixty  of  the  British  were  killed  and  wounded  ;  the 
loss  of  the  Indians  was  not  ascertained.  Immediately  after  the  action, 
Grant  proceeded  to  the  neighbouring  town  of  Etchoe,  which  he  reached 
about  midnight,  and  the  next  day  reduced  to  ashes.  Every  other  town  in 
the  middle  settlements  of  the  Cherokees  shared  the  same  fate  ;  the  mag- 
azines of  the  tribe  were  destroyed,  and  their  corn-fields  laid  waste  ;  and 
the  miserable  Indians  were  driven  to  seek  what  shelter  and  subsistence 
their  barren  mountains  might  afford  them.  Having  inflicted  this  severe 
blow.  Grant  returned  to  Fort  Prince  George,  where,  a  few  days  after.  The 
Little  Carpenter^  accompanied  by  other  chiefs  of  the  Cherokees,  repaired 
to  his  camp  and  sued  for  peace.  Articles  of  a  pacific  treaty  were  according- 
ly adjusted,  and  not  long  after  were  solemnly  ratified  in  a  convention  held  by 
the  same  Indian  chiefs,  with  Bull  and  the  provincial  council  of  South  Caro- 
lina, at  Ashley  Ferry  ;  ^  with  mutual  expressions  of  hope  that  the  friendly 
relations  thus  reestablished  might  endure  as  long  as  the  sun  should  shine 
and  the  rivers  flow.  The  reduction  of  the  Cherokees  was  one  of  the  last 
humbling  strokes  given  to  the  power  and  influence  of  France  in  North 
America.^ 

This  was  the  only  occasion  on  which  any  one  of  the  British  colonies  had 
ever  besought  and  obtained  the  assistance  of  the  forces  of  the  parent  state 
in  conducting  a  war  with  the  Indians.  Some  of  the  inhabitants  of  South 
Carolina  were  forcibly  struck  with  the  singular  inability  thus  confessed  by 
their  native  province  to  provide  for  its  own  security  and  render  its  domestic 
resources  available  and  sufficient  to  its  external  defence.  The  cause  of 
this  singularity  was  easily  perceived  to  be  the  great  disproportion  between 
the  number  of  freemen  in  the  province  and  the  negro  slaves,  of  whom  vast 
numbers  had  been  recently  imported  by  the  slave-traders  of  Britain.     To 

^  Amherst,  in  his  despatches  to  England  relative  to  this  action,  reported  that  "  Colonel 
Grant  says  that  the  provincials  have  behaved  well,  as  he  always  expected  they  would  do." 

2  One  of  Grant's  requisitions  was,  that  the  Indians  should  deliver  either  four  of  their  tribe 
to  be  executed  in  presence  of  the  British  army,  or  four  green  scalps  of  Cherokee  warriors. 
This  barbarous  demand  was  resisted  by  the  Indians,  who  maintained  that  they  were  much 
more  justly  entitled  to  make  a  similar  requisition  against  the  people  of  Virginia,  whose  vio- 
lence and  ingratitude  had  first  given  occasion  to  the  war.  It  was  remitted  by  the  wisdom  and 
humanity  of  Bull. 

^  .lanual  lit ghter  for  I76i.     Hewit.     Trumbull.     Wynne.     Holmes. 


CHAP.  VL]  RESIGNATION  OF  PITT.  31| 

promote  the  public  security,  and  check  the  growth  of  the  evil  by  which  it 
was  thus  undermined,  a  law  was  enacted  in  the  present  year  by  the  provin- 
cial assembly,  imposing  so  high  a  duty  on  every  additional  slave  imported 
into  South  Carolina  as  to  amount  in  effect  nearly  to  a  prohibition  of  farther 
importation.^  But  this  law  (which,  with  impudent  absurdity,  has  been  rep- 
resented as  an  expression  of  humane  consideration  for  the  negroes)  was 
rescinded  by  the  crown,  as  inconsistent  with  the  interests  of  British  com- 
merce. 

Notwithstanding  the  conquest  of  Canada,  the  military  exertions  of  the 
British  colonies  in  North  America  were  but  partially  relaxed.  A  letter  ad- 
dressed this  year  by  Pitt  to  the  provincial  governors  represented  that  the 
king  was  determined  still  vigorously  to  prosecute  the  war,  until  the  enemy 
should  be  compelled  to  accept  of  peace  on  terms  conducive  to  the  advantage 
and  glory  of  his  crown,  and  to  the  welfare,  in  particular,  of  his  subjects  in 
America  ;  and  required  the  colonies  to  cooperate  with  the  royal  policy, 
by  raising  troops  to  the  amount  of  two  thirds  of  the  forces  which  they  had 
contributed  for  the  campaign  of  the  preceding  year.  This  requisition  was 
readily  complied  with.  The  repairing  and  strengthening  of  the  numerous 
posts  in  the  extensive  territory  of  Canada  ;  the  construction  of  new  fortifica- 
tions requisite  to  secure  the  conquered  country,  and  to  cover  and  guard  the 
colonies,  in  case  of  Canada  being  again  restored  to  France  ;  the  erection 
of  houses  and  barracks  at  the  various  places  where  it  seemed  expedient  that 
garrisons  should  be  maintained,  —  demanded  exertions  which  the  colonists, 
and  especially  the  people  of  New  England,  were  prompted  alike  by  their 
wishes  and  their  fears  to  contribute.  Desiring  that  Canada  might  be  an- 
nexed to  the  British  empire,  they  were  eager  to  strengthen  the  hold  of  it 
which  Britain  had  obtained  ;  and  fearing  that  it  would  be  ceded  to  France, 
they  were  anxious  to  guard  themselves  as  well  as  possible  against  the  vicinity 
of  peril  and  disquiet  thus  again  to  be  reproduced,  and  to  fortify  every  post 
not  likely  to  be  included  in  the  cession.  Both  in  Europe  and  in  America, 
the  approach  of  peace  was  generally  supposed  to  be  somewhat  nearer  than 
it  eventually  proved.  In  the  present  year,  a  correspondence^  took  place 
between  the  ministers  of  Britain  and  France  on  this  important  subject,  and 
was  carried  so  far  as  to  develope  the  views  of  both  cabinets  with  regard 
to  the  fundamental  articles  of  a  treaty  of  peace.  The  keen,  extensive  pen- 
etration and  sagacity  of  Pitt,  however,  perceived  that  this  desirable  con- 
summation was  retarded  by  the  altered  dispositions  of  Spain  ;  and  discerned, 
in  the  overtures  of  the  Spanish  monarch  to  mediate  between  Britain  and 
France,  a  purpose,  only  suspended  by  political  convenience,  to  espouse  and 
support  the  French  interest  and  quarrel.  In  vain  Pitt  pressed  his  col- 
leagues in  the  cabinet  (of  whom  some  hated  and  others  feared  him)  to 
embrace  this  view,  and  to  disarm,  by  anticipating,  the  meditated  hostility 
of  Spain.  Supported  by  the  king,  they  withstood  his  urgency,  and  de- 
feated his  wishes  ;  and  Pitt,  perceiving  he  could  no  longer  guide  the  cabinet, 
but  that,  remaining  in  it,  he  must  seem  to  approve,  by  his  presence,  coun- 
sels which  he  reckoned  feeble  and  pernicious,  resigned  his  ministerial  office. 

*  Annual  Register  for  1761.  And  see  Ramsay's  History  of  the  American  Revolution.  Among 
other  written  instructions  communicated  by  the  crown  to  Benning  Wentworth,  the  fifovernor 
of  New  Hampshire,  on  the  30th  of  June,  1761,  the  twenty-seventh  article  directs  that  "You 
are  not  to  give  your  assent  to,  nor  pas^,  any  law  imposing  duties  on  negroes  imported  into 
New  Hampshire."     Gordon. 

*  It  is  impossible  to  peruse  this  correspondence  without  being  struck  with  the  stately  and 
disdainful  dignity  (or  rather,  arrogance)  of  Pitt's  temper  and  language. 


312  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK   X. 

To  soothe  the  wounded  pride  of  the  fallen  minister,  and  to  appease  the 
national  displeasure  at  his  secession  from  the  cabinet,  he  was  enriched  with 
a  munificent  pension,  and  a  peerage  was  bestowed  on  his  wife  and  their 
issue. ^  The  Spanish  court,  at  the  same  time,  as  if  to  aid  the  adversaries 
of  Pitt,  and  promote  the  delusion  which  these  politicians  honestly  embraced 
or  artfully  countenanced,  published  the  most  solemn  declaration  of  its  pacific 
intentions,  and  disavowed  every  purpose  which  Pitt  had  imputed  to  it. 

But  whatever  delusion  might  thus  have  been  created  or  confirmed  was 
dissipated  in  the  commencement  of  the  following  year  [1762],  when  the 
war,  which  Pitt  predicted,  actually  broke  forth  between  Britain  and  Spain. 
The  British  cabinet  in  this  emergency,  without  recalling  Pitt  to  office,  availed 
itself  of  the  vigorous  posture  which  the  empire  had  assumed  under  the  in- 
fluence and  direction  of  his  genius.  While  a  powerful  armament  was  de- 
spatched for  the  reduction  of  the  Spanish  settlement  at  Havana,  the  British 
troops  on  the  continent  of  America  received  orders  to  undertake  an  expedi- 
tion against  the  French  West  Indian  colony  of  Martinique.  This  last  project 
was  communicated  to  the  governors  and  assembhes  of  the  British  colonies 
in  North  America  by  the  Earl  of  Egremont,  the  successor  to  Pitt's  office, 
who  pressed  it  upon  them  as  a  reason  for  supporting  as  many  forces  as 
they  contributed  in  the  former  year.  The  provincial  assembhes  approved 
and  obeyed  this  requisition  with  an  eagerness  for  which  it  is  easier  to  assign 
many  plausible  reasons,  than  to  ascertain  the  one  which  actually  possessed 
the  greatest  influence  with  them.  It  was,  they  deemed,  their  interest,  by 
replacing  the  British  regulars  in  the  Canadian  garrisons,  to  diminish  any 
difficulty  the  parent  state  might  experience  in  retaining  her  American  con- 
quest ;  and,  by  facilitating  the  progress  of  British  victory,  to  render  Canada 
not  the  only  spoil  which  the  enemy  would  seek  to  recover  at  the  next 
treaty  of  peace.  There  had  been  formed,  too,  by  recent  circumstances, 
among  the  colonial  population,  a  numerous  class  of  persons  attached  by 
habit  to  mihtary  pursuits,  and  who,  at  this  crisis,  were  not  less  fitted  to 
subserve  the  external  interests,  than  unlikely  to  promote  the  internal  wel- 
fare of  the  provincial  communities  to  which  they  belonged.  Such  an  ac- 
tual redundance  of  inhabitants  was  produced  in  Massachusetts  by  the  recent 
military  efforts  and  their  cessation,  that,  from  this  province  alone,  nearly  six 
hundred  persons  emigrated  to  Nova  Scotia  in  the  preceding  year.  For  one, 
or  other,  or  all  of  these  reasons,  the  provincial  governments  not  only  raised 
with  alacrity  the  forces  they  were  required  to  support  in  America,  but  of- 
fered bounties  to  encourage  the  enlistment  of  their  people  among  the  regu- 
lar troops  of  the  parent  state.^  About  nine  hundred  men  were  thus  added 
by  Massachusetts  to  the  expedition  of  the  British  forces  against  the  insular 
colonies  of  France.  All  the  enterprises  of  Britain  this  year  proved  suc- 
cessful. Havana  was  wrested,  by  conquest,  from  Spain  ;  Martinique  was 
won  from  France  ;  and  along  with  it  fell  Grenada,  Guadaloupe,  St.  Lucia, 
St.  Vincent,  and  every  other  settlement  which  the  French  possessed  in  the 

*  So  much  enslaved  was  this  great  man  to  aristocratical  illusions,  that  he  (who  had  pre- 
viously rejected  the  approaches  of  Franklin  with  cold  indifference  or  disdain)  is  said  to  have 
been  affected  to  tears  by  a  few  words  of  hollow  civility  addressed  to  him  by  the  narrow- 
minded  monarch  who  regarded  him  with  fear  and  aversion  and  gladly  accepted  his  resignation 
of  office. 

'  "This,"  says  Hutchinson,  "is  a  singular  occurrence."  Hutchinson  seems  to  have  pos- 
sessed a  subtle  and  active,  rather  than  an  elevated  or  comprehensive  mind  ;  and  to  have  been 
more  capable  of  ascertaining,  than  of  appreciating  and  classifying,  the  details  of  a  wide  and 
various  prospect. 


CHAP.  VI.]  DISCONTENTS  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  3|3 

extensive  chain  of  the  Caribbee  Islands.  The  zeal  of  New  England  in 
promoting  these  enterprises  ^  cost  her  the  loss  of  a  great  number  of  men. 
Of  the  troops  which  she  contributed  to  the  British  armament,  so  many 
were  destroyed  by  the  sword  or  by  disease,  that  very  few  returned  to  their 
native  country. ,  A  transient  gleam  of  success  attended  the  arms  of  France 
in  America.  The  island  of  Newfoundland  was  compelled  to  submit  to  the 
sudden  attack  of  a  French  squadron  ;  but  even  before  the  arrival  of  the 
succour  which  England  promptly  afforded,  it  was  retaken  by  a  British  force 
despatched  thither  by  General  Amherst,  under  the  command  of  Lord  Col- 
ville.2 

Notwithstanding  the  harmony  thus  manifested  between  the  martial  spirit 
and  purposes  of  Britain  and  her  colonies,  the  most  violent  discontents 
were  engendered  in  America,  partly  by  the  pressure  of  the  British  com- 
mercial restrictions,  and  partly  by  the  unpopular  and  arbitrary  policy  pur- 
sued by  certain  of  the  royal  governors.  Nothing  can  prove  more  strongly 
the  force  of  these  internal  discontents  than  the  occasional  eruptions  of 
theit  malignity  which  broke  forth  even  at  a  crisis  like  the  present,  when  the 
Americans  were  sensible  that  their  most  important  interests  depended  on 
the  policy  which  Britain  might  choose  to  pursue,  in  the  negotiations,  which 
were  speedily  expected,  for  a  general  peace.  In  Massachusetts,  a  variety 
of  circumstances  had  occurred,  since  the  commencement  of  Bernard's  ad- 
ministration, to  excite  popular  odium  against  this  governor,  and  to  develope 
and  inflame  the  distinctions  between  the  friends  of  American  liberty  and 
the  partisans  of  British  prerogative,  of  which  last  the  most  conspicuous 
were  Bernard  himself,  and  his  deputy,  Hutchinson,  who  possessed  unbound- 
ed influence  over  him.  Governor  Shirley  had  promised  the  office  of  judge 
in  the  provincial  court  to  Otis,  an  able  and  popular  lawyer  in  Boston  ;  and 
on  the  death  of  Sewall,  the  chief  justice  of  this  court,  shortly  after  Ber- 
nard's accession,  the  public  hope  and  expectation  were  fixed  on  the  pro- 
motion of  Otis,  but  disappointed  by  the  conduct  of  Bernard,  who  bestowed 
the  office  of  chief  justice  on  Hutchinson,^  with  expressions  that  gave  Otis 
to  understand  that  he  had  nothing  to  hope  from  the  existing  administration. 
Otis,  thus  balked  of  the  elevation  to  which  his  merit  entitled  and  the  public 
voice  designed  him,  was  incited  both  by  patriotism  and  by  personal  resent- 
ment to  withdraw  his  support  from  the  government,  and  to  court  exclusively 
the  popular  favor.  His  conduct,  however,  was  moderate,  in  comparison 
with  that  of  his  son,  James  Otis,  also  a  lawyer,  a  man  of  fiery,  violent  dis- 
position and  superior  talents,  who  had  hitherto  filled  with  credit  an  official 

*  "  When  Martinique  was  attacked,  the  British  forces,  greatly  weakened  by  sickness  and 
death,  were  enabled,  by  the  timely  arrival  of  the  New  England  troops,  to  prosecute  and  ac- 
complish the  reduction  of  the  island.  A  great  part  of  the  British  force  being  about  to  sail 
from  thence  for  Havana,  the  New  Englanders,  whose  health  had  been  much  impaired  by 
service  and  the  climate,  were  sent  off,  in  three  ships,  as  invalids,  to  their  own  country.  Be- 
fore they  had  completed  the  voyage,  they  found  themselves  restored,  ordered  the  ships  to  veer 
about,  steered  immediately  for  Havana,  and,  arriving  when  the  British  were  too  much  reduced 
to  expect  success,  enabled  them,  by  this  opportune  succour,  to  achieve  the  conquest  of  the 
place."     Gordon. 

2  Jinmml  Register  for  1761  and  1762.  Wynne.  Trumbull.  Hutchinson.  Holmes 
'  Hutchinson  says  that  he  warned  Bernard  of  the  impolicy  of  this  proceeding,  which,  in 
effect,  proved  highly  detrimental  to  the  reputation  of  them  both ;  but  that  Bernard  declared, 
that,  even  though  Hutchinson  should  decline  the  appointment,  Otis  should  not  obtain  it.  Gor- 
don asserts,  that  Hutchinson,  by  his  eager  and  adroit  solicitation,  procured  the  office  for  him- 
self It  is  certain  that  he  accepted  an  appointment  which  be  knew  would  prove  generally 
disagreeable  to  his  countrymen. 

VOL.    II.  40  '        ^'  AA         '  •  .     •    • 


314  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

situation  in  the  public  service.  Transported  with  Indignation  ^  at  the  treat- 
ment of  his  father,  Otis,  the  younger,  instantly  resigned  his  office,  and  ex- 
erted the  most  indefatigable  industry  and  ability  in  advocating  popular  rights, 
and  promoting  and  supporting  every  complaint  that  might  diminish  the 
credit  of  the  British  government.  Roused  by  the  zeal  and  eloquence  of 
such  a  leader,  the  popular  party  began  to  assume  a  bolder  and  more  confident 
tone,  and  to  bestir  themselves  with  increased  activity  in  defending  the 
provincial  liberty,  and  arraigning  whatever  their  inflamed  vigilance  and  jeal- 
ousy deemed  an  encroachment  upon  it. 

The  distinction  created  between  the  colonists  and  the  inhabitants  of  the 
parent  state,  by  the  British  commercial  restrictions,  gave  occasion  to  the 
first  display  of  this  newly  sharpened  spirit.  A  rooted  grudge  subsisted  be- 
tween the  officers  of  the  customs  in  the  port  of  Boston  and  the  merchants 
concerned  in  the  foreign  trade  of  the  province.  The  odium  unavoidably 
attached  to  the  duties  of  those  officers  was  increased  by  the  zeal  they  ex- 
erted to  obtain  the  approbation  of  the  British  government,  and  to  eiyich 
themselves  by  a  rigorous  discharge  of  their  functions  and  numerous  con- 
fiscations. This  antipathy  gradually  became  more  and  more  violent  and 
personal ;  insomuch  that  the  execution  of  the  laws  appeared  too  often  like 
the  triumph  of  private  revenge.  Loud  and  frequent  complaints  asserted  that 
a  superfluous  severity  was  employed  to  carry  into  effect  vexatious  regula- 
tions of  trade,  which,  in  other  colonies,  were  suffered  to  be  evaded  from 
a  conviction  of  their  unreasonableness  and  the  impracticability  of  their  gen- 
eral execution.  Certain  abuses  which  were  suspected  to  exist  in  the  depart- 
ment of  the  revenue,  and  the  notoriety  of  the  fact,  that,  after  all  the  severi- 
ties which  were  inflicted,  no  part  of  the  confiscations  ever  reached  the 
public  exchequer,  prompted  the  merchants  to  scrutinize  the  proceedings  of 
the  commissioners  of  customs.  Some  irregularities  were  detected,  and  re- 
ported to  the  assembly,  which,  in  spite  of  the  utmost  exertions  of  the  gov- 
ernor, ordered  an  action  of  damages  to  be  instituted  against  the  commis- 
sioners. The  issue  of  the  suit'^^  was  creditable  to  the  justice  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Boston  ;  for,  notwithstanding  the  general  irritation  that  prevailed, 
the  jury  were  sensible  that  the  complaint  had  not  been  properly  substan- 
tiated, and  returned  a  verdict  for  the  defendants.  It  had  been,  till  of  late 
years,  a  common  practice  of  the  collectors  and  inferior  officers  of  the  cus- 
toms, without  any  other  authority  than  what  they  derived  from  their  com- 

*  Otis,  the  younger,  is  said  to  have  declared,  on  this  occasion,  that  "  he  would  set  the  prov- 
ince in  flames,  even  though  he  should  perish  by  the  fire."  He  certainly  kindled,  or  at  least 
fanned  and  inflamed,  the  political  conflagration  that  ensued,  and  was  himself  one  of  its  earli- 
est victims. 

2  This  suit  had  special  relation  to  an  act  of  parliament  passed  in  the  sixth  year  of  the  reign 
of  George  the  Second,  and  ever  since  regarded  by  the  Americans  as  a  grievance,  imposing 
a  duty  of  sixpence  per  gallon  on  all  foreign  molasses  imported  into  the  colonies,  and  award- 
ing one  third  of  all  forfeited  cargoes  to  tlie  king  for  the  use  of  the  colony  where  the  forfeiture 
should  be  inflicted,  one  third  to  the  governor,  and  the  remainder  to  the  informer.  The  first 
of  these  shares  had  never  been  appropriated  in  terms  of  the  act,  but  it  was  generally  rendered 
tributary  to  the  more  complete  indemnification  of  the  informers. 

The  duty  on  molasses  was  so  heavy  as  to  amount  to  a  virtual  prohibition  of  the  importation, 
which  accordingly  was  entirely  confined  to  contraband  channels.  Some  years  before  this  pe- 
riod, in  consequence  of  a  representation  by  BoUan,  the  provincial  agent  at  London,  to  the 
British  ministers,  it  was  signified  that  a  reduction  of  the  duty  would  be  granted,  if  the  provin- 
cial assembly  would  petition  for  this  measure,  and  engage  that  the  reduced  duty  would  be 
cheerfully  paid.  The  assembly  were  on  the  jpoint  of  taking  this  step,  when  they  were  dis- 
suaded from  it  by  the  advice  of  Hutchinson,  who,  with  less  consideration  for  the  wishes  of  the 
British  cabinet  than  his  subsequent  conduct  expressed,  cautioned  the  members  against  any 
voluntary  recognition  of  the  propriety  of  an  impost  generally  detested  by  the  people. 


CHAP.  VI J  DISCONTENTS  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  3|5 

missions,  forcibly  to  enter  warehouses,  and  even  dwelling-houses,  on  re- 
ceiving information  that  contraband  goods  were  secreted  within  their  walls. 
The  people,  at  length,  began  to  resent  the  exercise  of  this  assumed  author- 
ity ;  some  stood  on  their  defence  against  the  officers,  while  others  sued 
them  in  actions  at  law  for  illegal  invasion  of  their  premises  ;  and  in  con- 
sequence, the  formality  of  a  peculiar  judicial  writ  was  latterly  employed  to 
legalize  the  operation  of  forcible  entry.  By  the  ingenuity  of  Otis,  an  ob-, 
jection  was  suggested  to  the  validity  of  those  writs  ;  and  a  new  suit,  in- 
volving this  point,  was  instituted  ;  but  the  decision,  which,  on  this  occasion, 
rested  with  the  judges,  again  proved  favorable  to  the  commissioners  of 
customs. 

These  judicial  proceedings,  which  were  regarded  with  intense  interest, 
though  their  immediate  issue  seemed  advantageous  to  the  crown,  produced 
impressions  far  more  advantageous  to  the  views  and  sentiments  of  the  pop- 
ular party.  The  people  were  taught  to  believe  that  they  were  considered 
and  treated  by  the  government  of  the  parent  state  as  a  portion  of  its  sub- 
jects degraded  beneath  the  level  of  English  liberty  and  constitutional  law  ; 
and  that  harsh  statutes  were  severely  enforced  against  them,  but  arbitrarily 
relaxed  in  favor  of  the  officers  of  the  crown,  by  judges  devoted  to  the  in- 
terest of  royal  prerogative.  Men  began  to  inquire  with  more  attention  than 
before  into  the  precise  nature  of  the  relations  subsisting  between  the  col- 
onies and  the  British  nation  ;  and  every  argument  which  gave  color  to  pleas 
opposed  to  the  pretensions  and  the  colonial  policy  of  the  parent  state  was 
favorably  received  by  a  great  majority  of  the  people.^  Bernard,  perceiv- 
ing the  disturbance  which  the  public  mind  had  undergone,  in  a  speech  to 
the  assembly,  cautioned  them  against  hstening  to  declamations  which  tended 
to  promote  a  suspicion  of  the  security  of  the  civil  rights  of  the  people, 
and  which,  however  suited  to  the  reigns  of  Charles  and  James,  were  (he 
declared)  at  the  present  era  utterly  groundless  and  inappropriate.  The 
assembly,  in  answer  to  this  communication,  expressed  their  regret  at  the 
governor's  mistake  in  supposing  that  party  spirit  could  influence  their  de- 
liberations, promised  a  due  attention  to  his  recommendation,  and  declared 
that  it  was  their  purpose  to  see  with  their  own  eyes.  From  the  general 
proneness  of  mankind  to  cherish  immoderate  hope,  and  yet  to  indulge  a 
jealous  impatience  and  discontent,  there  is  no  topic,  which,  supported  with 
ordinary  plausibility,  finds  readier  prevalence  with  the  members  of  any 
social  community,  than  the  notion  that  they  are  hardly  and  unjustly  dealt 
with  ;  and,  unfortunately  for  the  contentment  of  the  colonists  and  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  British  empire,  this  popular  topic  derived  too  much  cor- 
roborative illustration  from  the  conduct  and  pohcy  of  the  parent  state. 

The  exertions  of  Otis  recommended  him  so  highly  to  the  favor  of  his 
countrymen,  that,  in  the  year  1761,  the  town  of  Boston  elected  him  one 
of  its  representatives  in  the  provincial  assembly  ;  and  chiefly  by  his  influence 
was  this  body  induced,  in- the  present  year,  to  embrace  a  measure  of  very 
remarkable  character  and  import,  in  vindication  of  its  own  privileges  and 
of  provincial  liberty.  After  the  number  of  forces  for  the  year  had  been 
voted,  and  during  a  recess  of  the  assembly,  the  fishing  towns  on  the  coast 
were  alarmed  by  intelligence  that  a  French  squadron  had  arrived  at  New- 

^  "  From  various  events,  men  were  prepared  to  think  more  favorably  of  independency  be- 
fore any  measures  were  taken  with  a  professed  design  of  attaining  it.^'  Hutchinson.  This 
is  an  admission  of  more  importance  than  the  writer  seems  to  have  been  aware  of. 


316  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

foundland.  In  this  emergency,  the  inhabitants  of  Salem  and  Marblehead 
petitioned  the  governor  and  council  to  cause  a  ship  and  sloop  belonging  to 
the  province  to  be  fitted  out  and  employed  for  the  protection  of  the  vessels 
engaged  in  the  fishery  ;  whereupon  the  governor  and  council  not  only 
compHed  with  the  request,  but  resolved  to  augment  the  complement  of  men 
on  board  of  the  sloop,  and  for  this  purpose  offered  a  bounty  for  the  encour- 
agement of  the  additional  enlistment  which  they  deemed  expedient.  The 
whole  expense  of  this  bounty  did  not  exceed  four  hundred  pounds  sterling  ; 
and  the  measure  might  have  been  justified  by  various  precedents  in  the 
history  of  the  colony.  But  the  assembly  was  not  in  a  temper  to  admit 
such  justification.  In  a  remonstrance,  composed  for  them  by  Otis,  and 
addressed  to  the  governor,  they  denounced  the  measure  which  he  had 
adopted  as  an  invasion  of  "their  most  darling  privilege,  the  right  of  origi- 
nating all  taxes  ;  and  tantamount  to  an  annihilation  of  one  branch  of  the 
legislature."  They  warmly  declared  that  '•'it  would  be  of  little  conse- 
quence to  the  people  whether  they  were  subjects  to  George,  the  king  of  Great 
Britain,  or  Louis,  the  French  king,  if  both  were  as  arbitrary  as  both 
would  be,  with  the  power  of  levying  taxes  without  parliament " ;  and  con- 
cluded by  praying  the  governor,  "  as  he  regards  the  peace  and  welfare  of 
the  province,  that  no  measures  of  this  nature  be  taken  for  the  future,  let  the 
advice  of  the  council  be  what  it  may."  With  some  difficulty,  the  governor, 
assisted  by  the  partisans  of  prerogative  and  the  friends  of  moderation,  pre- 
vailed with  the  house  to  expunge  from  its  remonstrance  and  records  the  pas- 
sage in  which  the  king's  name  was  introduced  with  such  boldness  of  free- 
dom. The  British  government,  ignorant  or  regardless  of  the  whole  trans- 
action, derived  no  instruction  from  the  ominous  indication  that  was  afforded 
of  the  spirit  and  temper  of  the  American  people.^ 

In  North  Carolina,  the  discontents  which  we  have  already  noted,  and 
traced  to  the  conduct  of  Governor  Dobbs,  were  prolonged  and  confirmed 
by  the  continuance  of  his  arbitrary  and  insolent  administration.  In  the  first 
year  of  the  present  king's  reign,  it  was  enacted  by  a  parhamentary  statute, 
that  the  commissions  of  the  English  judges  should  not,  as  was  previously 
the  practice,  be  vacated  by  the  demise  of  the  sovereign.  Imitating  this 
wise  provision,  and  conforming,  as  they  supposed,  to  the  principle  which 
required  an  assimilation  between  the  provincial  statutes  and  those  of  the 
parent  state,  the  assembly  of  this  province  passed  a  law  ordaining  that  the 
judges  in  its  Supreme  Court  should  hold  their  offices  by  the  tenure  of  their 
good  behaviour,  instead  of  the  precarious  dependence  to  which  they  had 
been  hitherto  restricted,  on  the  discretion  of  the  governor.  Dobbs,  though 
he  was  instructed  to  grant  no  commissions  of  longer  or  securer  duration 
than  his  own  pleasure,  and  to  approve  no  laws  encroaching  in  the  slightest 
degree  on  the  royal  prerogative,  nevertheless  consulted  on  this  occasion 
the  chief  justice  and  the  attorney-general  of  the  province,  who  united  in 
advising  him  to  assent  to  the  law,  which,  they  declared,  "would  restore 
life  to   the   government  and  protection  to  the  subject."     The  governor, 

'  "  It  must  astonish  the  political  observer,  that,  at  such  a  moment,  when  the  genius  of  the 
British  nation  may  be  said  to  have  appeared  and  pointed  to  the  most  fatal  convulsion  in  her 
history,  no  notice  was  taken  of  the  warning.  Her  ministers,  either,  distracted  with  the  weight 
of  the  public  debt,  overlooked  every  thing  but  the  immediate  means  of  collecting  a  revenue  ; 
or,  ignorant  of  the  growth,  enterprise,  and  advantages  of  the  colonists,  carelessly  suffered  a 
disagreement  among  these  distant  subjects,  which  deserved  the  interposition  of  the  highest 
authority,  to  be  aggravated  by  private  rancor  and  prejudice,  the  contemptible  spirit  of  party, 
and  the  domineering  pride  of  inferior  officers."     Minot.  •  .  . 


CHAP.  VL]  QUESTION  OF  RESTORING  CANADA  TO  FRANCE.      317 

however,  thought  proper  to  refuse  his  assent,  and  farther  signified  his 
displeasure  by  dissolving  the  assembly.  The  disposition  of  this  officer  was 
equally  sordid  and  tyrannical.  A  system  of  chicane  at  once  impudent  and 
ingenious  enabled  him  to  enlarge  his  official  perquisites  by  multiplying  the 
occasions  and  augmenting  the  amount  of  the  fees  which  he  exacted  from  the 
colonists  ;  and  the  agents  of  Lord  Granville,  to  whom  we  have  seen  a 
portion  of  the  provincial  territory  reserved,  emulating  his  example,  carried 
their  extortions  to  such  a  height  as  in  some  instances  to  provoke  a  forcible 
resistance.  Numerous  complaints  were  transmitted  to  England,  both  by 
the  representative  assembly  and  by  individual  planters,  against  the  conduct 
of  the  governor  and  of  Lord  Granville's  agents  ;  and  both  the  British  cab- 
inet and  Lord  Granville  are  said  to  have  been  impressed  with  the  justice 
of  these  complaints,  though  neither  chose  to  redress  the  wrongs  they  indi- 
cated by  an  effigctual  cure.  Lord  Granville  remitted  his  vassals  to  the  rem- 
edy of  legal  process,  which,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  and  the  circum- 
stances of  the  province,  was  utterly  inapplicable  ;  and  the  British  government 
contented  itself  with  sending  to  the  colony  William  Try  on,  a  military  officer, 
with  the  appointment  of  lieutenant-governor,  and  the  promise  of  obtaining 
the  supreme  command  as  soon  as  Dobbs  should  retire,  —  a  promise  of  which 
Dobbs  deferred  the  fulfilment  till  his  own  death  in  the  spring  of  the  year 
1765.  Among  his  other  qualities,  Dobbs  was  distinguished  by  a  real  or  af- 
fected bigotry  to  the  ecclesiastical  establishment  and  ordinances  of  the 
parent  state  ;  and  various  laws  were  passed  from  time  to  time  during  his 
administration  for  promoting  the  preeminence  of  the  church  of  England  and 
restraining  the  liberties  of  Dissenters.  From  the  power  and  number  of 
the  Dissenters,  however,  these  laws  were  but  partially  and  feebly  executed  ; 
and  during  the  subsequent  administration  of  Tryon,  who  was  a  stranger  to 
bigotry,  the  most  illiberal  of  their  provisions  were  repealed.^ 

A  mutual  disposition  for  peace  had  latterly  prevailed  in  the  belligerent 
nations.  France  was  depressed  and  weakened  by  her  misfortunes  ;  Spain 
had  similar  reasons  to  desire  a  cessation  of  the  hostilities  she  had  rashly 
provoked  ;  and  Britain  was  sated  with  success,  and  embarrassed  by  the  ex- 
penses of  her  exertions.  A  <liminished  interest  in  the  progress  of  the  war 
appeared  throughout  the  whole  British  empire  ;  and  the  public  concern  was 
more  forcibly  engaged  by  consideration  of  the  terms  of  the  anticipated  treaty 
of  peace,  on  which  the  substantial  value  of  the  preceding  effiarts  was  justly 
considered  to  depend.  In  America,  there  prevailed  but  one  wish  on  this 
subject ;  every  man  who  had  the  welfare  of  his  country  at  heart,  whatever 
might  be  his  sentiments  or  opinions  with  regard  to  the  duration  of  her  con- 
nection with  Britain,  ardently  desired  that  Canada  might  not  revert  to  the 
possession  of  France,  and  that  the  growth,  happiness,  and  security  of  the 
colonial  population  might  no  longer  be  repressed  and  menaced  by  the  near 
vicinity  of  a  rival  power,  equally  dexterous,  ambitious,  and  enterprising. 
But  this  desire  was  combined  with  a  great  deal  of  anxious  apprehension  ; 
for  it  was  well  known  in  America  that  the  English  nation  and  ministry 
were  divided  in  opinion  on  the  question  whether  it  was  most  expedient  to 
retain  Canada  or  the  islands  which  had  been  subdued  in  the  West  Indies  ; 
and  it  was  equally  notorious  that  the  main  objection  to  the  retention  of 
Canada  was  derived  from  the  notion  that  the  annexation  of  it  to  the  British 
empire  would  infallibly  promote,  and  sooner  or  later  produce,  a  disruption 

*  Minot.     Hutchinson.     Eliot's  Biographical  Dictionary.     Williamson.     Gordon. 

AA* 


318  "^       HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

of  the  colonies  of  Britain  from  their  parent  state.  It  was  unhappy  for 
British  authority,  that,  at  a  crisis  so  interesting,  the  notion  of  independence 
was  thus  forcibly  suggested  to  the  minds  of  the  Americans. ^  In  England, 
a  considerable  party,  strongly  cherishing  the  renown  which  attended  the 
conquest  of  Canada,  were  prompted  to  desire  that  their  government  should 
insist  on  the  retention  of  a  territory  acquired  with  so  much  courage  and 
glory,  and  which  at  once  enlarged  the  extent  and  (as  they  supposed)  pro- 
moted the  security  of  the  British  empire  in  America.  These  impressions 
were  reinforced  by  an  able  pamphlet  written  by  Israel  Mauduit,  a  merchant 
of  London,  brother  of  Jasper  Mauduit,  the  agent  for  the  province  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, which  exposed  with  success  the  impolicy  of  German  wars,  and 
in  earnest  and  vigorous  strains  urged  on  the  public  mind  the  importance  of 
Canada,  and  the  necessity  of  preserving  this  acquisition  for  the  welfare  of 
those  colonies  which  formed  so  considerable  and  valuable  a  branch  of  the 
British  empire. 

In  the  year  1760,  when  views  of  peace  began  first  to  be  entertained, 
the  Earl  of  Bath  expressed  his  sentiments  in  a  composition  which  he  enti- 
tled, Jl  Letter  to  Two  Great  Men  (Pitt  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle), 
on  the  terms  for  which  Britain  should  insist  in  her  negotiations  with  France, 
and  warmly  recommended  the  retention  of  Canada.  This  publication  was 
answered  by  a  pamphlet  which  appeared  in  the  same  year,  and  was  com- 
monly ascribed  to  the  celebrated  Edmund  Burke  and  his  brother,  and  in 
which  opinions  and  views  of  policy  diametrically  opposite  to  those  of  Lord 
Bath  were  supported.  A  division  of  opinion  upon  this  important  point  cer- 
tainly prevailed  both  in  the  British  cabinet  and  the  nation  at  large  ;  though, 
doubtless,  the  majority  of  the  nation  were  disposed  to  wish  that  Canada 
might  be  retained.  Franklin,^  alarmed  for  the  interest  of  his  country,  now 
entered  with  his  usual  talent  and  address  into  the  controversy,  and  published 
his  sentiments  in  a  pamphlet  which  he  entitled.  The  Interest  of  Great  Brit- 
ain considered  with  Regard  to  the  Colonies^  and  the  Acquisition  of  Canada 
and  Guadalowpe.  In  a  clear  and  forcible  manner  he  descanted  on  the  ad- 
vantages which  Britain  might  expect  to  derive  from  the  retention  of  Canada  ; 
he  maintained  that  the  security  of  an  established  dominion  was  a  prudent  and 
justifiable  ground  for  demanding  corresponding  territorial  cessions  from  an 
enemy  ;  that  the  erection  of  forts  in  the  back  settlements  of  the  British 
colonies  could  never  afford  a  sufficient  security  against  the  inroads  of  the 
French  and  the  Indians  ;  that  this  security  could  be  obtained  only  by  the 
possession  of  Canada  ;  and  that  the  abandonment  of  so  great  an  advantage, 
now  placed  within  the  reach  of  the  British  government,  would  imply  a  wide 
departure  from  good  policy,  and  tend  to  promote  disgust  and  disaffection  in 
the  minds  of  the  Americans.  Whatever  was  the  influence  or  effect  of  this 
publication,  the  views  it  supported  were  embraced  by  the  British  cabinet, 
and  especially  by  Pitt,  whose  communications  to  the  French  ministry,  in 
1761,  expressed  the  determined  purpose  of  Britain  to  retain  her  conquests 
in  America.  France  herself,  at  that  time,  was  willing  to  surrender  Canada, 
but  urged  ineffectually  the  restoration  of  Cape  Breton. 

Contrary  to  the  expectations  of  the  Americans,  the  subsequent  conquests 
of  Britain  in  other  quarters  rather  impaired  than  promoted  the  likelihood 

*  "  This  jealousy  in  England,  being  known,  was  of  itself  sufficient  to  set  enterprising  men 
upon  considering  how  far  such  a  separation  was  expedient  and  practicable."     Hutchinson. 
2  Franklin  did  not  return  to  America  from  his  first  mission  to  England  till  the  summer 

ol  1762.      ••         ^      ,  ,:•      •-  •     •••'■  •■      '-  - 


CHAP.  VI.]  TREATY  OF  PARIS.  319 

of  the  retention  of  Canada,  by  tempting  the  political  and  commercial  spec- 
ulators in  the  parent  state  to  balance  between  this  advantage  and  the  per- 
manent acquisition  of  the  islands  subdued  in  the  West  Indies.  Lord  Hard- 
wicke,  though  not  at  present  possessing  any  ostensible  share  in  the  adminis- 
tration, was  much  respected  and  consulted  by  the  actual  members  of  the 
cabinet ;  and  his  advice  on  this  occasion  (uninfluenced  by  any  fears  of 
American  independence,  and  prompted  solely  by  commercial  considerations) 
was,  that  Britain  should  retain  the  West  India  Islands,  and  abandon  Canada. 
But  the  policy,  which,  under  the  auspices  of  Pitt,  was  embraced  in  1761, 
ultimately  prevailed  again  with  the  British  ministry,  and  was  made  the  basis 
of  the  negotiations  which  ensued  in  the  close  of  this  year  between  the  Duke 
of  Bedford  and  the  Duke  de  Nivernois,  who,  as  commissioners  for  the  bel- 
ligerent nations,  repaired  to  Fontainebleau,  where  they  soon  arranged  the 
preliminary  articles  of  a  treaty  of  peace,  which  was  definitively  concluded  at 
Paris  in  the  commencement  of  the  following  year.  [February  10,  1763.] 
By  this  treaty,  the  French  monarch  renounced  all  claim  whatever  to  Nova 
Scotia,  which  he  guarantied  in  the  amplest  manner  to  the  king  of  Great 
Britain  ;  he  also  ceded  to  his  Britannic  Majesty  the  full  right  to  Canada 
and  its  dependencies,  together  with  Cape  Breton,  and  all  the  other  islands 
and  coasts  adjoining  the  river  and  gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  — disclaiming  any 
reservation  of  pretence  to  require  the  slightest  restriction  of  this  general 
cession  and  guaranty.  In  order  to  remove  for  ever  the  occasion  of  such 
territorial  disputes  as  had  produced  the  late  war,  it  was  stipulated  that  the 
confines  between  the  dominions  of  Britain  and  France,  on  the  continent 
of  North  America,  should  be  fixed  irrevocably  by  a  Hne  drawn  along  the 
centre  of  the  river  Mississippi  from  its  source  as  far  as  the  river  Iberville  ; 
and  from  thence,  by  a  Hne  drawn  along  the  middle  of  the  river,  and  the 
lakes  Maurepas  and  Pontchartrain,  to  the  sea  ;  and  to  effectuate  this  stip- 
ulation, the  French  king  ceded  and  guarantied  to  the  British  monarch  the 
river  and  port  of  Mobile,  and  aU  the  French  claims  and  possessions  on  the 
left  side  of  the  Mississippi,  except  the  town  of  New  Orleans  and  the  island 
on  which  it  is  situated,  which  were  reserved  to  France.  The  British 
king,  on  the  other  hand,  restored  to  France  all  the  islands  which  had  been 
reduced,  whether  in  the  West  Indies  or  on  the  coast  of  France,  except 
Grenada  and  the  Grenadines,  which  were  retained  by  Britain  and  ceded  by 
France.  He  also  restored  to  the  king  of  Spain  all  the  British  conquests  of 
Spanish  settlements  in  the  West  Indies  ;  and,  in  return,  the  Spanish  mon- 
arch ceded  to  Britain  the  settlement  of  Florida,  with  the  Fort  of  Augustine, 
the  Bay  of  Pensacola,  and  all  the  territory  that  Spain  possessed  or  claimed 
on  the  continent  of  North  America  to  the  east  or  to  the  southeast  of  the 
river  Mississippi.  It  was  stipulated  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  countries 
ceded  by  France  and  Spain  should  be  allowed  the  enjoyment  of  the  Ro- 
man Cathohc  faith  and  the  exercise  of  its  rites,  as  far  as  might  he  consistent 
with  the  laws  of  Great  Britain^  —  an  absurd  and  unintelligible  qualification, 
w^hich,  from  the  illiberal  strain  of  British  ecclesiastical  law  at  that  period, 
might  have  given  scope  to  the  most  enormous  oppression  and  injustice  ;  — 
and  that  they  should  retain  their  civil  rights,  while  they  chose  to  remain 
under  the  British  government,  and  yet  be  entitled  to  dispose  of  their  estates 
to  British  subjects,  and  retire  with  the  produce  without  hindrance  or  moles- 
tation to  any  part  of  the  world.  Such  were  the  principal  articles  of  the 
treaty,  which  had  relation  to  the  continent  of  America.     By  the  treaty  of 


320  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

Utrecht,  the  French  court  had  been  reduced  to  the  humiliating  necessity 
of  destroying  the  fortifications  of  Dunkirk  ;  and  by  the  present  treaty,  an 
article  far  more  insulting  to  France  than  advantageous  to  England  stipulated 
the  residence  at  Dunkirk  of  an  English  commissary  charged  to  watch 
against  any  attempt  of  the  French  government  to  refortify  the  place.  This 
insolent  provision  awakened  a  keen,  profound,  vindictive  resentment  in  the 
breast  of  every  Frenchman  to  whom  the  honor  of  his  country  was  dear. 

A  few  months  after  the  ratification  of  the  treaty,  a  proclamation  issued 
by  the  British  king  announced,  among  other  arrangements,  the  erection 
within  the  territories  ceded  by  France  and  Spain  of  four  distinct  and  sep- 
arate governments,  on  which  were  bestowed  the  names  of  Quebec,  East 
Florida,  West  Florida,  and  Grenada.  Besides  the  other  territorial  distri- 
butions specified  in  this  proclamation.  Cape  Breton  and  the  adjacent  islands 
were  united  to  the  government  of  Nova  Scotia  ;  and  the  region  situated 
between  the  rivers  Alatamaha  and  St.  Mary's  was  annexed  to  the  province 
of  Georgia.  The  proclamation  farther  announced,  that,  in  testimony  of  the 
royal  approbation  of  the  conduct  and  bravery  of  the  officers  and  soldiers  of 
the  British  armies,  and  in  recompense  of  their  merits,  the  governors  of  the 
three  newly  established  colonies,  and  the  other  royal  governors  of  provinces 
on  the  continent  of  North  America,  were  empowered  to  grant  lands  with- 
out fee  or  price  to  all  reduced  officers  who  had  served  in  America  during 
the  late  war,  and  to  all  private  soldiers  disbanded  and  actually  residing  in 
America,  who  should  personally  apply  for  such  grants  ;  the  lands  so  granted, 
however,  being  declared  subject,  at  the  expiry  of  ten  years,  to  the  quit- 
rents  usually  exacted  within  the  provinces  where  they  were  respectively 
situated,  and  the  possessors  incurring  subjection  to  the  usual  obligations  of 
cultivation  and  improvement.^ 

In  no  part  of  the  British  dominions  did  the  peace  of  Paris  excite  such 
lively  satisfaction  as  in  North  America.  To  the  people  of  this  country  the 
war  had  been  far  more  burdensome  than  to  the  inhabitants  of  Britain,  both 
in  the  amount  of  taxation  which  it  demanded,  and  in  all  the  other  incon- 
veniences and  sufferings  which  attend  the  presence  and  movements  of  ar- 
mies, friendly  or  hostile,  and  the  usual  events  and  exigencies  of  war.  New 
England  had  generally  maintained  ten  thousand  men  in  the  field  ;  and,  as 
the  provincials  never  enlisted  for  more  than  a  single  campaign,  a  new 
army  was  to  be  raised,  new  bounties  bestowed,  and  new  clothing  furnished 
every  spring.  And  now,  by  a  treaty,  of  which  it  was  utterly  beyond  their 
power  to  regulate  or  influence  the  terms,  the  colonists  beheld  the  war, 
which  had  carried  ravage  and  revolution  of  empire  into  every  part  of  the 
world,  terminated  by  an  arrangement  incomparably  more  beneficial  to  them 
than  to  any  other  portion  of  the  subjects  of  the  British  crown.  Instead  of 
seeing  the  trophies  of  their  valor  resigned,  as  on  former  occasions,  for  the 
real  or  supposed  advantage  of  the  parent  state,  they  saw  Britain  part  with 
her  other  conquests,  in  order  to  justify  the  retention  of  those  acquisitions 
in  which  alone  they  were  interested.  They  beheld  their  territories  en- 
larged, their  internal  growth  promoted,  their  commerce  and  fisheries  se- 
cured, and  the  enemies  who  had  inflicted  so  much  misery  and  desolation 
upon  them  deprived  of  the  power  of  farther  injury,  and  reduced  to  circum- 
stances, in  which,  far  from  menacing  the  safety,  they  became  tributary  to  the 

'  Annual  Register  for  1762  and  1763.  rranklin's  Memoirs.  Trumbull.  Hutchinson. 
Holmes.    Memoirs  and  Reminiscences  of  Count  Segur.  ,  , 


CHAP.  VI.]  GENERAL  REJOICING  IN  AMERICA.  321 

advantage,  of  the  British  colonies  and  the  weahh  and  grandeur  of  Britain. 
One  blended  sentiment  of  hope,  happiness,  and  gratitude  was  circulated 
throughout  America,  — warm  and  sincere  while  it  lasted,  though  fated  to  be 
exceedingly  transient.  Many  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  England,  who  in- 
herited the  strong  and  deep-seated  piety  of  their  forefathers,  felt  this  noble 
emotion  powerfully  awakened  by  a  sense  of  exulting  gratification,  which 
they  could  never  freely  indulge,  unless  it  were  mixed  and  imbued  with  a 
savor  of  religion,  and  devoutly  declared  that  only  the  kind  providence  of 
that  Being  who  supremely  controls  human  counsel,  regulates  destiny,  and 
diffuses  good,  could  have  blessed  America  with  a  consummation  so  glorious 
and  happy. 

Notwithstanding  the  discontents  and  dissensions  which  prevailed  in  most 
of  the  colonies,  every  other  feeling  was,  for  the  time,  overborne  by  the  gen- 
eral current  of  joy.  The  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  in  a  congratulatory 
address  to  the  governor,  declared,  that  the  manifest  design  of  the  French  to 
surround  the  colonies  had  been  the  just  and  immediate  cause  of  the  war ;  ^ 
that,  without  the  assistance  of  the  parent  state,  they  must  have  fallen  a 
prey  to  the  power  of  France  ;  that,  without  the  compensation  granted  to 
them  by  parliament,  the  burdens  of  the  war  had  been  insupportable  ;  and 
without  the  provisions  of  the  treaty  of  peace,  all  its  successes  would  have 
been  fruitless  and  delusive.  In  an  address  to  the  king,  they  repeated  the 
same  acknowledgments,  and  pledged  themselves,  in  conclusion,  to  demon- 
strate their  gratitude  by  every  possible  testimony  of  duty  and  loyalty. 
These  expressions  were  not  merely  the  effusion  of  popular  warmth  and 
transport  ;  they  were  embraced  and  approved  by  the  most  jealous,  able, 
and  resolute  defenders  of  American  liberty  against  the  excesses  of  British 
domination  and  royal  prerogative.^  Never  was  attachment  to  Britain  more 
warmly  or  generally  prevalent  in  America  than  at  this  period.  British  glory 
and  American  safety  and  prosperity  seemed  to  be  identified  ;  and  even  the 
ambitious  hope  of  national  independence,  which  some  Americans  had  as- 
sociated with  the  conquest  of  Canada,  was  silenced  by  a  grateful  sense  of 
the  generosity  (as  it  was  deemed)  by  which  the  gratification  of  this  hope 
was  approximated.  But  long  cherished  feehngs,  though  suspended,  were 
not  subdued  ;  and,  amidst  the  tumultuous  flow  of  pleasure  and  triumph  in 
America,  an  intelligent  eye  might  have  discerned  symptoms,  of  which  a 
sound  regard  to  British  ascendency  required  the  most  cautious,  forbearing, 
and  indulgent  treatment  ;  for  it  was  manifest  that  the  exultation  of  the 
Americans  was  founded,  in  no  small  degree,  on  the  conviction  that  their 
own  proper  strength  was  augmented,  and  that  they  had  attained  a  state  of 
security  which  lessened  at  once  their  danger  from  neighbouring  hostihty, 
and  their  dependence  on  the  protection,  so  often  delusive  and  precarious, 
of  the  parent  state.^ 

Perhaps  in  none  of  the  colonies,  at  this  period,  were  sentiments  and  no- 
tions akin  to  independence  more  strongly  cherished  or  more  distinctly  ex- 
pressed than  in  Virginia,  where  the  most  dazzling  eloquence  fa  faculty  of 

*  This  was,  doubtless,  the  genuine  and  deliberate  conviction  of  the  Americans.  And  yet 
(such  changes  can  passion  and  policy  produce),  about  thirteen  years  after,  they  addressed  % 
declaration  of  most  opposite  import  to  the  French  court ;  reproaching  England  with  having 
unjustly  appropriated  Canada,  and  offering  assistance  towards  its  reconquest  by  France.  See 
Book  XI.,  Chap,  v.,  post. 

^  See  Note  XXV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  Minot.     Trumbull      Hutchinson. 
VOL.    II.  41 


322  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  L^^^^l^  X. 

which  this  province  has  been  singularly  prolific)  was  employed  to  defend 
and  embellish  the  principles  and  to  warn  and  propagate  the  sentiments  of 
liberty.  The  transaction  to  which  we  must  now  advert  manifestly  showed 
that  not  only  the  peoi)le  and  the  provincial  juries  in  Virginia,  but  the  provin- 
cial judges  and  legislature,  could  be  excited,  on  occasion,  to  an  open  and 
determined  opposition  to  the  will  of  the  British  government.  There  had 
prevailed  for  some  time  in  this  province  a  controversy  remarkable  in  its  na- 
ture, and  still  more  remarkable  for  its  issue,  which  occurred  in  the  present 
year.  The  emoluments  of  the  clergy  of  the  church  of  England  in  Virginia, 
as  we  have  formerly  remarked,^  consisted  of  a  fixed  quantity  of  tobacco, 
allotted  by  law  to  every  clergyman,  and  contributed  by  the  parish  in  which 
he  officiated.  In  the  year  1755,  the  tobacco  crop  having  proved  extremely 
scanty  throughout  the  province,  the  assembly,  for  the  relief  of  the  people, 
passed  an  act  which  was  to  endure  for  ten  months,  and  which  restricted  the 
claims  of  the  clergy  to  a  moderate  pecuniary  commutation,  far  inferior  to 
the  sudden  and  temporary  increase  which  the  value  of  tobacco  derived  from 
the  prevailing  scarcity.  This  act  did  not  contain  the  usual  clause  by  which 
statutes  of  the  provincial  legislature  were  suspended  in  their  operation  till 
they  should  receive  the  royal  assent ;  an  omission  which  was  essential  to  the 
efficiency  of  the  measure.  Whatever  discontent  it  may  have  created  in  the 
clergy,  it  was  carried  into  effect  without  any  open  objection.  But  in  the 
year  1758,  upon  a  bare  surmise  that  a  deficient  crop  was  again  hkely  to 
occur,  the  assembly  reenacted  the  provision  of  1755  ;  and  the  new  law, 
like  the  former,  contained  no  suspending  clause.  A  controversy  now  arose 
between  the  clergy  and  the  supporters  of  the  provincial  law  ;  and  various  lit- 
erary compositions,  distinguished  by  much  ability,  but  deformed  by  passion 
and  sarcasm,  were  published  by  both  parties.  The  clergy  were  manifestly 
victors  in  argument  ;  but  so  far  were  they  from  prevailing,  on  that  account, 
over  the  popular  will,  that,  as  the  discussion  proceeded,  the  indignation 
against  them  became  so  strong  and  general,  that  the  provincial  printers  re- 
fused to  publish  their  pamphlets,  and  they  w^ere  constrained  to  resort  for 
this  service  to  a  printer  in  Maryland.  Finding  their  cause  hopeless  in 
America,  they  appealed  to  the  king  and  privy  council,  who  promptly  de- 
nounced the  act  of  1758  as  an  illegal  usurpation  of  power,  and  declared 
it  utterly  null  and  void.  The  clergymen  now  brought  actions  at  law  for 
ascertaining  and  retrieving  the  loss  and  damage  they  had  sustained  from  the 
operation  of  the  rescinded  act  ;  and  as  the  judges  could  not  refuse  to  ac- 
knowledge the  relevancy  of  these  suits,  the  promoters  of  them  confidently 
anticipated  a  complete  triumph  and  indemnification.  It  remained  that  the 
damages  should  be  assessed  by  a  jury  ;  which  seemed  merely  a  matter  of 
arithmetical  calculation. 

In  this  emergency,  the  popular  party  intrusted  their  cause  to  Patrick 
Henry,^  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  that  Virginia  or  even  America  has 
ever  produced.  He  was  the  son  of  parents  unwealthy,  but  in  easy  circum- 
stances ;  and,  after  a  slender  education,  commenced  hfe  as  a  store-keeper. 
But  his  youth  was  passed  in  idleness,  though  not  in  sensuality  or  debauch- 
ery ;  he  preferred  the  conversation  to  the  custom  of  the  persons  w^ho  fre- 
quented his  store  ;  and,  neglecting  his  business,  was  forced  to  abandon  it 
'  ^^,"Rooiri7ciT^iL  ''  " 

*  "  Henry,  the  forest-born  Demostlienes, 

Whose  thunder  shook  tlie  Philip  of  the  seas."  —  Lord  Byron. 


CHAP.  VI  ]  PATRICK  HENRY.      '  323 

nearly  in  a  state  of  insolvency.  He  next  attempted  to  support  himself  by 
agriculture  ;  but,  though  he  tilled  with  his  own  hands  the  soil  of  the  prov- 
ince of  which  he  was  afterwards  to  be  the  governor,  his  negligent  and  irreg- 
ular habits  caused  this  attempt  to  issue  as  unfortunately  as  the  former.  A 
second  experiment  of  mercantile  pursuits  ended  still  more  disastrously  ; 
for  he  became  completely  bankrupt.  These  repeated  failures  and  disap- 
pointments, the  more  harassing  because  he  had  married  at  an  early  age, 
were  unable  to  depress  Henry's  spirit,^  though  they  seriously  impaired  his 
reputation.  He  seemed  a  man  incapable  of  succeeding  even  in  pursuits 
which  persons  of  very  moderate  capacity  were  able  to  conduct  with  credit 
and  success  ;  and  none  of  his  associates  recognized  or  appreciated  the  ar- 
dent and  aspiring  disposition,  the  intrepid  and  determined  character,  the 
vigorous  capacity,  the  depth  of  genius,  and  the  brilliant  and  commanding 
eloquence  with  which  Henry  was  endowed,  and  by  the  exertion  of  which 
he  was  soon  to  hew  his  way  to  the  most  splendid  distinction  and  honor- 
able renown.  During  the  period  of  his  second  mercantile  experiment,  he 
had  assiduously  labored  to  supply  the  deficiencies  of  his  early  education. 
The  ancient  classics  engaged  much  of  his  attention,  and  Livy  became  his 
favorite  author.  The  grandeur  of  the  Roman  character,  delineated  by  the 
graceful  pen  of  this  writer,  filled  him  with  surprise  and  admiration  ;  the 
vivid  descriptions  and  eloquent  harangues  with  which  the  work  abounds  were 
perused  by  him  with  intense  and  oft-repeated  delight  ;  nor  could  fortune 
have  thrown  in  his  way  a  book  more  fitted  to  cherish  his  republican  spirit, 
and  awaken  that  elevated  strain  of  genius,  discourse,  and  conduct  which  his 
career  shortly  after  began  to  disclose. 

Having  finally  embraced  the  study  of  the  law,  he  was  licensed  to  practise 
as  a  barrister  about  the  time  when  the  controversy  between  the  clergy  and 
the  other  inhabitants  of  Virginia  commenced  ;  and  was  now  employed  as  ad- 
vocate for  the  defendants  in  the  first  of  the  suits  to  which  we  have  already 
adverted  ;  —  probably  because  no  other  lawyer  could  be  found  to  defend 
so  hopeless  a  proposition  as  that  the  clergy  were  not  entitled  to  be  indem- 
nified for  the  entire  loss  which  they  had  incurred  by  the  operation  of  a 
law  declared  to  be  unjust  and  void  by  the  highest  authority  in  the  empire. 
[December  1,  1763.]  To  the  surprise  and  admiration  of  all  who  heard 
and  beheld  him,  Henry  appeared  on  this  occasion  to  cast  off  the  vulgar 
vesture  of  his  former  character,  and  to  catch  an  inspiration  that  descended 
on  him  in  the  shape  of  a  tongue  of  fire.  His  spirit,  kindling  with  the  great- 
ness of  the  opportunity,  seemed  at  once  elevated  in  stature  and  extended  in 
range ;  his  genius  broke  out  in  all  its  lustre  from  the  cloud  that  had  ob- 
scured it  ;  and  he  stood  forth  a  new  and  superior  being  in  the  eyes  of  his 
countrymen,  —  whose  idol  and  champion,  from  this  day,  he  became.  The 
popular  party,  whose  hopes  had  been  extremely  depressed,  were  trans- 
ported with  astonishment  and  delight  ;  the  clergy,  who  had  manifested  de- 
rision at  the  simple  and  faltering  exordium  of  the  orator,  confounded  by  the 

'  "  His  misfortunes,"  says  Jefferson,  who  became  acquainted  with  him  at  this  period,  "  were 
not  to  be  traced  either  in  his  countenance  or  conduct."  Eloquence  apart,  Henry  seems,  in 
genius  arid  character,  to  have  strongly  resembled  Cromwell.     They  were  assimilated,  too,  in 


the  abortive  issue  of  their  attempts  to  act  well  a  humble  and  ordinary  part  in  social  life.  In 
this  respect,  Washington  was  superior  to  them  both.  While  he  could  sustain  the  dignity  of 
the  most  elevated  pursuits,  he  could  impart  dignity  to  humble  avocations,  and  render  them 


tributary  to  his  credit  and  advantage.     So  also  could  and  did  Dr.  Franklin. 
"  Omnis  Aristippum  decuit  color  et  status  et  res 
Tentantem  maj(M-a  fere,  prsesentibus  aequura." 


324  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

rapid  and  overwhelming  invective  with  which  his  collected  and  stiffening 
spirit  assailed  them,  fled  from  the .  court  with  precipitation  and  dismay  ; 
while  Henry  pleaded  the  cause  of  his  clients  and  of  the  province  with  ora- 
tory so  powerful,!  and  argument  so  congenial  to  the  feelings  of  his  audience, 
that,  in  defiance  of  all  existing  law,  a  verdict  was  returned  by  the  jury 
awarding  one  penny  as  the  damages  due  to  the  clergy.  The  president  of 
the  tribunal,  and  one  of  the  most  astonished  of  the  auditory,  was  Henry's 
own  father.  A  new  trial  was  instantly  demanded  on  the  part  of  the  plain- 
tiffs, thus  inadequately  and  delusively  compensated  ;  but  the  minds  of  the 
judges  themselves  had  been  overborne  by  the  torrent  of  Henry's  oratory  and 
the  accompanying  flow  of  public  feeling  ;  and,  amidst  the  loudest  acclama- 
tions,, they  rejected  the  demand  by  a  unanimous  vote.  The  provincial  as- 
sembly, shortly  after,  pledged  itself  to  defend  any  appeal  which  the  clergy 
might  prosecute,  and  appropriated  a  portion  of  the  pubHc  funds  for  this 
object  ;  but  the  clergy  submitted  without  farther  struggle,  and  desisted  en- 
tirely from  a  litigation  in  which  they  would  have  had  to  contend  with  the 
weight  of  the  public  purse,  as  well  as  the  strong  and  swelling  tide  of  public 
feeling. 

The  triumph  w^hich  Henry  thus  achieved  for  the  popular  party  in  Vir- 
ginia derived  an  additional  significance  from  the  nature  of  the  topics  which 
his  discourse  had  embraced,  and  his  manly  and  vigorous  eloquence  had 
discussed  and  illustrated.  He  insisted  on  the  reciprocity  of  connection  and 
duties  between  the  king  and  his  subjects  ;  from  which  he  inferred  that  gov- 
ernment was  a  conditional  compact,  composed  of  mutual  and  dependent 
covenants,  of  which  a  violation  by  one  party  implied  the  reciprocal  dis- 
charge of  the  other  ;  and  intrepidly  maintained,  that  the  disregard  which 
had  been  shown,  on  the  present  occasion,  to  the  pubhc  exigency  of  the 
colony,  was  an  instance  of  royal  misrule^  which  had  so  far  dissolved  the 
political  compact,  and  left  the  people  at  liberty  to  consult  the  general  wel- 
fare by  means  which  were  sufficiently  sanctioned  by  the  general  approba- 
tion ;  that  they  had  consulted  it  by  the  act  of  1758,  which,  therefore,  not- 
withstanding the  dissent  of  the  king  and  his  council,  ought  to  be  considered 
as  the  law  of  the  land,  and  the  only  legitimate  measure  of  the  claims  of  the 
clergy.  From  the  nature  of  this  topic,  and  the  earnest  and  undaunted 
manner  in  which  it  was  handled  by  the  orator,  we  may  infer,  that,  even  at 
this  era,  so  remarkably  signalized  by  the  attachment  of  the  colonists  to  their 
parent  state,  his  mind,  at  least,  w^as  disposed  to  scan  with  httle  reverence 
the  course  of  regal  administration  ;  while  the  reception  which  his  argument 
obtained  from  the  great  majority  of  his  countrymen  strongly  attests  that  they 
also  were  deterred  by  no  superstitious  repugnance  from  the  consideration 

*  None  of  the  reported  speeches,  or  rather  portions  of  speeches,  of  this  remarkable  person 
fully  correspond  with  the  idea  of  his  genius  conveyed  by  the  descriptions  of  his  auditors  and 
his  biographer.  The  language  of  the  eye,  of  the  vocal  tone,  and  of  bodily  gesture  and  action, 
in  which  he  is  said  to  have  been  preeminent,  may  be  justly  commended,  but  can  never  be 
adequately  represented.  In  one  sense,  that  speech  is  best  which  is  most  suitable  to  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  it  is  delivered.  At  a  county  meeting  of  English  farmers,  the  shrewd, 
keen  prate  of  a  Cobbett  would,  doubtless,  be  far  more  efficacious  than  an  oration  of  Pericles. 
I  am  constrained  to  yield  to  general  testimony  in  favor  of  Henry's  genius  and  oratorical  pow- 
ers ;  but  I  must  confess  that  I  have  never  read  any  specimen  of  his  eloquence  which  has  not 
offended  my  notions  of  good  taste  ;  and  for  the  eMcacy  of  which  I  have  not  been  obliged  to 
suppose  some  indescribable  charm,  and  some  peculiar  and  intimate  correspondence  between 
the  sentiments  of  the  speaker  and  his  audience.  Yet  Jefferson,  whose  learning  and  genius 
were  combined  with  sound  judgment  and  refined  taste,  pronounced  Henry  "  the  greatest  orator 
that  ever  lived"  In  character,  variety,  and  power,  his  eloquence  seems  to  have  resembled 
that  of  the  celebrated  Irish  political  agitator,  0"Connell. 


CHAP.  VI.]  INDIAN  JEALOUSIES.  325 

of  such  topics,  and  were  far  from  regarding  with  an  invincible  horror  the 
prospect  of  separation  from  Great  Britain.^. 

The  hopes  entertained  by  the  British  colonists  of  an  entire  exemption 
from  war,  in  consequence  of  the  treaty  of  Paris,  were  dispelled,  a  few 
months  only  after  the  date  of  this  treaty,  by  a  furious  and  unexpected  at- 
tack from  the  Indians.  The  conquest  of  the  French  settlements,  which 
had  been  reckoned  the  pledge  of  an  entire  subjection  of  the  Indian  tribes 
to  the  English,  was  the  immediate  forerunner,  and  in  a  great  measure  the 
cause,  of  this  war,  —  the  most  extensive,  arduous,  and  destructive  that  was 
ever  waged  between  the  two  races  of  people.  We  have  already  remarked 
the  opinion  which  was  impressed  on  the  savages,  partly  by  the  assurances 
of  the  French,  and  partly  by  their  own  observation  and  recollection  of  the 
course  of  events,  that  Britain  would  never  entirely  or  at  least  permanently 
subdue  the  empire  of  France  in  America.  When,  at  length,  they  witnessed 
the  arrival  of  this  catastrophe  which  they  had  deemed  so  improbable,  they 
were  struck  with  alarm  (promoted,  if  not  inspired,  by  French  suggestion) 
at  the  vast  and  sudden  increase  of  power  and  territory  which  Britain  ac- 
quired, and  began  to  imagine  that  they  ought  to  have  made  greater  and 
earlier  efforts  to  prevent  the  complete  preponderance  she  finally  obtained 
over  her  rival.  Many  of  the  Indian  tribes  were  always  far  more  jealous 
of  the  English  than  of  the  French,  who  seemed  more  intent  on  trade  than  on 
settlement,  and  who,  conscious  that  they  were  inferior  to  their  rivals  in 
strength,  supplied  this  defect  by  policy,  and  paid  a  more  flattering  and  sys- 
tematical attention  to  the  Indians  than  wa-s  ever  done  by  the  English.  Every 
httle  fort,  which,  in  the  hands  of  the  French,  had  been  a  mere  military  post 
and  trading-house,  now,  in  the  occupation  of  the  English,  seemed  the  germ 
of  a  numerous  and  powerful  community.  The  demeanour  of  the  English 
towards  the  Indians  was  rendered  more  haughty  and  negligent  by  their  recent 
victories  and  apparent  security  ;  in  their  occasional  conferences  with  the 
sachems  or  chiefs,  they  began  to  omit  the  demonstrations  of  that  ceremoni- 
ous courtesy  and  civility  which  the  savages  highly  valued  and  punctiliously 
paid  and  exacted  ;  and  some  of  the  tribes  no  longer  received  the  gifts 
which  it  had  been  customary,  at  particular  periods,  to  present  to  them. 

In  the  year  1761,  after  peace  was  concluded  with  the  Cherokees,  Sir  Wil- 
liam Johnson  made  an  extensive  tour  among  the  Indian  tribes,  with  the 
view  of  employing  the  influence  and  popularity  he  possessed  with  them,'^ 
to  quiet  the  jealousy  which  they  were  known  to  have  conceived  from  the 
conquest  of  Canada,  and  which  it  was  reported  that  French  emissaries 
were  industriously  fomenting  ;  but  his  exertions  were  only  partially  success- 
ful. It  was  not  always  possible  to  discover  the  effect  that  had  been  really 
produced  by  negotiations  with  the  Indians,  who,  cultivating  secrecy,  decep- 
tion, and  surprise,  as  essential  qualities  of  their  policy,  were  never  more 
prone  to  profess    contentment  and  friendly  dispositions,  than  at  the   very 

*  Wirt's  Life  of  Henry .  ""         ' 

2  Johnson,  without  adopting  Indian  habits,  gratified  the  savages  by  accommodating  his 
manners  to  theirs.  He  even  descended  to  imitate  and  retort  their  tricks  and  knavish  mancfeu- 
vres  ;  and  the  Indians  were  better  pleased  to  have  their  ingenuity  foiled  in  this  manner, 
than  to  be  addressed  with  the  insolence  of  grave  rebuke.  A  sachem,  who  came  to  pay  John- 
son a*visit,  announced  one  morning  that  he  had  dreamed,  the  preceding  night,  that  his  host 
piesented  him  with  a  rich  suit  of  military  apparel.  Johnson,  according  to  tiie  Indian  custom 
on  such  occasions,  fulfilled  the  dream;  but  next  morning  related,  as  a  dream  of  his  own,  that 
his  guest  had  presented  him  with  a  valuable  tract  of  land.  The  Indian,  regarding  him 
with  a  sly  look,  replied,  "  The  land  is  yours  ;  but  let  us  dream  no  more."    D wight's  Travels. 


326  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

moment  when  they  cherished  the  most  deadly  rage  and  harboured  the  most 
sanguinary  projects.  A  conference  was  held,  in  the  same  year,  between 
several  of  the  American  governors  and  the  deputies  of  the  Six  Nations,  for 
the  purpose  of  ratifying  former  treaties,  and  with  the  hope  of  conciliating 
thoroughly  and  confirming  the  wavering  faith  of  these  confederated  tribes. 
At  this  conference,  a  warm  dispute  arose  on  account  of  certain  lands,  which 
a  chief  of  the  Delaware  tribe,  allied  to  the  Six  Nations,  complained  that 
some  English  settlers  had  usurped,  in  consequence  of  a  fraudulent  convey- 
ance. Though  a  seeming  accommodation  of  the  dispute  was  effected  at 
the  time,  yet  was  it  justly  apprehended,  from  various  symptoms  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  Indians,  that  their  minds  were  not  satisfied,  and  that  they  se- 
cretly nourished  more  resentment  than  they  chose  openly  to  avow. 

New  causes  of  offence  continued  to  present  themselves  to  men  inflamed 
with  jealousy  and  predisposed  to  quarrel.  The  king  of  Britain  had  recently 
issued  a  proclamation  confining  all  future  purchases  of  lands  from  the  In- 
dians to  certain  royal  commissioners  charged  with  the  administration  of 
Indian  affairs.  This  injunction,  which  was  probably  intended  to  render  the 
growth  of  the  colonies  tributary  to  the  royal  revenue,  as  well  as  to  obviate 
the  frequent  causes  of  quarrel  supplied  by  the  transactions  of  private  ad- 
venturers with  the  Indians,  obtained  very  httle  regard  in  America.  Perhaps 
the  only  method  by  which  the  more  equitable  and  pacific  of  its  purposes 
could  have  been  accomplished  would  have  been  to  commit  the  absolute  and 
exclusive  power  of  treating  with  the  Indians  for  additional  lands  to  the 
assembly  of  each  respective  province.  Purchases  of  lands  continued  to 
be  made  by  private  individuals  ;  and  the  Indians,  sometimes  the  dupes  of 
their  own  rashness  and  of  the  knavery  of  their  customers  in  these  transac- 
tions, invariably  dissipated  the  price  of  their  alienated  property  in  excesses 
of  debauchery  and  riot,  which  were  followed  by  the  most  stinging  sensa- 
tions of  rage,  remorse,  and  mortification.  Unhappily,  in  the  midst  of  these 
ferments,  and  aided  by  their  influenccf  a  report  was  circulated  among  the 
Indians  that  the  English  had  formed  a  scheme  for  their  entire  extirpation. 
This  report,  though  totally  destitute  of  foundation,^  obtained  general  credit, 
and,  combining  with  the  other  causes  of  suspicion  and  irritation,  united  a 
powerful  confederacy  of  Indian  tribes  in  the  purpose  of  revenging  their  past 
wrongs,  and  defeating,  by  anticipating,  the  supposed  impending  blow. 

The  Indians  inhabiting  the  shores  of  the  Ohio,  and  especially  the  Shaw- 
anese  and  Delawares,  took  the  lead  in  this  enterprise  ;  and  having  engaged 
the  tribes  in  the  vicinity  of  Detroit,  the  greater  number  of  the  tribes  on  the 
same  side  of  the  Mississippi,  and  the  Senecas,  one  of  the  tribes  of  the 
Six  Nations,  to  cooperate  in  their  design,  they  determined  to  make  a  sudden, 
general,  and  simultaneous  assault  on  the  British  frontiers.  By  the  indefati- 
gable exertions  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  the  other  tribes  of  the  Six  Nations 
were  restrained,  though  whh  great  difficulty,  from  plunging  into  this  hostile 
enterprise,  which  seemed  the  last  effort  of  the  Indian  race  to  hold  at  least 
divided  empire  with  the  European  colonists  of  America.  The  Cherokees 
also,  faithful  to  their  late  treaty  of  peace,  abstained  from  interposition  in  the 
w^ar.     It  was  the  purpose  of  the  allied  and  hostile  Indians,  in  order  to  de- 

^  The  only  circumstance  with  which  I  am  acquainted,  correspondent  even  in  the  slightest 
degree  with  this  report,  is  the  protestation  uttered,  about  six  or  seven  years  before,, by  some 
exasperated  fanatics  in  Pennsylvania,  that  the  extirpation  of  the  Indians  was  a  sacrifice  due  to 
the  glory  of  God  and  the  security  of  the  Christian  colonies  of  America.  See  Appendix  HI., 
yoH. 


CHAP.  VI.J  GENERAL   INDIAN  WAR.  327 

stroy  at  one  blow  both  the  colonists  and  their  means  of  subsistence,  that 
the  work  of  destruction  should  commence  in  the  season  of  harvest  of  the 
present  year.  Their  plan  of  operation  was  concerted  and  matured  with 
consummate  craft  and  secrecy.  At  the  appointed  time,  a  furious  incursion 
was  made  upon  the  provinces  of  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Pennsylvania. 
The  precipitancy  of  some  of  the  Indian  warriors  defeated  in  part  the  more 
methodical  and  considerate  mischief  of  the  rest,  and,  communicating  an 
earlier  alarm  than  was  intended,  enabled  a  number  of  the  colonists  to  es- 
cape with  their  movable  effects.  Great  numbers,  however,  were  massacred, 
and  their  dweUings  and  other  property  desolated  with  all  the  circumstances 
of  horror  and  cruelty  attending  Indian  warfare.  In  the  general  panic  and 
consternation  created  by  this  fierce  and  unexpected  attack,  the  frontiers  of 
the  three  provinces  by  which  it  was  sustained  were  deserted  to  the  extent 
of  twenty  miles  inwards  ;  and  multitudes  of  flourishing  settlements,  the  fruit 
of  many  years  of  hard  labor,  were  abandoned  to  hostile  rage  and  spoil. 
The  itinerant  merchants,  at  the  same  time,  v/ho,  on  the  security  of  the  ex- 
isting treaties  of  peace,  had  repaired  to  pursue  their  trafiic  in  the  Indian 
territories,  were  all  murdered,  and  their  effects,  to  the  value  of  several  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds,  made  the  prey  of  the  savages.  All  the  great  trading 
towns  in  America  were  sufferers  from  this  blow.  But  what,  in  a  military 
view,  was  regarded  as  of  much  greater  significance,  was  the  capture  by 
the  Indians  of  the  forts  Le  Boeuf,  Venango,  and  Presque  Isle.  These 
places  derived  their  importance  rather  from  local  position  than  from  their 
fortifications,  which  were  feeble  and  incomplete.  Situated  to  the  south- 
w^ard  of  Lake  Erie,  they  commanded  the  heads  of  all  the  navigable  rivers 
in  this  region,  and  were  subservient,  indeed  absolutely  requisite,  to  the  com- 
munication between  Pittsburg,  the  lakes,  and  the  northern  garrisons.  In- 
considerable in  point  of  strength  as  the  captured  forts  were,  the  Indians 
would  probably  have  failed  to  reduce  them,  without  the  aid  of  fraud  and 
stratagem  in  addition  to  the  influence  of  surprise  created  by  sudden  and 
unforeseen  assault.  Whenever  they  invested  one  of  them,  they  assured  the 
garrison  that  they  had  taken  all  the  others  ;  intimidated  them  by  menaces  of 
the  danger  of  withstanding  the  strength  and  provoking  the  vengeance  of  the 
additional  multitudes  of  Indians  whose  near  approach  they  announced  ;  and 
upon  promises  of  personal  safety,  which  they- commonly  violated,  induced 
them  to  surrender  their  post.  By  the  same  artifices,  and  with  similar  perfi- 
dy, they  obtained  possession  of  some  other  smaller  fortresses,  and  especially 
of  Michilimackinac,  the  remotest  of  all  the  forts  that  had  been  erected  by 
the  French  and  annexed  to  the  British  dominions  by  the  conquest  of  Can- 
ada. There  still  remained  three  fortresses,  considerable  alike  by  their 
strength  and  the  commanding  influence  of  their  position,  which  it  was  neces- 
sary for  the  Indians  to  subdue,  before  they  could  expect  any  permanent 
advantage  from  their  successes.  These  were  Detroit,  between  the  Lakes 
Huron  and  Erie  ;  Niagara,  between  the  Lakes  Erie  and  Ontario  ;  and  Pitts- 
burg, which  overawed  the  regions  and  tribes  adjacent  to  the  Ohio.  The 
Indians  were  sensible,  that,  while  these  fortresses  continued  to  exist,  thei 
most  important  links  of  the  chain  with  which  they  were  now  encompassed 
by  the  British  dominion  remained  unbroken  ;  and  against  them,  according- 
ly, they  reiterated  all  their  exertions  of  force  and  policy.  Though  the  the- 
atre of  this  Indian  war  was  of  prodigious  extent,  and  the  various  belligerent 
tribes  widely  disjoined,  yet  they  preserved  in  their  operations  an  amazing 


328  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

degree  of  harmony  and  concert.  Detroit  and  Pittsburg,  though  so  remote 
from  each  other,  were  begirded  almost  at  the  same  moment.  The  con- 
summate address  which  the  Indians  displayed  on  this  occasion  was  sup- 
ported by  a  proportionate  degree  of  courage,  determination,  and  perse- 
verance ;  nor  ever  did  the  Indian  race  approve  itself  a  more  stubborn  and 
formidable  enemy  than  in  this  final  stand  against  the  encroachment  of  Eu- 
ropean dominion  and  civility  in  America. 

Amherst,  sensible  of  the  danger  with  which  his  recent  conquests  were 
menaced  by  the  explosion  of  these  hostilities,  hastily  detached  a  numerous 
body  of  his  troops  to  the  succour  of  the  western  garrisons.  Captain  Dal- 
zell,  who  conducted  the  detachment  intended  to  reinforce  the  garrison  of 
Detroit,  after  he  had  safely  performed  this  duty  [July  29]  ,^  was  deluded  by 
erroneous  information  into  the  hope  that  he  could  surprise  the  Indian  army, 
which  was  posted  at  the  distance  of  three  miles  from  the  fort,  and,  attack- 
ing it  under  the  cover  of  darkness,  inflict  a  blow  that  would  terminate 
the  war  in  this  quarter.  With  this  view,  between  two  and  three  o'clock  of 
the  morning,  he  set  out  from  the  fort,  in  quest  of  the  Indian  camp,  at  the 
head  of  two  hundred  and  seventy  men,  —  having  previously  adopted  the 
most  judicious  precautions  for  the  secrecy  and  orderly  disposition  of  the 
march,  and  (which  was  equally  necessary  in  American  campaigns)  for 
preventing  wounded  soldiers  from  falling  into  the  hands  of  a  barbarous  foe. 
But  he  had  undervalued  the  vigilance  and  penetration  of  the  Indians,  who, 
perhaps,  also  derived  some  advantage  from  a  friendly  intelligence  with  the 
French  settlers  in  the  vicinity.  Apprized  of  his  design,  they  securely  pre- 
pared to  defeat  it ;  and  every  step  of  his  march  from  the  fort  only  con- 
ducted him  farther  into  the  jaws  of  their  dexterous  ambuscade.  The  ad- 
vance of  his  troops  was  suddenly  arrested  by  a  sharp  fire  in  their  front, 
which  was  presently  followed  by  a  similar  discharge  on  their  rear,  and  then 
succeeded  by  a  confounding  and  destructive  volley  from  every  side.  It 
was  fatally  manifest  to  the  British  that  they  were  surprised  by  the  enemy, 
whom  they  had  themselves  rashly  undertaken  to  surprise  ;  and  this  was  all 
that  they  could  discover  ;  for,  in  the  darkness,  neither  the  position  nor  the 
numbers  of  the  Indians  could  be  ascertained.  Dalzell  fell  in  the  beginning 
of  the  affair,  and  his  whole  troop  were  on  the  brink  of  irreparable  confu- 
sion and  ruin,  when  Captain  Grant,  on  whom  the  command  now  devolved, 
perceiving  that  a  safe  retreat,  his  only  resource,  could  not  be  accomplished 
without  a  previous  attack  upon  the  enemy,  promptly  rallied  the  soldiers, 
who,  steadily  and  resolutely  obeying  his  orders,  charged  the  Indians  with  so 
much  spirit  and  success,  as  to  repulse  them  on  all  sides,  to  some  distance. 
Having  thus  extricated  themselves  from  immediate  peril,  the  British  hastily 
regained  the  shelter  of  the  fort,  with  the  loss  of  seventy  men  killed  and 
forty  wounded.  The  issue  of  this  unfortunate  affair,  which  deterred  them 
from  undertaking  any  farther  offensive  operations,  was  not  yet  of  sufficient 
importance  to  encourage  their  enemies  to  pursue  the  siege  of  a  fort  so 
strong,  and  now  supplied  with  a  garrison  and  provisions  fully  adequate  to  its 
defence.  After  pausing  only  long  enough  to  ascertain  that  the  garrison 
were  completely  on  their  guard  against  stratagem  and  surprise,  the  Indians 
abruptly  broke  up  their  camp  and  retired  from  the  vicinity  of  Detroit. 

^  An  attempt  (rendered  unsuccessful  by  treachery  among  themselves)  was  made  by  the  In- 
dians, to  acquire  this  place  by  a  most  ingenious  but  fraudful  artifice  (Marryat's  Diary  in  Amer- 
ica^ Chap.  27),  which  was  afterwards  repeated  with  success  by  the  troops  of  the  Emperor 
Napoleon  against  a  fortress  in  Spain. 


CHAP.  VI.]  GENERAL  INDIAN  WAR.  329 

Pittsburg,  meanwhile,  was  so  closely  beleaguered  on  every  side,  that  its 
communication  with  the  country  was  completely  suspended.  Its  Indian 
besiegers  supplied,  in  some  measure,  their  want  of  skill  and  of  artillery,  by 
the  daring  and  obstinate  valor  of  their  assault.  Regardless  of  danger,  and 
exerting  a  resolution  which  the  most  accomphshed  veterans  in  European 
discipline  could  not  have  surpassed,  they  posted  themselves  on  the  brink  of 
the  river,  close  to  the  fort,  and,  sheltered  in  holes  which  they  dug,  poured 
upon  it  an  incessant  storm  of  musketry,  and  of  arrows  tipped  with  fire.  The 
scantiness  of  the  garrison,  and  the  meagreness  of  its  stores,  rendered  the 
place  very  ill  qualified  to  support  a  siege  ;  but  its  defence  was  prolonged  by 
the  skill  and  spirit  of  the  commander.  Captain  Ecuyer,  and  his  troops, 
who,  though  perfectly  conscious  of  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  their  post, 
were  still  more  strongly  impressed  with  the  disgrace  and  danger  of  surren- 
dering to  a  savage  and  faithless  foe. 

Aware  of  the  importance  of  Pittsburg,  and  judging  that  the  principal  ef- 
forts of  the  Indians  would  be  directed  against  this  fortress,  Amherst  had 
despatched  for  its  rehef  a  large  quantity  of  military  stores  and  provisions, 
under  the  protection  of  a  powerful  escort  commanded  by  Colonel  Bouquet. 
This  officer  conducted  his  troops  and  the  convoy  to  the  remotest  limits  of 
the  British  settlements,  without  laeing  able  to  obtain  the  slightest  intelligence 
of  the  state  of  the  garrison,  or  of  the  numbers,  position,  or  proceedings  of 
the  enemy.  In  this  uncertainty,  he  prudently  determined  to  disengage 
himself  from  all  the  ammunition  and  provisions  by  which  his  march  was 
loaded,  except  what  he  judged  to  be  indispensably  requisite  to  the  main 
object  of  his  enterprise.  Thus  disencumbered,  the  English  troops  entered 
a  rough  and  mountainous  country,  and  drew  nigh  to  a  formidable  defile 
called  Turtle  Creek,  extending  several  miles  in  length,  and  commanded  on 
both  sides  by  steep  and  craggy  hills.  Bouquet  now  proposed,  after  refresh- 
ing his  forces,  to  attempt  the  passage  of  this  defile  during  the  night,  in  the 
hope  of  eluding  the  observation  of  the  Indians,  —  who  proved,  however, 
to  be  nearer  and  more  alert  than  he  imagined.  Their  vigilance  was  so 
much  superior  to  his,  or  at  least  so  much  more  successfully  exerted,  that 
they  had  obtained  early  intelhgence  of  his  expedition  ;  and  judging  it  impos- 
sible to  subdue  Pittsburg  either  before  or  after  the  arrival  of  the  approach- 
ing reinforcement,  they  prepared  to  intercept  it.  Suspending  the  siege,  they 
occupied  a  position  from  which  the  advance  of  Bouquet  might  be  opposed, 
and  his  forces  attacked  with  advantage.  Could  they  have  foreseen  the  in- 
tention of  this  commander,  and  been  induced  to  defer  an  engagement  till 
after  the  commencement  of  the  nocturnal  march  which  he  proposed,  when 
darkness  would  have  cooperated  with  the  perplexity  of  the  defile,  to  pro- 
mote the  influence  of  surprise,  and  to  spread  among  the  British  a  confusion 
favorable  to  the  irregular  and  disorderly  style  of  Indian  attack,  the  forces 
of  Bouquet  would  probably  have  fallen  an  easy  prey  to  the  valor  and  good 
fortune  of  the  savages.  But,  whether  transported  with  the  hope  that  their 
position  rendered  victory  certain,  or  prompted  by  the  more  prudent  impulse 
to  attack  the  British  before  they  had  leisure  to  repose  from  the  fatigues 
of  a  march  of  seventeen  miles,  they  waited  only  till  Bouquet's  troops  be- 
gan to  make  preparation  for  their  refreshment ;  and  then,  about  one  o'clock 
of  the  afternoon  [August  5],  rushed  forward  with  sudden  and  furious  as- 
sault on  his  advanced  guard. 

All  the  advantages  of  tliis  onset,  however,  proved  inferior  to  the  effi- 

VOL.    II.  42  BB  * 


530  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

cacy  of  order,  steadiness,  and  discipline,  exerted  with  the  full  assistance 
of  daylight.  So  firmly  was  the  charge  of  the  Indians  sustained,  that  they 
were  quickly  put  to  flight,  and  even  pursued  to  a  considerable  distance. 
Yet  so  far  were  they  from  abandoning  the  hope  of  victory,  that,  in  the  very 
moment  when  pursuit  ended,  they  returned  with  redoubled  fury  to  renew 
the  engagement.  Several  other  parties  of  their  forces,  which  had  hitherto 
lain  in  ambush  on  the  adjacent  heights,  now  sprang  up  from  their  conceal- 
ment, and,  aiding  the  efforts,  as  well  as  emulating  the  resolution,  of  their 
companions,  assailed  the  British  with  a  galling  and  obstinate  fire.  To  dis- 
lodge these  assailants  from  their  elevated  position,  it  was  necessary  to  make 
a  charge  with  the  whole  hue  ;  but  though  this  operation  succeeded,  it  pro- 
duced no  decisive  advantage.  The  Indians  had  previously  ascertained  all 
the  military  capabilities  of  the  neighbouring  country  ;  and  no  sooner  were 
they  driven  from  one  position,  than  their  flight  appeared  to  have  been  but 
a  rapid  movement  to  gain  another  not  less  commanding.  The  concerted 
plan  they  pursued  was  developed  by  the  increased  strength  and  more  formi- 
dable attitude  which  they  progressively  derived  from  the  constant  flow  of 
reinforcements  corresponding  to  every  change  of  the  ground  they  occupied. 
At  length,  in  consequence  of  all  these  successive  operations,  the  English 
troops  were  completely  surrounded  by  the  enemy,  and  at  the  same  time 
withdrawn  to  a  considerable  distance  from  the  convoy,  which  another 
party  of  the  Indians  now  attempted  to  carry  by  a  fierce  assault.  The  main 
body  of  the  troops  were  consequently  obliged  to  fall  back,  in  order  to  pre- 
vent the  convoy  from  being  lost ;  and  by  dint  of  address  and  resolution,  in 
spite  of  every  impediment,  this  movement  was  seasonably  and  successfully 
performed.  But  though  the  hard-contested  prize  was  thus  snatched  from 
their  grasp,  the  Indians  were  neither  depressed  nor  intimidated.  With  un- 
diminished spirit  and  inveteracy,  they  pressed  their  attacks  on  every  side  ; 
and  the  conflict,  instead  of  relaxing,  became,  every  moment,  more  warm 
and  general.  During  the  whole  of  this  arduous  struggle,  the  English  troops 
were  never  thrown  into  the  slightest  disorder.  By  their  steady  discipline, 
and  calm,  deliberate  courage,  they  finally  maintained  the  field,  and  with 
fixed  bayonets  repulsed  the  enemy  at  every  point.  The  action  lasted  seven 
hours,  and  ended  only  with  the  close  of  day.  Happily  for  the  English,  the 
scene  of  their  last  struggle,  from  which  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  with- 
draw, afforded  some  convenience  for  an  encampment.  The  convoy  and 
the  wounded  were  placed  in  the  centre,  surrounded  and  guarded  by  the 
effective  troops.  In  this  posture,  and  with  little  repose,  the  English  passed 
an  anxious  night ;  obliged  to  the  strictest  vigilance  by  the  vicinity  of  a  subtle 
and  enterprising  foe  who  completely  encompassed  their  position. 

At  the  first  dawn  of  morning  [August  6],  the  Indians  began  to  approach 
the  English  camp.  On  all  sides  they  presented  themselves  at  the  same 
moment,  and  simultaneously  raised  the  most  horrible  yells  ;  hoping,  by  such 
ostentation  of  their  numbers  and  fury,  to  impress  a  terror  that  would  facili- 
tate their  victory.  This  signal  was  followed  by  a  series  of  attacks,  conducted 
with  the  same  mixture  of  cautious  address  and  ferocious  activity  which 
characterized  the  conflict  of  the  preceding  day.  The  English,  enfeebled 
as  they  were  by  their  prior  exertions,  and  the  sufferings  of  a  sleepless 
night,  were  additionally  distressed  by  lack  of  water,  and  a  consequent 
thirst  more  intolerable  than  the  fire  of  the  enemy.  In  its  commencement, 
the  action  resembled  the  former  one.   The  Indians  made  the  most  desperate 


CHAP.  VI.]  GENERAL  INDIAN  WAR.  331 

efforts  to  penetrate  the  centre  of  the  camp,  and,  though  constantly  repulsed, 
as  constantly  resumed  their  onset  without  relaxation  or  dismay.  The  Eng- 
hsh,  vainly  victorious,  continually  in  danger,  and  exhausted  by  successes 
which  obviously  produced  no  decisive  influence  on  the  fortune  of  the  day, 
nor  impaired  in  the  slightest  degree  the  spirit  and  alacrity  of  the  foe,  were 
forced  to  contemplate  the  melancholy  prospect  of  crumbling  away  by  de- 
grees, till  the  diminution  of  their  numbers  and  dissipation  of  their  strength 
should  deliver  up  the  survivors  of  them  to  the  inglorious  yoke  of  savage 
bondage  or  the  terrific  cruelty  of  savage  torture.  Confined  to  their  con- 
voy, they  durst  not  lose  sight  of  it  for  a  moment,  without  exposing  this  in- 
teresting object,  together  with  all  their  wounded  men,  to  the  pillage  and  fury 
of  the  Indians.  Many  of  the  horses  were  killed  or  disabled  ;  and  most  of 
the  drivers,  stupefied  with  fear,  hid  themselves  in  the  neighbouring  thickets, 
and  were  incapable  of  hearing  or  obeying  orders.  To  advance  or  re- 
treat was  equally  impracticable  for  the  British  troops.  Th^  fate  which 
overtook  Braddock's  army  seemed  to  impend  over  them  ;  and  this  dismal 
catastrophe  was  averted  only  by  the  genius  and  skill  of  their  commander. 
Sensible  that  he  could  not  extricate  himself  from  his  dangerous  predicament, 
without  bringing  the  Indians  to  abide  the  issue  of  a  close,  general,  and  sus- 
tained encounter,  and  remarking  the  increased  temerity  and  audacity  with 
which  the  success  of  their  manoeuvres  had  latterly  inspired  them,  Bouquet 
directed  a  considerable  portion  of  his  troops  to  perform  a  movement  which 
would  ultimately  enable  them  to  attack  with  advantage,  provided  the  seem- 
ing indication  of  flight  which  it  presented  should  tempt  the  enemy  to  deliver 
battle  in  a  more  compact  and  continuous  style.  The  rest  of  his  troops, 
meanwhile,  by  their  evolutions  seemed  to  be  endeavouring  to  cover  the  flight, 
and  supply  the  loss  of  the  supposed  fugitives.  Deceived  by  appearances 
so  congenial  to  their  wishes,  and  transported  with  eagerness  to  reap  the  fruit 
of  their  efforts  and  expectations,  the  Indians  now  discarded  the  prudent  and 
cautious  policy  which  they  had  hitherto  pursued,  and  yielded  to  all  their  fury. 
They  no  longer  receded  from  the  first  resistance  to  their  assault ;  but, 
spreading  the  battle  and  pressing  forward  in  a  flame  of  rage  and  antici- 
pated triumph,  exposed  themselves  to  the  full  effect  of  the  superior  skill 
and  vigor  of  the  English  ;  and  were  overthrown  with  prodigious  slaughter 
and  irreparable  rout.  This  repulse  was  rendered  the  more  decisive  by 
the  fall  of  some  of  the  bravest  and  ablest  of  the  Indian  chiefs,  who  had 
distinguished  themselves  by  the  bitterness  of  their  animosity  against  the 
English,  and,  exerting  their  address  while  it  seemed  necessary,  reserved 
their  active  prowess  for  the  moment  of  victory,  which  they  prematurely 
supposed  to  have  arrived,  and  rashly  attempted  to  accelerate.  In  their  fall 
was  extinguished  no  mean  part  of  the  fuel  of  the  war.  The  victory  was 
dearly  bought  by  the  English,  who,  besides  fifty  men  killed, ^  were  encum- 
bered with  such  a  multitude  of  wounded,  and  deprived  of  so  many  of  their 
horses  at  the  very  time  when  additional  means  of  conveyance  were  most 
urgently  requisite,  that  they  were  reluctantly  compelled  to  destroy  the  great- 
est part  of  their  convoy  of  provisions,  and  so  far  defeat  the  principal  object 
of  their  expedition.  They  had  advanced  hardly  two  miles  beyond  the 
scene  of  their  late  conflicts,  when,  to  their  extreme  surprise  and  vexation, 
their  encampment  was  again  beset  by  the  enemy  ;  but  this  renewed  attacK 
was  slight  and  transient  ;  and  the  Indians,  who  seemed  rather  to  remem- 

*  See  Note  XXVI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


332  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

ber,  than  to  retain  the  power  of  executing,  the  counsels  of  their  fallen  chiefs, 
retired  after  a  slight  skirmish,  and  offered  no  farther  opposition  to  the  ad- 
vance of  the  British,  who,  four  days  after,  arrived  at  Pittsburg.  In  spite 
of  the  sacrifices  which  attended  their  march,  this  important  post  was,  from 
the  moment  of  their  arrival,  freed  from  all  farther  attempts  and  menaces  of 
the  enemy. 

Though  the  projects  of  the  hostile  Indians  received  a  signal  check,  and 
their  hopes  a  grievous  disappointment,  from  the  rehef  of  Detroit  and  Pitts- 
burg, they  were  not  discouraged  from  making  farther  efforts  in  a  different 
quarter.  They  now  bent  their  main  force  against  Niagara,  which  they  justly 
esteemed  a  post  of  at  least  equal  importance  ;  and,  in  addition  to  every  other 
art  of  annoyance  which  they  were  capable  of  exerting,  they  proposed,  as 
a  last  expedient,  to  reduce  it  by  famine.  Their  design  was  favored  by  the 
vast  distance  by  which  all  these  posts  were  separated  from  each  other  and 
from  the  population  of  the  provincial  settlements.  With  the  same  vigilance 
and  alertness  which  characterized  their  previous  operations,  the  Indians 
now  descried  from  afar  and  watched  the  motions  of  every  convoy  de- 
spatched to  Niagara  :  and  on  the  14th  of  September,  surrounding  one  which 
had  nearly  reached  the  place  of  its  destination,  they  succeeded  in  making  it 
their  prey  by  a  sudden  attack,  in  which  seventy  of  the  British  soldiers  were 
slain.  Shortly  afterwards,  as  a  British  schooner  was  crossing  Lake  Erie, 
with  provisions  for  Detroit,  she  was  attacked  by  a  numerous  fleet  of  ca- 
noes, on  board  of  which  were  nearly  four  hundred  Indians.  But  this  at- 
tempt was  less  successful  ;  and,  after  a  sharp  engagement,  the  Indian  ar- 
mada was  repulsed  with  considerable  loss.  In  a  conflict  with  an  armed 
vessel,  the  savages  were  exposed  to  the  same  disadvantages  which  attended 
their  operations  against  fortified  places  on  shore. 

By  the  exertions  of  the  British,  the  garrisons  of  the  three  great  western 
forts  which  had  been  thus  besieged  were  at  length  so  powerfully  reinforced 
and  so  well  supplied  with  stores  and  provisions,  that  the  Indians,  abandoning 
all  hope  of  reducing  them,  confined  themselves  to  their  wonted  style  of  pred- 
atory hostility,  and  ravaged  by  furious  incursions  the  frontier  settlements  of 
the  southern  provinces.  As  they  seemed  determined  to  prolong  the  war, 
though  its  chief  purpose  had  manifestly  failed,  the  British  government 
judged  it  proper  to  require  the  colonists  to  lend  the  aid  of  their  arms  to  the 
regular  troops  who  had  hitherto  borne  the  whole  brunt  of  it.  In  the  com- 
mencement of  the  following  year  [1764],  the  States  of  New  England  were 
specially  invited  by  letters  from  Lord  Halifax,  one  of  the  secretaries  of 
state,  and  from  General  Gage,  who  now  succeeded  to  the  command  of 
Amherst,  to  raise  a  force  that  should  cooperate  with  the  English  troops 
and  the  levies  supplied  by  the  southern  colonies  in  an  invasion  of  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  hostile  Indians.  This  application  was  received  with  much 
impatience  and  aversion.  The  people  of  New  England  were  far  remote 
from  the  sphere  and  interest  of  the  existing  war,  and  plainly  showed  their 
disinclination  to  increase  the  burdens  with  which  their  exertions  in  the  last 
contest  with  France  had  loaded  them,  in  order  to  combat  the  Indian  ene- 
mies of  other  States,  from  which  New  England,  in  her  own  similar  exi- 
gencies, had  never  obtained  or  solicited  assistance.  The  assembly  of  Mas- 
sachusetts availed  itself  of  a  report  of  the  near  termination  of  the  war,  to 
evade  either  compliance  with  the  proposition  or  a  direct  refusal.  Connecti- 
cut was  more  pliant.     Its  assembly,    though  with  undisguised  reluctance. 


CHAP.  VI.]  TREATY  OF  PEACE  WITH   THE  INDIANS.  333 

resolved,  that,  in  conformity  with  their  duty  to  promote  the  king's  service, 
and  in  order  to  manifest  their  obedience  to  his  will,  a  battalion  of  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  men  should  be  raised,  and  conducted  by  Colonel  Putnam  to 
w4iatever  part  of  North  America  the  commander-in-chief  should  direct.  So 
little  advantage  had  the  royal  prerogative  obtained  in  Massachusetts  from 
the  tyrannical  invasion  of  the  privilege  of  electing  their  own  governor, 
which  originally  belonged  to  the  people  of  this  province,  and,  without  any 
just  or  equitable  distinction,  was  still  retained  by  the  inhabitants  of  Con- 
necticut ! 

Reinforced  by  the  Connecticut  battalion,  and  by  some  detachments  from 
the  militia  of  the  southern  colonies,  the  British  troops,  commanded  by 
Colonels  Bouquet  and  Bradstreet,  attacked  the  enemy  with  such  spirit 
and  success  during  the  spring  and  summer,  that  the  vanquished  savages  at 
length  expressed  a  sincere  desire  for  peace,  and  proposed,  in  Indian  phrase, 
to  bury  the  hatchet.  In  September,  there  was  concluded  a  treaty  of  peace, 
of  which  the  conditions,  dictated  by  the  EngHsh,  were  more  consonant  to 
the  spirit  of  victors  than  to  the  principles  of  equity.  By  the  articles  of 
this  treaty,  it  was  provided,  that,  within  twenty  days  after  the  ratification  of 
it,  the  Indians  should  deliver  up  all  the  prisoners  in  their  hands  ;  ^  that 
they  should  renounce  all  claim  to  the  forts  which  the  English  then  possessed 
in  their  country  ;  that  the  English  should  have  liberty  to  build  as  many  more 
as  they  might  deem  requisite  to  the  security  of  their  trade  ;  and  that  the 
Indians  should  cede  to  them  for  ever  all  the  surrounding  land  within  the 
range  of  cannon-shot  from  each  respective  fort.  It  was  also  stipulated, 
that,  if  any  Indian  should  kill  an  Englishman,  he  was  to  be  delivered  up  by 
his  tribe  to  be  judged  by  the  English  laws,  and  that  half  of  the  jury  on  his 
trial  should  consist  of  Indians  ;  and  that,  if  any  of  the  Indian  tribes  should 
renew  the  war,  the  rest  were  to  aid  the  efforts  of  the  English  to  produce  an 
accommodation.  It  has  been  censoriously  remarked  by  the  honest  and  sen- 
sible historian  of  Connecticut,  that  this  treaty  expressed  no  reciprocal  con- 
cessions on  the  part  of  the  English,  who  were  transported,  by  resentment, 
success,  and  thirst  of  immediate  advantage,  beyond  all  consideration  of  the 
common  rights,  condition,  and  fortune  of  humanity.  No  engagement  was 
contracted  by  them  to  surrender  to  public  justice  the  English  murderers  of 
Indians  ;  nor  was  any  equivalent  stipulated  for  those  territorial  appendages 
which  the  Indians  were  obliged  to  cede  to  them  around  not  only  every  fort 
which  they  then  possessed,  but  every  other  which  they  might  think  proper 
subsequently  to  erect.  This  last  observation  conveys  a  far  severer  censure 
than  a  reasonable  consideration  of  the  former  can  be  allowed  to  imply.  It 
was  not  inconsistent  with  a  just  respect  for  the  rights  of  human  nature,  that 
Britain  should  consult  the  safety  of  her  people  by  requiring  that  their  mur- 
derers should  abide  the  issue  of  that  fair  transcript  of  natural  law  which  her 
judicial  system  discloses  in  the  trial  and  punishment  of  murder  ;  and  the 
interest  of  the  accused  was  amply  protected  by  that  provision  for  the  com- 
position of  his  jury  w^hich  rendered  it  necessary  that  his  guilt  should  be  as- 
certained by  the  concurrent  sentence  of  his  own  countrymen.  But  it 
would  have  been  utterly  inconsistent  with  British  honof,  real  humanity,  and 
Christian  sentiment,  to  have  surrendered  an  Englishman,  charged  with  mur- 

*  Many  of  the  Indians  were  struck  with  the  deepest  anguish  and  wept  bitterly,  when  thoy 
were  compelled  to  surrender  the  white  children  whom  they  had  kidnapped,  and  for  whom 
they  had  conceived  a  remarkable  warmth  and  tenderness  of  affection.  An  interesting  account 
of  tneir  demeanour  on  this  occasion  is  preserved  in  the  Jlnnual  Register  for  1765. 


334  -         HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  X. 

dering  an  Indian,  or  with  any  other  crime,  to  the  uncertain  inquisition  of 
savage  jurisprudence  or  the  infliction  of  that  barbarous  revenge  which  coin- 
cided with  Indian  ideas  of  justice  and  propriety.  In  all  the  American 
provinces,  at  this  time,  the  murder  either  of  a  white  man  or  an  Indian  was 
a  capital  crime.  It  must,  indeed,  be  confessed  that  the  equality  of  this 
legal  provision  was  in  practice  generally  disturbed  and  defeated  by  the 
violent  prejudices  and  resentments  with  which  the  colonists  were  transported 
by  their  experience  of  Indian  perfidy  and  cruelty.  It  was  so  difficult  at 
this  time,  as  to  be  accounted  impossible,  even  in  New  England  and  Penn- 
sylvania, to  induce  a  provincial  jury  to  deliver  up  one  of  their  countrymen 
to  the  executioner  for  the  slaughter  of  an  Indian  ;  and  the  provincial  gov- 
ernments were  frequently  obliged  by  presents  to  soothe  the  rage  of  Indian 
tribes  to  whom  the  inefficient  theory  of  British  justice  was  unable  to  afford 
more  honorable  satisfaction.^ 

A  remarkable  transaction  occurred  this  year  in  Pennsylvania,  where  the 
disputes  between  the  proprietaries  and  the  assembly  which  had  so  long  agi- 
tated the  province,  and  at  last  were  seemingly  composed,  suddenly  broke 
out  with  more  violence  than  ever.  The  proprietaries  were  discontented 
with  the  concessions  which  the  people  had  obtained  from  them,  and  never 
ceased  to  cherish  the  hope  of  again  resuming  that  pretension,  which  we 
have  seen  them  unwillingly  relinquish,  of  exempting  their  own  estates  from 
the  provincial  taxation.  It  was,  doubtless,  with  the  view  of  promoting  this 
and  other  kindred  purposes,  that,  in  the  year  1763,  the  government  of  the 
province  was  withdrawn  from  the  hands  of  James  Hamilton,  and  conferred 
on  John  Penn,  whose  father,  Richard,  was  one  of  the  proprietaries.  This 
new  governor's  assumption  of  his  functions  was  the  signal  for  recommence- 
ment of  former  disagreements  and  controversies.  The  assembly  having 
passed  a  militia  bill  In  the  same  year,  he  refused  his  assent  to  it,  without 
the  introduction  of  certain  amendments,  which  consisted  in  transferring 
the  nomination  of  the  officers  from  the  people,  who  had  hitherto  exercised 
it,  to  himself  ;  In  increasing  all  the  pecuniary  fines  by  which  neglect  of  mus- 
ters and  of  other  military  duty  was  punished  ;  and  substituting,  in  some  cases, 
the  punishment  of  death  in  place  of  fine.  These  amendments  were  re- 
sisted by  the  assembly,  as  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  hberty  ;  but  the 
governor  was  obstinate  in  preferring  the  authority  of 'himself  and  his  family 
to  the  public  will  ;  and,  as  neither  party  would  yield,  the  bill  was  lost. 
Other  occurrences  of  a  similar  character  contributed  to  widen  the  breach 
between  the  proprietaries  and  the  assembly,  and  to  increase  the  regret  with 
which  many  of  the  Inhabitants,  and  even  the  Quakers,  had  seen  and  acknowl- 
edged of  late  that  the  executive  government  was  not  sufficiently  strong  to 
enforce  the  provisions  of  law  and  the  dictates  of  justice  and  humanity,  to 
defend  either  the  safety  of  the  State  against  foreign  hostility,  or  its  honor 
and  dignity  against  the  internal  ebullition  of  popular  prejudice,  rage,  and 
violence.^  The  assembly  were  at  length  so  highly  exasperated  against  the 
proprietaries,  that,  in  the  present  year,  they  resolved  to  present  a  petition 
to  the  king,  imploring  a  change  of  the  political  constitution  of  Pennsylvania, 
correspondent  to  th^  innovation  which  the  crown  had  formerly  sanctioned 
in  the  Instance  of  Carolina,""^ — the  substitution  of  a  regal  in  place  of  a  pro- 
prietary government. 

^  j9nnufi J  Register  for  \763  mid  1764.    Trumbull.    Hutchins6n.    Fjanklin'sJIfemoir*.    Bel 
knap.     Minot. 

2  See  post,  Appendix  III.  3  Mte,  Book  VFJ  ,  Chap.  II. 


CHAP.  VI.]        FRANKLIN'S  SECOND  MISSION  TO   ENGLAND.  335 

This  proceeding,  which,  if  not  originally  suggested,  was  warmly  sup- 
ported, by  Dr.  Franklin,  occasioned  a  violent  ferment  in  the  province,  where 
many  good  men,  though  opposed  to  the  unjust  and  insolent  pretensions  of 
the  proprietaries,  were  shocked  at  the  idea  of  a  revolution  so  dishonorable 
to  the  memory  and  the  family  of  that  illustrious  person  to  whom  Penn- 
sylvania owed  its  social  origin  and  its  name.  The  partisans  of  the  measure, 
themselves,  endeavoured  to  propitiate  the  pubhc  reverence  for  the  name  of 
William  Penn,  and  justified  their  policy  by  appealing  to  the  conduct  of  this 
patriarch  himself,  who,  they  remarked  with  truth,  was  prevented  only  by  sick- 
ness and  death  from  completing  the  transaction  he  had  commenced  for  a 
surrender  of  his  proprietary  functions  to  the  crown. ^  Amidst  the  collision 
and  confusion  of  political  sentiment  that  ensued,  the  proprietaries  gained 
the  advantage  of  alienating  so  many  of  the  citizens  of  Philadelphia  from 
their  former  regard  for  Franklin,  that,  at  the  annual  election  in  the  autumn 
of  this  year,  he  was  deprived  of  the  seat,  which,  as  their  representative, 
he  had  enjoyed  for  fourteen  years  in  the  provincial  assembly.  But  the  de- 
lusiveness of  this  triumph  appeared,  when  the  assembly,  at  its  first  meeting 
after  the  election,  espoused  the  petition  which  had  been  previously  voted, 
and  intrusted  to  Franklin  the  duty  of  conveying  it,  and  the  honor  of  again 
representing  the  province,  as  its  agent,  at  London.  This  appointment  — 
which  was  suggested  not  less  by  Franklin's  character,  and  former  success 
in  advocating  the  interests  of  his  countrymen,  than  by  the  peculiarity  of  his 
present  situation,  which  precluded  him  from  lending  his  support  to  their 
cause  in  the  assembly  —  was  farther  recommended  by  the  influence  and 
consideration  which  he  appeared  to  possess  at  the  British  court.  In  the 
preceding  year,  his  natural  son,  William  Franklin,  whether  as  a  tribute  to 
the  father's  merit  and  fame,  or  in  recompense  of  his  own  valor,  which  had 
been  honorably  displayed  during  the  last  war  with  France,  obtained  the 
powerful  recommendation  of  Lord  Bute  to  the  appointment  of  governor  of 
New  Jersey,^  which  was  accordingly  bestowed  upon  him.  By  the  exertions 
of  Governor  Penn  and  the  interest  of  the  proprietaries,  the  embassy  of 
Franklin  from  Pennsylvania  to  England  was  opposed  in  the  assembly  with 
a  violence,  which,  though  unsuccessful,  appears  to  have  keenly  affected  the 
feelings  of  Franklin,  and  given  him  a  painful  foretaste  of  that  sacrifice  of  pri- 
vate friendship  which  every  man  who  takes  an  active  part  in  civil  broils  must 
either  inflict  or  incur,  and,  at  all  events,  should  firmly  prepare  himself  to 
undergo.^  Of  his  present  mission  the  immediate  object  proved,  indeed, 
unsuccessful.  The  petition  of  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly  to  the  throne 
was  rejected,  and  the  proprietary  government  allowed  to  remain  unchanged.'* 
But  Franklin's  sojourn  in  Europe  proved  far  longer  than  he  had  expected  ; 
and  this,  his  second  embassage  to  England,  as  the  representative  of  a  por- 
tion of  his  countrymen,  was  attended  with  consequences  m.ore  deeply  and 
largely  important  to  America  than  either  its  promoters  or  opponents  had 
anticipated. 

~r^^n^Book  VII.,  Chap.  II.  ' 

2  The  salary  of  this  office  at  that  time  was  one  thousand  pounds  a  year.     Burnaby's  Travels. 

3  In  one  of  the  political  compositions  published  by  Franklin  at  tliis  period,  he  expresses  a 
deep  and  manly,  but  not  repentant,  sorrow  for  the  hostility  which  lie  had  provoked  from  men 
(says  he)  "the  very  ashes  of  whose  n)rmer  friendship  I  revere."  —  "  Esto  perpetua,"  he  adds, 
with  votive  benediction  of  Pennsylvania  and  its  social  svstem  :  —  a  wish  more  propitious  to 
human  happiness  than  that  of  Father  Paul,  of  Venice,  from  whom  the  expression  is  derived. 

*  Proud.     S.  Smith.     Franklin's  Memoirs. 


APPENDIX    III. 

Condition  of  the  North  American  States  —  Virginia —  New  England  —  Maryland  —  the  Car- 
olinaa  —  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania  —  Georgia.  —  Political  Feelings  and 
Ideas  in  Britain  and  America.  —  Benjamin  West.  —  Indian  Affairs.  —  Moravian  Missions. 

At  this  interesting  epoch  [1764],  we  may  with  propriety  pause  awhile, 
to  survey  some  particulars  of  the  condition  of  the  North  American  States, 
supplemental  to  the  views  occasionally  disclosed  from  various  points  of  our 
progress  along  the  main  stream  of  events.  Though,  from  the  defect  of 
materials,  our  surve^f  must  be  far  less  minute  and  extended  than  its  impor- 
tance deserves,  yet,  by  collecting  the  scattered  rays  wjiich  may  be  ex- 
tracted from  various  existing  sources  of  information,  some  additional  light 
can  be  thrown  on  the  state  of  society  in  America  at  the  present  period, 
when  a  signal  crisis  in  her  fortune  had  occurred,  and  a  grander  and  more 
important  crisis  in  her  fortune  and  political  condition  was  at  hand. 

The  war,  which  issued  in  the  triumphs  we  have  witnessed  over  the 
French,  the  Spaniards,  and  the  Indians,  exercised  during  its  continuance 
a  mischievous  influence  on  the  population  and  prosperity  of  the  American 
provinces,  which,  however,  the  vigor  and  virtue  of  their  excellent  constitu- 
tions, aided  by  the  happy  result  of  the  contest,  enabled  them  very  speedily 
to  surmount.  In  the  commencement  of  the  war,  the  successes  of  the  French 
and  the  ferocious  ravages  of  the  Indians  tended  to  repress  the  flow  of  emi- 
gration from  Europe  to  America  ;  and,  during  the  whole  of  its  continuance, 
the  sacrifice  of  life  and  resources,  yielded  to  military  exigence,  and  inflicted 
by  hostile  rage,  diminished  the  means  and  the  activity  of  domestic  increase. 
But  the  progressive  growth  of  America,  though  impeded,  was  by  no  means 
arrested  during  this  war.  In  every  instance  in  which  materials  for  judgment 
can  be  obtained,  we  find  the  various  States  more  wealthy  and  populous  at 
the  period  of  the  treaty  of  Paris,  than  at  the  preceding  date  of  the  treaty  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle. 

From  Virginia,  in  the  year  1758,  there  were  exported  seventy  thousand 
hogsheads  of  tobacco,  —  "  the  largest  quantity  of  this  produce,"  says  Jef- 
ferson, ''  ever  exported  from  the  colony  in  a  single  year."^  The  population 
of  this  province  is  said  to  have  amounted,  in  1763,  to  one  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand  persons,  of  whom  one  hundred  thousand  were  slaves.^ 
Burnaby,  an  English  gentleman  and  scholar,  who  visited  the  North  Ameri- 

'  Kotes  on  Virginia,  The  average  export  was  55,000  hogsheads  of  1,000  pounds  each. 
Tucker's  Life  of  Jefferson.  About  the  year  1763,  the  herbage  of  Britain  was  enriched  by  the 
imp'ortation  from  Virginia  of  some  valuable  species  of  ^rass  previously  unknown  in  Europe. 
Annuai  Register  for  1765.  The  researches  which  terminated  in  this  beneficial  result  seem  to 
have  originated  from  the  notion,  conceived  and  suggested  by  Wych,  an  ingenious  member  of 
the  London  Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  Arts,  aided  by  Rocque,  a  French  farmer  settled 
in  England,  "  that,  as  there  are  many  animals  which  subsist  wholly  on  the  fruits  of  the  earth, 
there  must  certainly  be  some  plant  or  herb  which  is  fit  food  for  them,  that  naturally  vegetates 
in  winter  ;  otherwise  we  must  suppose  the  Almighty  to  have  made  creatures  without  providing 
for  their  subsistence,  till  they  were  taken  by  man  out  of  the  hands  of  nature  and  provided  with 
dry  food,"  &c.     lb, 

^  Warden.  This  computation,  though  adopted  by  several  writers,  is  probably  too  low.  Pres- 
ident Adams,  in  his  Twenty-six  Letters  on  Important  Subjects,  asserts  that  Virginia,  in  1764, 
contained  200,000  inhabitants. 


APP.  Ill]  STATE  OF  VIRGINIA.  337 

can  colonies  in  1759  and  1760,  and  afterwards  published  an  account  of  his 
travels,  remarks  that  the  progress  of  arts  and  sciences  had  been  very  slight 
and  scanty  in  Virginia,  where  the  College  of  William  and  Mary  was  yet  the 
only  established  seminary  of  education,  and  by  no  means  fulfilled  the  de- 
signs of  its  founders.  This  writer  has  expressed  his  conviction  that  no 
considerable  town  would  arise  in  Virginia  for  some  centuries.^  The  follow- 
ing description  of  the  state  of  society  in  this  province  has  been  transmitted 
by  an  intelligent  person,  who  was  one  of  its  inhabitants  at  the  present  period. 
From  the  character  of  the  author  (Wirt),  by  whom  it  has  been  approved  and 
preserved,  there  is  reason  to  believe  it  substantially  just  ;  but  it  is  probably 
overcharged,  as  general  descriptions  of  human  character  and  manners  com- 
monly are.  "  In  a  country  insulated  from  the  European  world,  insulated 
from  its  sister  colonies,  with  whom  there  was  scarcely  any  intercourse, 
little  visited  by  foreigners,  and  having  little  matter  to  act  upon  within  it- 
self, certain  families  had  risen  to  splendor  by  wealth,  and  by  the  preser- 
vation of  it  from  generation  to  generation,  under  the  law  of  entails  ;  and 
some  of  these  had  produced  a  series  of  men  of  talents.  Families,  in  gen- 
eral, had  remained  stationary  on  the  grounds  of  their  forefathers,  for  there 
was  no  emigration  to  the  westward  in  those  days  :  the  Irish,  who  had  gotten 
possession  of  the  valley  between  the  Blue  Ridge  and  the  North  Mountain, 
formed  a  barrier  over  which  none  ventured  to  leap  ;  and  their  manners  pre- 
sented no  attraction  to  the  lowlanders  to  settle  among  them.  In  such  a 
state  of  things,  scarcely  admitting  any  change  of  station,  society  settled  itself 
down  into  several  strata,  separated  by  no  marked  lines,  but  shading  off  im- 
perceptibly from  top  to  bottom,  nothing  disturbing  the  order  of  their  repose. 
There  were,  then,  first,  aristocrats,  composed  of  the  great  landholders,  who 
had  seated  themselves  below  tide-water  on  the  main  rivers,  and  lived  in  a 
style  of  luxury  and  extravagance  insupportable  by  the  other  inhabitants, 
and  which,  indeed,  ended,  in  several  instances,  in  the  ruin  of  their  own 
fortunes.  Next  to  these  were  what  might  be  called  half-breeds,  the  de- 
scendants of  the  younger  sons  and  daughters  of  the  aristocrats,  who  inherited 
the  pride  of  their  ancestors,  without  their  wealth.  Then  came  the  pretend- 
ers, men  who,  from  vanity,  or  the  impulse  of  growing  wealth,  or  from  that 
enterprise  which  is  natural  to  talents,  sought  to  detach  themselves  from  the 
plebeian  ranks,  to  which  they  properly  belonged,  and  imitated,  at  some 
distance,  the  manners  and  habits  of  the  great.  Next  to  these  were  a  solid 
and  independent  yeomanry,  looking  askance  at  those  above,  yet  not  venturing 
to  jostle  them.  And  last  and  lowest,  a  fcecula  of  beings,  called  overseers, 
the  most  abject,  degraded,  unprincipled  race  ;  the  flatterers  of  the  great  who 
employed  them,  and  furnishing  materials  for  the  exercise  of  their  pride, 
insolence,  and  spirit  of  domination."  ^  The  duties  of  these  last  mentioned 
persons,  as  the  tide  by  which  they  are  distinguished  imports,  had  relation  to 
the  management  of  that  class  of  inhabitants,  far  more  numerous  than  all  the 
others,  but  of  whose  situation  no  notice  has  been  preserved,  —  the  negro 
slaves.  A  dismal  conjecture  of  the  real  condition  of  this  unhappy  race 
necessarily  arises  from  the  character  ascribed  to  those  men  to  whom  the 
power  of  aggravating  or  mitigating  their  bondage  was  confided. 

To  the  class   of   Virginian  yeomanry  belonged  Patrick   Henry,  whose 

'  Burnaby's  Tracels  through  the  Middle  Settlements  in  North  America.  Burnaby  states  that 
there  were  few  Dissenters  of  any  denomination  in  Virginia.  But  this  is  quite  erroneous,  — 
and  strangely  so,  from  a  man  who  passed  ten  months  in  the  province. 

*  Wirt's  Life  of  Henry. 

VOL,   II.  43  cc 


338  HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

sudden  and  remarkable  rise  above  the  political  horizon  has  already  engaged 
our  notice.  Improving  with  equal  abihty  and  success  the  first  happy  fruits 
of  his  genius  and  fortune,  Henry  advanced  with  rapid  strides  to  an  acknowl- 
edged preeminence  of  all  his  contemporaries  in  Virginia,  except  Washing- 
ton, whose  character  and  capacity  were  of  an  entirely  different  description. 
And  yet  Virginia,  at  this  period,  was  graced  with  the  talents  of  Jefferson, 
the  Randolphs,  the  Lees,  and  many  other  able,  accomplished,  and  enter- 
prising men.  Henry's  elevation,  feebly  obstructed  for  a  while  by  the  envy 
which  mingled  with  the  astonishment  of  the  higher  classes  of  Virginian 
society,  was  warmly  seconded  by  the  awakened  spirit  and  energy  of  that 
class  to  which  he  peculiarly  belonged,  —  to  whose  interests  he  devoted  him- 
self with  unshaken  fidelity  and  exhaustless  zeal  ;  and  which,  regarding  him 
as  its  especial  property,  recognized  its  own  triumph  in  the  advancement  of 
its  favorite  and  champion.  His  invariable  declaration  as  a  politician  was, 
that  he  bowed  to  the  majesty  of  the  people  :  and  while  he  illustrated  this 
profession  by  the  whole  strain  of  his  brilliant  career,  he  exercised  a  power- 
ful influence  on  the  destiny  of  his  countrymen,  and  was  carried  aloft  In  the 
sequel  by  the  fervor  of  their  admiration,  and  their  eagerness  to  assert  their 
own  republican  majesty,  to  the  highest  pinnacle  of  official  grandeur  and  dis- 
tinction in  Virginia.^ 

Massachusetts  contained,  in  the  year  1763,  a  population  of  at  least  two 
hundred  and  forty-one  thousand  persons,  —  of  whom  five  thousand  two 
hundred  were  slaves  ;  Connecticut,  one  hundred  and  forty-five  thousand 
five  hundred,  —  of  w^hom  four  thousand  five  hundred  were  slaves  ;  and 
Rhode  Island,  upwards  of  forty  thousand,  —  of  whom  four  thousand  six 
hundred  were  slaves.  The  population  of  New  Hampshire  at  this  period  has 
not  been  distinctly  noted  ;  but  In  the  year  1767  It  Is  said  to  have  amounted 
to  fifty-two  thousand  seven  hundred  persons.^  Of  the  population  of  Maine 
no  notice  has  been  transmitted.  These  numbers  are  certainly  too  low  ;  and 
more  credit  is  due  to  the  computation  of  Dr.  Stiles,  who  assigns  to  the 
whole  of  New  England,  at  the  present  period,  a  population  of  upwards  of 
five  hundred  thousand  souls. ^  The  States  of  New  England  were  more 
eager  to  Increase  their  population  than  to  publish  the  details  of  its  pro- 
gressive growth.  In  the  year  1763,  the  British  ministers,  who  were  intent 
upon  schemes  of  rendering  the  resources  of  America  directly  tributary  to 
the  revenue  of  the  parent  state,  instructed  the  governor  of  Massachusetts  to 
obtain  for  them  an  accurate  census  of  the  number  of  inhabitants  of  this  prov- 
ince. In  compliance  with  their  wish,  the  governor  proposed  to  the  assembly 
to  enact  a  law  requiring  every  parish  and  district  to  ascertain  and  report  the 
amount  of  Its  population.  But  this  measure  was  opposed  with  strong 
manifestations  both  of  patriotic  jealousy  and  of  Puritan  prejudice.  Many 
persons  entertained  a  suspicion  (which  the  frame  of  their  temper  would  have 

^  Wirt's  Life  of  Henry.  The  utility,  though  not  the  agreeableness,  of  the  moral  lesson 
which  Henry's  history  is  fitted  to  convey  is  increased  by  the  recollection,  that,  in  the  close  of 
his  life,  even  his  great  and  well-deserved  popularity  was  eclipsed,  in  consequence  of  his  con- 
scientious dissent  on  a  political  question  from  the  majority  of  that  people  whose  independence 
and  glory  he  had  signally  contributed  to  promote.  Such  instances  of  the  fleeting  tenure  of 
popular  favor,  while  they  damp  the  ardor  of  the  selfish  and  splenetic,  refine  the  motives  and 
elevate  the  views  of  the  upright  and  disinterested  professors  of  patriotism.  If  Henry  at  all 
deserved  his  final  loss  of  popularity,  it  was  by  occasionally  stooping  to  arts,  not  base  indeed, 
but  very  undignified,  of  augmenting  it.  He  is  said  to  have  on  many  occasions  affected  a  gross 
vulgarity  of  language  and  pronunciation,  in  order  to  gratify  the  vanity  of  the  coarsest  and  most 
ignorant  part  of  the  provincial  population, 

*  Warden.     Holme*.  ^  Stiles,  apud  Holmes. 


APP.  Ill]  STATE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  339 

led  them  to  infer  from  slighter  grounds)  that  some  sinister  design  of  British 
tyranny  and  encroachment  was  couched  under  the  proceeding  ;  and  not  a 
few  opposed  it  with  religious  scruples,  and  assimilated  it  to  King  David's 
unhallowed  and  calamitous  policy  in  numbering  the  people  of  Israel.  After 
being  postponed  from  session  to  session,  the  proposed  law  was  reluctantly- 
passed  by  a  small  majority  of  the  assembly  ;^  and  executed,  most  proba- 
bly, with  little  diligence  or  exactness. 

This  was  not  the  only  recent  instance  of  the  traces  that  yet  lingered  in 
popular  usage  and  sentiment,  and  even  in  the  provincial  jurisprudence,  of 
that  strong  Puritan  leaven  which  was  originally  imported  into  New  England. 
Symptoms  of  the  austere  and  rigid  spirit  of  the  first  Puritan  colonists  broke 
forth  on  various  occasions,  during  this  century,  in  proceedings  that  remind 
us  of  the  primitive  statutes  against  finery  of  apparel  and  long  or  elaborately 
curled  hair.  The  government  of  Connecticut  repeatedly  issued  orders  for 
reviving  a  strict  execution  of  ancient  laws  against  tale-bearing,  tavern- 
haunting,  idleness,  and  "  the  unseasonable  assemblies  of  young  people." 
We  have  formerly  remarked^  a  law,  by  which,  in  the  year  1646,  the  leg- 
islature of  Massachusetts  denoifnced  the  punishment  of  flogging  against  any 
man  bestowing  the  salute  of  a  kiss  on  a  woman  in  the  streets.  A  curious 
instance  has  been  related  of  the  execution  of  this  law,  more  than  a  century 
after  its  enactment.  We  are  informed  by  Burnaby  the  traveller,  that,  shortly 
before  his  visit  to  America  (which  took  place  in  1759),  the  captain  of  a 
British  man-of-war,  which  was  stationed  olF  the  coast  of  Massachusetts  for 
the  protection  of  its  trade  during  the  last  war  with  France,  happened  to 
return  from  a  cruise  on  a  Sunday  to  Boston,  where  he  had  left  his  wife. 
Learning  his  arrival,  this  lady  rushed  down  to  the  harbour  to  meet  him  ; 
and,  in  a  transport  of  joy,  they  could  not  refrain  from  tenderly  embracing 
each  other  in  the  open  street.  .  For  this  breach  of  the  laws  and  desecration 
of  the  Sabbath,  the  captain  was  summoned  to  appear  before  the  magistrates, 
who,  after  a  grave  rebuke,  sentenced  him  to  be  flogged.  The  punishment 
seems  to  have  inferred  no  ignominy  whatever  ;  and,  after  having  undergone 
it,  he  w^as  freely  admitted  into  the  best  company  of  the  place,  and  even  into 
the  society  of  the  magistrates,  who  so  little  guessed  the  resentment  which 
lurked  in  his  bosom,  as  to  accept  an  invitation  to  an  entertainment  on 
board  of  his  vessel  on  the  day  when  she  was  to  leave  the  station  and  sail  for 
England.  After  regaling  them  with  a  handsome  feast,  he  caused  his  sailors 
to  flog  them  all  on  the  deck  of  the  vessel  in  sight  of  the  town  ;  and  then 
telling  them  that  he  and  they  had  now  settled  all  their  mutual  claims  and 
debts,  he  dismissed  them  and  set  sail.  This  story  (somewhat  varied)  ap- 
peared in  the  English  newspapers  at  the  time.  Burnaby  declares  that  he 
was  assured  of  the  truth  of  it  by  the  most  respectable  inhabitants  of  Bos- 
ton.^ Probably  the  strictness  and  even  severity  of  manners  prescribed 
by  the  laws  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  contributed,  with  the  heavy 
taxes  occasioned  by  their  military  exertions,  to  those  frequent  emigrations 
which  now  began  to  take  place  from  their  territories  to  Nova  Scotia,  New 
•York,  and  others  of  the  British  colonies. 

The  conquest  of  the  French  dominions,  and  the  reduction  of  the  hostile 

Indians,  which  communicated  a  new  energy  to  the  principle  of  increase  in 

all  the  British  colonies,  was  beneficial  in  an  especial  degree  to  New  England. 

In  New  Hampshire,  more  particularly,  this  advantage  was  speedily  and  strik 

»  Hutchinson.  '  .4v«f,  Book  II.,  Chap.  II.  *  Burnaby  " 


340  HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

ingly  apparent.  For  many  years,  the  frontiers  of  this  province  had  been, 
with  little  intermission,  a  scene  of  suffering  and  danger  from  the  incursions 
of  the  Indian  allies  of  France.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  war,  many  of  the 
inhabitants  of  New  Hampshire  were  enabled  to  return  from  savage  captivity 
to  their  homes  ;  and  friends  who  had  long  been  separated  were  restored  to 
each  other's  society.  The  general  joy  was  heightened  by  the  considera- 
tion that  Canada  would  no  longer  be  a  source  of  terror  and  distress.  Re- 
lieved from  this  scourge.  New  Hampshire  began  to  expand  with  happy  vigor 
in  the  extension  of  settlements  and  the  multiplication  of  its  people.  From 
the  peace  of  Paris  may  be  dated  the  flourishing  state  of  this  province,  which 
till  then  was  circumscribed  and  stinted  in  its  growth  by  the  continual  pressure 
of  danger  from  a  savage  enemy.  But  now  that  the  land  had  rest,  its  fron- 
tiers were  rapidly  peopled  and  extended,  both  by  internal  increase,  and  by 
copious  emigration  from  the  other  States  of  New  England  ;  and  the  terri- 
tory, in  particular,  subsequently  distinguished  by  the  name  of  Vermont,  and 
whose  original  cultivation  we  have  already  remarked,  began  to  fill  apace 
with  inhabitants.  Proportioned  to  its  replenishment,  unfortunately,  was  the 
warmth  of  the  controversy  in  which  New  Hampshire  and  New  York  urged 
their  rival  pretensions  to  the  government  of  this  territory.  The  colonists  of 
Vermont,  who  would  probably  have  submitted  with  little  opposition  to  the 
jurisdiction  of  New  York,  were  provoked  to  the  most  violent  and  deter- 
mined resistance  of  this  pretension  by  the  claims  for  heavy  fines  and  quit- 
rents  which  were  blended  with  it.  Encouraged  by  two  leaders  of  ardent 
and  daring  spirit,  Ethan  Allen  and  Seth  Warner,  both  natives  of  Connecti- 
cut, a  numerous  body  of  the  colonists,  with  arms  in  their  hands,  rejected  the 
mandates  and  defied  the  menaces  of  the  government  of  New  York  ;  and 
though  the  assembly  of  this  province  enacted  a  decree  of  outlawry  against 
Allen  and  Warner,  its  power  was  unavailing  to  carry  the  sentence  into 
effect,  or  to  overcome  the  opposition  which  these  adventurers  promoted. 
The  controversy  was  conducted  with  a  virulence  unfriendly  to  civiHzation 
and  humanity  ;  but  it  proved  eventually  serviceable  in  a  high  degree  to  the 
political  interests  of  America,  by  educating  a  prompt  and  vigorous  spirit 
of  self-defence  among  the  growing  population  of  Vermont.^ 

A  passion  for  occupying  new  territories  and  forming  new  settlements 
rose  to  an  amazing  height  in  New  Hampshire,  and  in  every  other  quarter  of 
New  England  ;  ^  and  the  gratification  of  this  taste  fostered  a  stubborn  reso- 
lution and  habits  of  daring  and  hardy  enterprise,  congenial  to  the  prevalent 
sentiments  of  independence,  and  propitious  to  the  efforts  which  these  senti- 
ments portended.  The  continual  migrations  of  this  provincial  race  from 
their  own  proper  territory  to  every  other  quarter  of  America  exerted  also 
(ds  it  still  continues  to  exert)  a  highly  beneficial  effect  in  improving  and 
assimilating  all  the  American  communities,  by  spreading  through  their  peo- 
ple the  knowledge  and  virtue,  the  spirit,  character,  and  habits  so  diligently 
cultivated  in  New  England,  and  so  honorably  distinctive  of  her  pecuhar 
population.  Among  other  new  settlements  created  by  the  exuberant  vigor 
of  New  England  at  this   period  was  one  whose  primitive  manners  and  hap- 

^  When  the  king's  attorney  at  New  York  urged  Ethan  Allen  to  abandon  his  opposition  to 
the  pretensions  of  this  province,  reminding  him  that  might  commonly  prevails  over  right,,  Allen 
coolly  replied,  "  The  gods  of  the  valleys  are  not  gods  of  the  hills."  Allen  was  at  the  head 
of  a  numerous  and  determined  body  of  hardy  planters  who  wers  called  "  The  Green  Mountain 
Boys,"  from  a  range  of  hills  within  the  territory  which  they  inhabited.  The  name  Vermont 
is  derived  from  a  translation  into  French  of  the  name  of  these  hills. 

*  Belknap.     Williams's  Hislorij  of  Vermont.    Ira  Allen's  History  of  Vermont 


APP.  UI]  STATE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.  341 

piness,  as  well  as  the  miserable  desolation  which  it  subsequently  underwent 
in  the  Revolutionary  War,  have  been  rescued  from  neglect  and  oblivion  by 
the  genius  of  a  poet  of  Scotland,  —  the  settlement  of  Wyoming,  on  the 
banks  of  the  river  Susquehannah.  The  territory  of  this  settlement  had  been 
purchased  several  years  before,  by  an  Association  of  Connecticut  planters, 
from  the  Indian  confederacy  of  the  Six  Nations  ;  but  first  the  war  with 
France,  and  afterwards  the  war  with  the  Indians,  deterred  the  resort  of  in- 
habitants to  the  soil  till  the  year  1763,  when  it  was  first  colonized  by  emi- 
grants from  Connecticut.  The  social  union  of  various  races  of  men,  and 
the  conversion  of  gallant  warriors  into  patriarchs  and  husbandmen,  so  beau- 
tifully described  by  Campbell,  in  his  Gertrude  of  Wyoming ^  is  rendered 
probable  by  the  increased  resort  which  now  took  place  of  emigrants  to 
America  from  every  quarter  of  Europe,  including  a  considerable  number 
of  British  officers,  who,  deprived  of  their  occupation  by  the  peace,  and 
smitten  with  the  charms  of  rural  life  in  America,  transferred  their  residence 
to  a  land  to  which  their  victorious  heroism  had  imparted  additional  value 
and  security.  This  settlement,  hke  the  occupation  of  the  Vermont  territo- 
ry, gave  rise  to  a  controversy  on  which  poetry  has  no  colors  to  bestow. 
A  keen  htigation  for  the  dominion  of  it  arose  between  the  government 
of  Connecticut,  to  which  it  properly  belonged,  and  the  proprietaries  of 
Pennsylvania,  who  derived  a  plausible  claim  from  the  vagueness  of  their 
charter,  and  who,  like  the  royal  governors  of  New  York  and  New  Hamp- 
shire, were  eager  to  augment  their  emoluments  by  multiplying  the  occa- 
sions of  exacting  fees  for  grants  of  land,  to  which  the  grantees  had  al- 
ready, by  previous  purchase  from  the  natural  owners,  a  much  more  equi- 
table title  than  those  pretenders  to  sovereignty  were  able  to  confer.^ 

Shortly  after  the  conquest  of  Canada,  there  was  discovered  at  the  mouth 
of  the  river  St.  Lawrence  a  valuable  whale-fishery,  which  had  been  un- 
known to  the  French.  Its  resources  were  made  tributary  to  the  people  of 
New  England  with  such  prompt  and  progressive  vigor  of  appropriation,  that 
in  the  year  1761  ten  New  England  ships,  and  in  1763  no  fewer  than 
eighty,  were  profitably  employed  in  this  adventure.^ 

In  New  England,  at  this  period,  there  were  at  least  five  hundred  and 
thirty  Congregational  churches,  besides  the  ecclesiastical  associations  which 
were  framed  upon  the  model  of  the  church  of  England,  and  had  of  late  years 
considerably  extended  their  influence  in  all  the  States.^  Much  genuine 
piety  still  survived  in  New  England  ;  and  this  noble  principle  would  probably 
have  obtained  both  a  wider  range  and  a  more  lasting  empire,  if  the  anti- 
quated institutions  of  Puritanism  had  been  sooner  and  more  fully  surren- 
dered to  the  changes  which  the  innovating  current  of  time  had  accom- 
pHshed  in  the  frame  of  general  sentiment  and  opinion.  But  laws  enacted  by 
the  fathers  of  New  England,  and  consecrated  by  long  respect,  were  more 
easily  defended  by  a  few  zealous  partisans,  than  abrogated  by  the  indiffer- 
ence or  dislike  of  a  more  numerous  but  disunited  portion  of  the  community. 
The  professors  of  Puritan  principles  in  New  England  had  been  always 
the  stanchest  advocates  of  provincial  liberty  ;  and  perhaps  their  favorite 
policy  of  blending  religious  with  political  ordinances  was  now  rather  pru- 
dentially  supported  than  sincerely  espoused  by  the  strong  and  rising  party 
which  regarded  every  object  as  of  secondary  importance,  in  comparison  with 
the  exaltation  of  popular  power  and  the  promotion  of  American  independ- 

»  Trumbull.  »  Jinnuat  Register  for  17641  ^Tfj^i;^^; 

cc  * 


342  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

ence.  Proud  of  the  generous  daring  and  fortitude,  but  ashamed  of  the  fer- 
vent, though  sometimes  coarse  and  erring,  piety  of  their  forefathers,  many- 
New  England  patriots  were  willing  to  uphold  in  the  amplest  show  of  obse- 
quious respect  the  ordinances  of  the  primitive  Puritans  ;  while  more  or 
less  consciously,  and  more  or  less  openly,  they  studied  to  trartslate  the  re- 
ligious zeal,  which  was  the  real  parent  principle  of  their  conduct,  into  more 
earthborn  fire,  affecting  nothing  higher  than  political  freedom.  Others, 
confounding  religion  with  one  particular  model  of  its  outward  ordinances,  clung 
with  traditionary  reverence  to  practices  of  which  the  originating  spirit  and 
vital  principle  had  subsided  or  departed.  Such  circumstances  could  not  fail 
to  engender  consequences  the  most  pernicious  to  the  purity  of  Christian 
doctrine,  and  the  warmth  and  sincerity  of  Christian  sentiment.  Laws  and 
usages  substantially  condemned  by  the  sentiments  of  a  great  majority  of  the 
social  community,  but  preserved  by  the  honest  conviction  of  a  few  admirers, 
and  the  acquiescence  of  indifferent  or  interested  supporters,  could  produce 
only  grimace  and  formality  ;  and  infallibly  tended  to  a  general  derehction  of 
that  system  of  Christian  piety  which  human  weakness  sought  to  incorporate 
with  the  mouldering  fabric  of  its  own  fleeting  institutions.^ 

No  fewer  than  five  printing-presses  were  at  this  time  maintained  in  con- 
stant employment  at  Boston.  Within  the  limits  of  the  old  Plymouth  terri- 
tory, which  was  now  annexed  to  this  province,  there  still  remained  upwards 
of  nine  hundred  Indians.  In  the  island  of  Nantucket  about  three  hundred 
and  fifty  of  this  race  were  still  to  be  found.  In  Duke's  county,  in  the 
same  province,  there  remained  about  three  hundred  Indians  ;  and  at  Natick 
only  thirty-seven  of  the  Indian  inhabitants  survived.  Nearly  one  thousand 
Indians  continued  to  occupy  lands  within  the  territory  of  Connecticut.  In 
the  months  of  September  and  October,  1760,  more  than  one  hundred 
bears  were'  killed  in  one  district  of  the  county  of  Hampshire,  in  Massachu- 
setts. The  manufacture  of  sugar  and  molasses  from  the  juice  of  the  maple- 
tree  was  first  introduced  into  New  England  in  the  year  1765.^ 

Of  the  population  and  condition  of  Maryland  at  the  present  period  no 
memorial  has  been  preserved.  The  proprietary  authority  still  subsisted 
in  the  family  of  Lord  Baltimore  ;  and  though  it  was  not  exercised  with  that 
sordid  and  illiberal  pohcy  which  provoked  so  much  dislike  against  the  kin- 
dred institution  in  Pennsylvania,  it  seems  to  have  been  regarded  with  little 
respect  or  affection.  We  have  formerly  remarked  ^  a  law  of  this  province 
by  which  the  importation  of  felons  from  the  parent  state  was  prohibited.  But 
either  this  law  was  subsequently  repealed,  or,  more  probably,  it  had  fallen 
into  desuetude  ;  for  in  the  chronicles  of  English  judicial  transactions  Mary- 
land is  more  frequently  particularized  than  any  of  the  other  colonies  as  the 
scene  to  which  felons  were  conveyed.  Four  years  after  the  present  epoch, 
the  proprietary  himself  was  in  some  danger  of  being  included  in  the  annual 
cargo  of  convicts  from  England,  and  compelled  to  reside  as  an  exiled  felon 
in  the  country  where  he  possessed  the  prerogative  of  a  feudal  sovereign. 
Frederick  Calvert,  Lord   Baltimore,  the  unworthy  descendant  of  the  first 

'  This  subject  is  illustrated  with  excellent  sense  and  enlightened  piety  in  two  anniversary- 
discourses  by  the  Rev.  W.  P.  Lunt,  published  at  Boston  in  1840.  "  11  semble  que  le  Seigneur 
ait  charge  successivement  certaines  portions  particulieres  de  son  Eglise  d'elever  pour  un 
temps  le  flambeau  de  sa  parole  parmi  les  homines ;  et  que  lors  que  leur  temps  assign^  est 
6chu,  il  transporte  sur  d'autres  cette  tache  magnifique."     Bost. 

*  Universal  History.     Holmes.    Annual  Register  for  1760  and  1765. 

3  Jinte,  Book  III. 


APP.  Ill]  STATE  OF  MARYLAND  AND  THE  CAROLINAS.  343 

proprietaries  of  Maryland,  was  an  accomplished  scholar  and  wit,^  but  an 
utter  stranger  to  piety,  morality,  and  decency.  During  the  lifetime  of  Fred- 
erick, Prince  of  Wales,  son  of  George  the  Second,  he  formed  one  of  the 
tribe  of  factious  and  intriguing  politicians  of  whom  the  petty  court  of  that 
prince  was  composed,  and  is  mentioned  with  no  small  opprobrium  in  the 
Diary  of  his  associate,  Lord  Melcombe.  He  openly  professed  a  systematic 
and  exclusive  devotion  to  voluptuous  pleasure,  and  a  contempt  for  all  re- 
straints except  the  penal  laws  of  human  society  ;  and  yet  these  laws,  which 
he  alone  regarded,  had  nearly  inflicted  on  him  a  doom  equally  unjust  and 
Ignominious.  A  consequence,  by  no  means  extraordinary,  of  one  of  the 
profligate  amours  which  he  indulged,  was  a  false  charge  of  rape,  for  which 
he  underwent  criminal  trial  at  the  assizes  for  the  English  county  of  Surrey  in 
the  year  1768.  He  was  acquitted  after  a  long  judicial  inquiry,  in  the  course 
of  which,  though  he  denied  the  particular  guilt  imputed  to  him,  he  openly 
admitted  his  general  libertinism  in  a  speech  more  remarkable  for  its  elegance 
than  its  modesty.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  character  and  conduct 
of  this  nobleman,  whom  the  people  of  Maryland  were  compelled  to  recog- 
nize as  their  proprietary  sovereign,  produced  on  their  minds  an  impression 
very  remote  from  respect  for  the  institutions  and  supremacy  of  the  parent 
state.  The  title,  which  Lord  Baltimore  thus  disgraced,  became  extinct  at 
his  own  death,  which  occurred  at  Naples  in  the  year  1771.  He  bequeathed 
his  rights  over  the  province  of  Maryland  to  his  natural  son,  Henry  Harford, 
who  was  then  a  child  at  school,  and  whom  the  subsequent  rupture  between 
Britain  and  America  prevented  from  ever  deriving  any  advantage  from  the 
bequest.^ 

North  Carolina,  in  the  year  1763,  is  reported  to  have  contained  about 
ninety-five  thousand  white  inhabitants.  The  contentment  and  prosperity  of 
the  people  of  this  province  had  suffered  a  much  greater  abatement  from  the 
extortion  and  injustice  practised  by  Governor  Dobbs  and  other  administra- 
tors of  British  authority,  than  from  their  share,  comparatively  a  small  one, 
of  the  calamities  of  the  late  Indian  wars.  Amidst  a  great  deal  of  genuine 
American  virtue  and  happiness.  North  Carolina  contained  a  more  numerous 
body  of  indigent  and  discontented  freemen  than  existed  in  any  or  perhaps 
all  of  the  other  British  settlements.  Education  was  generally  neglected  ;  the 
laws  and  the  executive  officers  enjoyed  little  influence  or  respect  ;  and  it  was 
difficult  among  this  people  to  recover  payment  of  debts,  or  to  obtain  satis- 
faction for  injuries.^ 

South  Carolina,  which  had  continued  to  advance  in  growth,  notwithstand- 
ing the  pressure  of  the  war,  reaped  an  ample  and  immediate  share  of  the 
advantages  resulting  from  the  peace  of  Paris.  In  consequence  of  an  act  of 
its  assembly,  which  appropriated  a  large  fund  to  the  payment  of  bounties 
to  industrious  laborers  from  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  and  to  all  foreign 
Protestants,  resorting  to  the  province  within  three  years  and  forming  set- 
i  tlements  in  its  interior  districts,  vast  numbers  of  emigrants  from  Germany, 

England,  Scotland,  and  especially  Ireland,  eagerly  embraced  the  prospect 

'  He  published  Jl  Tour  to  the  East  in  1763  -  4,  and  some  other  literary  compositions  of  slen- 
t  der  merit  and  little  note. 

\  ^  Annual  Re orister  for  1768  ^nd  for  1771.     Lord  Melcombe's  Dmry.     "  Whatever  was  the 

^  aberrance  of  the  last  Lord  Baltimore,  he  did  not  participate  in  the  late  unhappy  measures  [of 

the  British  government].     Maryland  continued  to  grow  in  people,  wealth,  and  happiness  un- 
der his  proprietariship.     Men  of  genius  and  enterprise  were  found  in  every  county  ;  and  the 
capital  had  become  a  little  court  of  taste  and  fashion."     Griffith's  History  of  Maryland. 
^  WilliamsoD      Holmes. 


344  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

and  became  citizens  of  the  New  World  in  South  Carolina.  Hither,  in  the 
year  1764,  were  transported,  at  the  charitable  expense  of  the  British  gov- 
ernment and  people,  several  hundreds  of  indigent  but  pious  and  industri- 
ous Germans  who  had  repaired  to  England  on  the  faith  of  an  invitation  from 
an  adventurer  of  their  own  country,  but  were  abandoned  by  him  when  he 
found  himself  unable  to  fulfil  his  promise  of  conducting  them  to  occupy 
a  territorial  grant  which  he  had  hoped  to  obtain  in  America.  In  1765,  the 
province  contained  one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  inhabitants,  of  whom 
ninety  thousand  were  slaves.  Most  of  the  free  colonists  were  in  easy  cir- 
cumstances ;  and  some  instances  were  not  wanting  of  great  accumulations  of 
wealth.  ''  It  has  been  remarked,"  says  the  historian  Hewit,  at  this  period, 
"  that  there  are  more  persons  possessed  of  between  five  and  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  sterling  in  South  Carolina,  than  are  to  be  found  anywhere 
else  among  the  same  number  of  people.  In  point  of  rank,  all  men  regard 
their  neighbours  as  their  equals,  and  a  noble  spirit  of  benevolence  pervades 
the  society."  The  planters  were  generally  distinguished  by  their  hospitable 
dispositions,  their  sociable  manners,  and  the  luxurious  cheer  of  their  tables. 
Almost  every  family  kept  a  one-horse  chaise  ;  and  some  maintained  the 
most  splendid  equipages  that  Britain  could  furnish.  All  the  new  Hterary 
publications  in  London  were  regularly  transmitted  to  this  province.  Hunt- 
ing and  horse-racing  were  favorite  anmsements  of  the  men.  Assembhes, 
concerts,  balls,  and  plays  were  common.  "  It  is  acknowledged  by  all,"  says 
Hewit,  "  but  especially  by  strangers,  that  the  ladies  in  this  province  con- 
siderably outshine  the  men.^  They  are  not  only  sensible,  discreet,  and  vir- 
tuous, but  also  adorned  with  most  of  those  polite  and  elegant  accomphsh- 
ments  becoming  their  sex."  A  wasteful  and  slovenly  system  of  husbandry 
prevailed  throughout  all  South  Carolina.^ 

From  the  year  1756,  when  the  State  of  New  York,  as  we  have  seen, 
contained  about  ninety-seven  thousand  white  inhabitants,  no  notice  occurs 
of  its  population  till  the  year  1771,  when  the  number  of  white  inhabitants 
is  said  to  hav^  amounted  to  upwards  of  one  hundred  and  forty-eight  thou- 
sand.^ The  advance  of  population  in  this  province  was  repressed  by  the 
monopoly  which  a  few  wealthy  planters  had  obtained  of  vast  tracts  of  land, 
which  reduced  many  emigrants  to  the  necessity  of  becoming  tenants  instead 
of  proprietors,  and  prompted  many  more  to  abandon  their  original  purpose 
of  settling  in  New  York,  and  extend  their  migration  to  other  provinces,  where 
land  could  be  obtained  on  terms  more  satisfactory.  No  credible  statement 
has  been  transmitted  of  the  population  of  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Del- 
aware, or  Georgia,  at  this  epoch,  nor  at  any  subsequent  period  prior  to  the 
American  Revolution.  They  had  all,  doubtless,  considerably  enlarged  their 
growth,  which  now  advanced  with  an  amazing  increase  of  vigor,  from  the 
security  afforded  by  the  treaty  of  Paris,  and  the  augmented  flow  of  emigra- 
tion from  every  part  of  Europe.  In  the  year  1760,  the  Quakers  formed 
about  a  fifth  part  of  the  population  of  Pennsylvania.^ 

The  inhabitants  of  the  town  of  New  York  at  this  period  are  described 
as  almost  wholly  engrossed  with  mercantile  pursuits,  from  which  they 
sought  a  relaxation  in  gay,  expensive,  and    ostentatious  festivity,  —  little 

'  This  praise  was  justified  in  a  very  remarkable  manner  in  the  year  1780,  when  the  cour- 
jeous  patriotism  and  inflexible  -•'-■  -„._... 

cause  of  liberty  in  the  province. 


hgeous  patriotism  and  inflexible  fortitude  of  the  women  of  South  Carolina  restored  the  expiring 


*  Warden.     Hewit.     Annual  Register  for  1764. 

'  Ramsay's  History  of  the  American  Revolution.  •*  Burnaby. 


APP.  Ill]    STATE  OF  NEW  YORK,  NEW  JERSEY,  AND  GEORGIA.  345 

conscious  or  heedful,  in  general,  of  any  value  that  was  not  demonstrable 
by  legers  or  recognized  in  commercial  transactions,  and  far  inferior  in  re- 
finement of  taste,  elevation  of  sentiment,  and  extent  of  knowledge,  to  the 
citizens  of  Philadelphia.  An  injurious  influence  was  exerted  on  the  man- 
ners and  habits  of  society  in  New  York  by  the  number  of  adventurers  whose 
residence  in  the  place  was  merely  temporary,  and  who  resorted  to  it  for  the 
purpose  of  accumulating  fortunes  with  which  they  hoped  to  purchase  pleasure 
or  distinction  in  the  metropohtan  cities  of  Europe.^  Yet  some  learned  and 
ingenious  men  were  produced  in  New  York,  and  found  a  kindred  spirit  and 
willing  associate  in  Golden,  for  many  years  the  lieutenant-governor  of  the 
province,  who  was  an  accomplished  scholar  and  philosopher,  and  devoted 
his  leisure  from  official  duty  to  the  pursuits  of  literature  with  enterprising 
vigor  and  distinguished  success.^  In  the  year  1758,  a  course  of  academic 
tuition  was  commenced  in  a  college  at  New  York,  for  which  a  charter  and 
a  grant  of  money  had  been  obtained  from  the  crown  four  years  before.  In 
1759,  a  donation  of  five  hundred  pounds  was  made  to  this  institution  by  the 
society  established  in  Britain  for  the  propagation  of  the  gospel  in  foreign 
parts  ;  and  in  1764,  more  than  ten  thousand  pounds  was  collected  by  sub- 
scription in  England  for  the  benefit  of  the  colleges  of  New  York  and  Phila- 
delphia.^ A  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Arts,  Agriculture,  and  Economy 
in  the  Province  of  JSTew  York  was  estabhshed  there  in  1765,  on  the  plan 
of  the  Society  of  Arts  at  London. 

Belcher,  the  governor  of  New  Jersey,  dying  in  1757,  was  succeeded  in 
the  following  year  by  Francis  Bernard,  whom  we  have  seen  removed  to  the 
government  of  Massachusetts  in  1760,  when  he  was  replaced  in  New 
Jersey  by  Thomas  Boone.  In  1761,  Josiah  Hardy  succeeded  to  Boone, 
who  was  advanced  to  the  government  of  South  Carolina  ;  and  in  1763, 
Hardy  was  replaced  by  William,  a  natural  son  of  Dr.  Benjamin  Frankhn.'* 
We  have  remarked  the  assumption  of  the  government  of  Pennsylvania 
in  1763  by  John  Penn,  son  of  one  of  the  proprietaries.  He  retained  this 
office  till  1771,  when  he  was  superseded  by  his  brother  Richard  ;  but  on 
the  death  of  their  father  in  the  same  year,  John,  who  then  became  himself 
a  proprietary,  again  assumed  the  government  of  the  province.^ 

In  none  of  the  British  colonies  were  the  advantages  attendant  on  the 
treaty  of  Paris  more  speedily  or  strikingly  manifested  than  in  Georgia.  This 
young  provincial  community,  destitute  of  commercial  credit,  and  peculiarly 
exposed  to  hostile  molestation,  had  hitherto  experienced  but  a  feeble  and 
languid  progress  ;  but  from  the  present  period  it  advanced  with  sudden  and 
surprising  rapidity  in  wealth  and  population.  The  British  merchants,  con- 
sidering the  colony  securely  established  and  likely  to  attain  a  flourishing 
estate,  were  no  longer  backward  in  extending  credit  to  its  planters,  and 
freely  supphed  them  with  negroes  and  with  the  produce  of  the  manufactures 
of  Britain.  But  the  colony  was  mainly  indebted  for  the  sudden  growth 
which  it  now  exhibited  to  its  governor.  Sir  James  Wright,  who  was  endowed 
with  wisdom  to  discern  and  resolution  to  pursue  the  most  efi^ectual  means 

1  Gait's  Life  of  West.     Grant's  Memoirs  of  an  American  Lady. 

'  Colden  is  most  generally  known  by  his  excellent  History  of  the  Five  Nations.  He  was 
also  the  author  of  a  treatise  entitled  Explication  of  the  First  Causes  of  Action  in  Matter  and  of 
the  Causes  of  Gravitation.,  published  at  New  York  in  1745. 

3  Winterbotham.  Miller's  Retrospect  of  the  Eiehteenth  Century.  Annual  Register  for  1759, 
/or  1764,  and /or  1765. 

*  S.  Smith.  6  Proud. 

VOL.   II.  44  ^ 


346  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

for  its  improvement. 1  In  addition  to  the  attractions  presented  by  the  hberal 
and  benevolent  strain  of  his  administration,  he  discovered  and  demonstrated 
the  fertihty  of  the  low  lands  and  river  swamps,  —  by  the  judicious  manage- 
ment and  culture  of  which  he  acquired  a  plentiful  fortune  ;  and  his  success- 
ful example  at  once  aroused  the  emulation  of  the  planters,  and  prompted 
the  resort  of  enterprising  strangers.  Many  new  plantations  were  formed 
both  by  retired  British  officers  and  by  Carolinians  around  Sunbury  and  on 
the  river  Alatamaha.  Stokes,  an  English  lawyer  who  resided  a  considera- 
ble time  in  Georgia,  declares,  that,  under  the  administration  of  Wright, 
"  this  province  made  such  a  rapid  progress  in  population,  agriculture,  and 
commerce,  as  no  other  country  ever  equalled  in  so  short  a  time."  The 
rapidity  of  its  progress  is  strikingly  exemplified  by  a  comparison  of  the  pres- 
ent state  of  its  exports  with  the  amount  which  ten  years  after  they  attained. 
In  1763,  the  exports  of  Georgia  consisted  of  7,500  barrels  of  rice,  9,633 
pounds  of  indigo,  and  1,250  bushels  of  Indian  corn,  which,  together  with 
silk,^  deer  and  beaver  skins,  naval  stores,  provisions,  and  timber,  amounted 
in  value  to  £27,021  sterling  ;  while  in  1773  the  province  exported  staple 
commodities  to  the  value  of  £  124,677  sterling.  The  valuable  plant,  sago, 
whose  nutritious  and  antiscorbutic  properties  had  been  remarked  by  Bowen, 
a  traveller  in  China,  was,  by  the  same  enterprising  observer,  discovered 
in  Georgia,  whence  he  imported  it  into  Britain,  and  introduced  its  use  about 
the  year  1766.  Among  other  emigrants,  who  formed  a  valuable  accession 
to  the  population  of  Georgia  about  this  period,  were  a  number  of  Quakers, 
who,  under  the  conduct  of  Joseph  Mattock,  a  pubhc-spirited  member  of 
this  religious  society,  founded  a  settlement  about  thirty  miles  from  Augusta, 
to  which,  in  honor  of  the  governor  who  actively  promoted  its  establishment, 
they  gave  the  name  of  Wrightsborough.  Mattock  was  recognized  as  chief 
magistrate  of  this  settlement,  and  continued  to  preside  over  it,  with  patri- 
archal grace,  till  a  very  advanced  age.  In  the  year  1760,  the  assembly  of 
this  province  enacted  a  law  requiring  all  persons,  who  pretended  right  to 
landed  property  in  Georgia,  to  present  themselves  before  the  expiry  of 
three  years  to  the  governor  and  council,  and  exhibit  proof  in  support  of  their 
claims  and  titles.^ 

Burnaby,  who  was  accustomed  to  the  grandeur  and  comfort  of  England, 
remarks  that  all  the  elegant  and  even  the  luxurious  fruits  of  wealth  were 
displayed  in  the  American  provinces.  In  the  houses  of  some  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  New  Jersey  he  found  specimens  of  the  works  of  the  great  painters 
of  Europe.  In  a  journey  of  twelve  hundred  miles  through  America,  this 
traveller  did  not  meet  a  single  individual  who  solicited  alms  from  him.  He 
declares  that  the  people,  in  most  of  the  States  which  he  visited,  were  strongly 
imbued  with  sentiments  of  independence  ;  and  that  it  was  a  frequent  remark 
with  them,  that  the  tide  of  dominion  was  running  westward,  and  that  Ameri- 
ca was  destined  to  be  the  mistress  of  the  world  A  So  much  jealousy,  howev- 
er, he  observes,  so  much  dissimilarity  and  mutual  contrariety  and  alienation 
prevailed  between  the  people  of  the  different  States,  that  a  permanent  union 
of  their  strength  and  councils  seemed  to  him  perfectly  impossible.^ 

^  Yet  Governor  Wright,  it  appears,  with  predominant,  if  not  exclusive,  regard  to  the  sup- 
posed interests  of  British  trade  and  supremacy,  advised  the  English  ministers  to  discourage 
the  formation  of  settlements  in  the  interior  of  the  country.     Walsh's  Appeal. 

2  In  1759,  upwards  often  thousand  pounds'  weight  of  raw  silk  was  lodged  at  Savannah  for 
exportation.     Holmes. 

^  Hewit.  Stokes's  Constitutions  of  the  British  Colonics,  Morse's  American  Gazetteer.  Bar- 
tram's  Travels.     Annual  Recrister  for  1760  and  1766. 

See  Note  XXVII..  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  '  Burnaby. 


APP.  Ill]  SCHEMES  OF  TAXATION.  347 

The  disunion  between  the  different  provincial  communities  appears  to 
have  been  a  favorite  consideration  with  those  Enghsh  politicians  who  were 
apprehensive  of  American  independence.  They  knew  that  the  natural 
progress  of  society  in  America  was  towards  independence,  and  that  the 
prevalent  sentiments  of  many  of  the  colonists  tended  to  accelerate  the  ar- 
rival of  this  interesting  epoch  in  their  national  existence  ;  but  they  hoped 
that  it  would  yet  be  long  retarded,  partly  by  British  policy,  and  partly  by  the 
absence  of  united  counsel  and  fellow-feeling  between  the  colonial  communi- 
ties. Unhappily  for  their  wishes,  British  policy  was  destined  to  operate 
very  differently,  and  not  only  to  stimulate  the  Americans  to  an  earlier  as- 
sumption of  independence,  by  rendering  it  more  than  ever  desirable  to  them, 
but  to  facilitate  its  attainment  by  compacting  them  in  a  federal  union  ce- 
mented by  the  strongest  sense  of  common  interest  and  danger.  An  English 
writer  of  considerable  sagacity,  in  a  political  treatise  which  he  published  in 
the  year  1764,  endeavoured  to  combat  the  fears  of  American  revolt  enter- 
tained by  his  countrymen.  ''If  the  British  constitution,"  says  this  writer, 
"  should  corrupt  and  fall  to  ruin,  as  all  others  have  done,  it  will  be  a 
blessing  to  mankind,  that  Its  colonies,  its  children  grown  to  maturity,  should 
not  be  involved  in  the  same  destruction,  but  inherit  by  succession  the  blessings 
of  liberty.  There  is  nothing  but  common  and  imminent  danger  or  violent 
oppression  can  make  them  ttni/e."^  Almost  all  the  political  reasoners  in 
Great  Britain  seem  to  have  completely  overlooked  this  obvious  and  forcibl6 
consideration,  —  that  the  same  jealous  spirit  of  independence,  vvhich  ordina- 
rily served  to  disunite  the  American  provinces,  would  operate  as  a  principle 
of  union  against  any  danger  or  encroachment  common  to  the  liberties  of 
the  whole.  Yet  all  the  statesmen  of  the  mother  country  were  not  equally 
blind.  Before  the  conclusion  of  the  late  war,  the  celebrated  English  lawyer, 
Pratt,  afterwards  Lord  Camden,  remarked  to  Dr.  Franklin,  "For  all  that 
you  Americans  say  of  your  loyalty,  I  know  you  will  one  day  throw  off  your 
dependence  upon  this  country  ;  and,  notwithstanding  your  boasted  aflection 
for  it,  will  set  up  for  independence."  Franklin  answered,  "  No  such  idea  is 
entertained  in  the  minds  of  the  Americans  ;  and  no  such  idea  will  ever 
enter  their  heads,  unless  you  grossly  abuse  them."  "Very  true,"  repHed 
Pratt, — "that  is  one  of  the  main  causes  which,  I  see,  will  happen,  and 
will  produce  the  event. "^ 

We  have  remarked^  the  various  schemes  of  policy  relative  to  America, 
which  were  entertained  by  the  British  cabinet  after  the  peace  of  Aix-la- 
Chapelle.  None  of  these  schemes,  except  that  of  subjecting  America  to 
direct  taxation  by  the  British  parliament,  was  even  at  the  time  decidedly 
renounced.  The  design  of  taxation,  which  we  have  seen  rejected  with  pro- 
phetic warning  of  Its  Impolicy  by  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  was  first  embraced, 
and  then,  on  farther  consideration,  abandoned  by  Pelham,  whose  conduct,  in 
this  instance,  was  imitated  by  Pitt.  Shortly  after  Pitt's  accession  to  power, 
it  was  signified  to  Dr.  Franklin  that  this  minister  was  disgusted  with  the  dila- 
tory manner  In  which  troops  and  money  were  raised  for  the  public  service  In 
America,  and  especially  in  the  proprietary  jurisdictions  ;  that,  if  he  should 
continue  one  of  the  ministry  at  the  close  of  the  war,  he  would  take  measures 
to  deprive  the  colonies  of  the  power  of  thus  retarding  the  necessary  sup- 
plies ;  and  that,  if  he  should  previously  leave  the  cabinet,  he  would  trans- 

'  Farmer's  Vino  of  the  Policy  of  Great  Britain,  «fec.  ^  Gordon. 

3  dnte,  Book  X.,  Chap.  II. 


348  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

mit  the  same  purpose  as  a  monitory  bequest  to  his  successors.  The  meas- 
ures which  Pitt  contemplated  were  not  then  specified  ;  but  in  the  close  of 
the  year  1759,  in  a  letter  which  he  had  occasion  to  write  to  Francis 
Fauquier,  the  lieutenant-governor  of  Virginia,  he  intimated,  that,  when  the 
war  was  over,  a  direct  revenue  to  Britain  must  be  drawn  from  America  by 
parhamentary  taxation.^  Fauquier,  in  reply,  expressed  his  apprehension  that 
this  novel  proceeding  would  excite  much  disgust  and  disturbance  in  the  col- 
onies ;  —  a  suggestion,  which,  enforced  by  his  own  farther  consideration  of 
the  subject,  seems  to  have  diverted  Pitt  from  his  dangerous  purpose. 

The  probable  enlargement  of  the  British  settlements  in  America,  by 
extension  of  the  colonial  occupation  into  the  interior  of  the  country,  was  a 
prospect  regarded  in  Britain  with  an  inquietude  and  perplexity  increased  by 
the  considerations  connected  with  the  conquest  of  Canada.  Should  the 
existing  provinces  be  suffered  or  encouraged  so  to  extend  themselves  ? 
should  distinct  inland  provinces  be  formed  ?  should  no  interior  extension  be 
permitted  ?  were  questions  which  employed  the  thoughts  and  divided  the 
opinions  of  the  statesmen  of  Britain.  Their  speculations  on  this  subject, 
however  discordant,  issued  all  out  of  the  parent  principle  of  the  subservi- 
ency of  America  to  the  wealth,  power,  and  grandeur  of  Britain.  To  some 
politicians  it  appeared  that  the  ultimate  and  inevitable  independence  of 
America  would  be  retarded  by  extension  of  interior  occupation,  and  its 
effects  in  opening  new  scenes  of  agriculture  and  widening  the  space  which 
the  colonists  must  first  completely  subdue  and  appropriate.  But  the  pre- 
ponderating opinion  in  the  British  cabinet  was,  that  all  interior  extension  of 
the  British  settlements  in  America  should  be  avoided  and  resisted  ;  and, 
in  a  report  presented  at  this  epoch  by  the  English  Board  of  Trade  and 
Plantations  to  the  Lords  of  the  privy  council,  occasion  is  taken  to  "re- 
mind your  Lordships  of  that  principle  which  was  adopted  by  this  board, 
and  approved  and  confirmed  by  his  Majesty,  immediately  after  the  treaty 
of  Paris,  namely,  the  confining  the  western  extent  of  settlements  to  such 
a  distance  from  the  seacoast,  as  that  those  settlements  should  lie  within  the 
reach  of  the  trade  and  commerce  of  this  kingdom,  whereby  also  will  be  facil- 
itated the  exercise  of  that  authority  and  jurisdiction  which  is  conceived 
to  be  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  the  colonies  in  a  due  subordination 
to  and  dependence  upon  the  mother  country."  That  the  rise  of  domestic 
manufactures  in  America  would  be  promoted  or  retarded  by  the  extension 
of  interior  territorial  occupation  was  the  main  commercial  argument  recip- 
rocated between  the  parties  to  this  discussion. 

Schemes  of  innovation  in  the  constitutions  of  the  American  States,  im- 
plying an  enlargement  of  the  power  of  the  crown  and  of  the  influence  of 
the  church  of  England,  were  continually  broached  and  discussed  in  the  Brit- 
ish cabinet.  The  English  bishops  incessantly  pressed  upon  the  ministry 
the  adoption  of  Bishop  Butler's  project  of  introducing  an  Episcopal  hierar- 
chy into  America  ;  and,  though  the  ministry  were  unable  to  devise  any 
means  of  surmounting  the  difficulties  by  which  this  proposition  had  been 
formerly  defeated,  they  hearkened  to  every  suggestion  relative  to  it,  and 
pursued  a  policy  which  seems  to  have  been  intended  to  pave  the  way  for 
Its  adoption.     It  was  customary  to  impart  to  the  officers  of  the  crown  in 

^  That  Pitt  had  wisely  chosen  the  correspondent  to  whom  he  imparted  this  project  appears 
both  from  the  soundness  of  the  advice  which  he  received,  and  from  the  representation  which 
Jefferson  has  transmitted  of  Fauquier,  whom  he  characterizes  as  "  the  ablest  man  who  had 
ever  filled  the  office  of  governor  of  Virginia."     Jefferson's  Memoirs. 


APP.  HI]  SCHEME   OF  AN  EPISCOPAL  HIERARCHY.  349 

America  so  much  acquaintance  with  the  policy  of  the  cabinet  as  was  neces- 
sary to  direct  their  conduct  into  a  suitable  conformity  with  it,  through  the 
medium  of  despatches  which  bore  the  title  of  royal  instructions.  Every 
governor  nominated  by  the  king  received  a  mandate  of  this  description  at  his 
appointment  ;  and  if  his  command  were  long  continued,  his  instructions  were 
renewed  and  varied,  in  correspondence  with  the  fluctuations  of  policy  and 
the  course  of  events.  The  instructions  communicated  to  Benning  Went- 
worth,  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  in  1761,  after  prohibiting  him  from 
assenting  to  any  law  calculated  to  obstruct  the  importation  of  negro  slaves 
into  the  province,  commanded  that  "  No  schoolmaster  from  England  shall 
be  henceforth  permitted  to  settle  in  the  province,  unless  he  produce  the 
license  of  a  bishop  ;  and  no  other  person  now  there,  or  that  shall  come 
from  other  parts,  shall  be  permitted  to  keep  school  without  your  license 
first  obtained."  In  the  year  1762,  an  act  was  passed  by  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts  for  incorporating  a  number  of  pious  individuals  in  an  as- 
sociation, of  which  the  purpose  is  expressed  in  the  title  bestowed  by  the 
act,  of  The  Society  for  promoting  Christian  Knowledge  among  the  Indians 
in  *N*orth  America ;  but  in  the  following  year,  this  act  was  rescinded  by 
the  king  and  privy  council,  in  compliance  with  the  remonstrances  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  a  party  of  the  English  clergy,  who  insisted 
that  it  would  be  prejudicial  to  the  interests  and  authority  of  the  church  of 
England.  These  measures  (of  which  all  the  springs  were  ascertained  and 
disclosed  by  the  activity  of  the  provincial  agents  at  London,  aided  by  the 
good  offices  of  Pownall)  were  extremely  disagreeable  and  irritating  to  the 
colonists  ;  and  that  they  failed  to  excite  some  violent  commotion  chiefly 
arose  from  the  notorious  impossibility  of  carrying  them  into  full  execution. 
The  purpose  of  their  promoters  was  rendered  far  more  apparent  and  odious 
than  effectual.  Wentworth  durst  not  deprive  any  popular  and  meritorious 
schoolmaster  of  his  vocation ;  and  men  sincerely  devoted  to  the  purpose  of 
evangelizing  the  Indians  were  not  to  be  diverted  from  it  by  the  denial  of  a 
statute  of  incorporation. 

Much  uneasiness  was  created  about  this  time  among  the  colonists  by 
reports  that  agents  in  the  employ  of  the  British  ministry  had  been  travelling 
in  the  provinces  since  the  year  1762,  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  by 
personal  survey  what  alterations  of  the  provincial  institutions  were  most 
practicable  and  most  likely  to  be  conducive  to  the  interests  of  British 
dominion,  and  of  gaining,  by  tempting  offers,  the  assent  of  leading  men 
in  America  to  the  introduction  of  such  measures.^  From  the  view  which 
we  have  already  obtained  of  the  state  of  political  sentiment  in  America  at 
this  era,^  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  these  reports  occasioned  an  injury 
to  the  influence  of  British  authority  on  the  great  mass  of  the  people  of 
America,  feebly,  if  at  all,  counterbalanced  by  the  increased  animation 
which  the  most  adroit  conduct  of  such  missions  could  impart  to  the  zeal 
of  that  small  class  of  the  colonial  population  who  longed  for  the  advance- 
ment of  British  prerogative,  and  for  a  concomitant  augmentation  of  their  own 
splendor  and  dignity.     A  strong  sensation  w^as   produced  in  New  Hamp- 

*  Gordon  has  preserved  the  following  specimen  of  the  letters  of  introduction  which  these 
persons  were  enabled  to  present  to  Americans  who  were  accounted  friendly  to  the  interests 
of  British  prerogative:  —  "This  is  a  gentleman  employed  by  the  Earl  of  Bute  to  travel  the 
country,  and  learn  what  may  be  proper  to  be  done  in  the  grand  plan  of  reforming  the  Amer- 
ican governments." 

«  AnU^  Book  X  ,  Chap.  V.  and  VI. 

DD 


350  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  HI. 

shire,  and  thence  propagated  in  other  quarters  of  America,  by  the  remark- 
able valedictory  warning  addressed  in  the  present  year  to  the  Congregational 
ministers  of  Portsmouth,  in  that  colony,  by  George  Whitefield,  the  Meth- 
odist. "  I  can't  in  conscience  leave  this  town,"  he  declared,  "without 
acquainting  you  with  a  secret.  My  heart  bleeds  for  America.  O  poor 
New  England  !  There  is  a  deep-laid  plot  against  your  civil  and  religious 
liberties  ;  and  they  will  be  lost.  Your  golden  days  are  at  end.  You  have 
nothing  but  trouble  before  you.  My  information  comes  from  the  best  au- 
thority in  Great  Britain.  I  was  allow^ed  to  speak  of  the  affair  in  general, 
but  enjoined  not  to  mention  particulars.  Your  liberties  will  be  lost." 
Probably  the  mysterious  terms  of  this  communication  added  not  a  little  to 
its  efficacy. 

To  the  combined  influence  of  these  various  circumstances,  we  must, 
doubtless,  ascribe  that  impatient  dislike  and  jealousy  of  Episcopal  power 
and  its  encroachments  which  the  bulk  of  the  people  in  New  England  cher- 
ished at  this  period,  and  which  blazed  forth  a  few  months  after  in  a  contro- 
versy so  violent  as  to  astonish  all  those  who  had  not  remarked  the  silent 
but  rapid  pace  of  sentiment  and  opinion.  An  insignificant  dispute  between 
some  clergymen  of  different  persuasions  served  to  kindle  this  controversy, 
in  which  the  comparative  merits,  theoretical  and  historical,  of  the  church 
of  England  and  the  Protestant  Dissenting  churches  were  discussed  by  their 
respective  partisans  with  a  warmth  of  temper  and  vehemence  of  animosity 
which  infected  and  agitated  the  spirits  of  a  great  portion  of  the  inhabitants 
of  British  America.  In  their  reciprocal  heat  and  eagerness,  both  parties 
were  transported  far  beyond  the  limits  of  equitable  moderation  and  deliber- 
ate, conscientious  opinion.  Sentiments  were  exaggerated  by  the  passions 
which  their  violent  collision  engendered.  The  defenders  of  the  American 
churches  excelled  their  adversaries  in  controversial  vigor  and  ability,  with- 
out excelling  them  in  candor,  meekness,  or  courtesy.^  The  church  of 
England  was  reproached  with  the  persecutions  w^hich  heretofore  drove  the 
Puritans  to  America  ;  while  the  Puritan  churches,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
assailed  with  the  sharpest  invectives  on  account  of  the  intolerance  they  dis- 
played in  their  infancy,  and  the  persecution  they  had  incited  or  sanctioned 
against  the  Quakers.  Both  parties  supported  their  charges  and  recrimina- 
tions with  so  many  historical  allusions  as  plainly  to  demonstrate  with  how 
much  industry,  but  how  httle  of  real  benefit,  the  lessons  of  history  had  been 
studied  by  either,  and  how  exclusively  the  attention  of  each  was  attracted 
by  the  circumstances  and  details  that  seemed  favorable  to  its  own  prepos- 
sessions. Though  political  topics  were  but  sparingly  introduced  into  this 
controversy,  political  affections  and  interests  were  from  the  first  enlisted  in 
support  of  the  pleas  maintained  by  the  champions  of  either  side,  —  who 
desisted  not  from  their  argumentative  warfare,  till  it  had  regenerated  to  a 
considerable  extent  the  flame  of  those  passions  which  formerly  contrib- 
uted to  separate  the  American  portion  from  the  European  mass  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  British  empire.^ 

'  "In  the  literary  compositions  of  both  parties  sharp  expressions  and  personal  invective 
were  employed,  under  protestations  of  candor  and  good-will,  which  gave  too  great  a  com- 

Elexion  of  cant  and  insincerity  to  the  debates  of  the  times  in  general.  These  writings  may 
e  considered  as  increasing  the  divisions  which  were  rising  in  New  England,  as  in  a  point 
whence,  with  diverging  influence,  they  were  about  to  spread  over  the  American  and  Euro- 
pean world."     Minot. 

2  Franklin's  Correspondence.    Annual  Register  for  1765,     Gordon.     Minot.     Walsh's  Ap- 
peal. 


APP.  III.]  UNPOPULARITY  OF  THE  BRITISH  TROOPS.  ^^l 

In  the  conduct  of  the  late  war,  or  at  least  in  its  closing  scenes,  the 
colonists  derived  the  most  signal  advantage  from  the  operations  of  the 
armies  despatched  from  Britain  to  America  ;  and  yet  the  intercourse  be- 
tween these  troops  and  the  provincials  was  attended  with  many  unhappy 
consequences  to  their  respective  countries.  At  first,  the  absurd  enforce- 
ment, which  we  have  remarked,  of  insolent  regulations,  arrogating  to  the 
British  a  superiority  which  their  exertions  in  the  field  w^ere  far  from  sup- 
porting, excited  general  disgust  and  resentment  in  America.  Even  when 
the  relaxation  of  this  foolish  policy,  and  a  series  of  victories  propitious  to 
the  interests  of  the  colonies,  had  contributed  to  improve  the  reputation  of 
the  British  troops,  they  never  became  popular  with  the  mass  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.  They  introduced  infidel  sentiments,  libertine  behaviour,  and 
infamous  diseases,  hitherto  almost  entirely  unknow^n  in  this  quarter  of  the 
empire.  Many  of  the  British  officers  w^ere  infidels,  —  a  class  of  persons, 
w^ho,  despite  their  usual  protestations  to  the  contrary,  are  by  no  means 
insensible  to  the  desire  of  making  proselytes  ;  and  additionally  characterized 
by  licentious  conduct,  unhappily  alHed  with  elegant  and  engaging  manners. 
Of  the  provincial  officers  whom  the  war  rendered  familiar  associates  of 
these  men,  few  had  ever  before  heard  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scriptures 
questioned,  or  w^ere  provided  with  answers  to  the  cavils  of  even  the  shal- 
lowest sophistry  ;  and  many,  from  the  same  ardor  of  disposition  which  im- 
pelled them  to  the  field,  w^ere  much  more  prone  on  all  occasions  to  decide 
with  promptitude  than  to  investigate  with  cautious  deliberation.  A  consid- 
erable number  of  the  American  officers  were  initiated  into  the  vices  of  their 
companions  in  arms,  and,  having  once  imbibed  a  taste  for  licentious  in- 
dulgence, sooif  experienced  the  attraction  of  those  libertine  principles  which 
assisted  to  silence  the  reproaches  of  conscience.  The  peasantry,  in  general, 
regarded  the  British  troops  with  an  aversion  justified  by  their  original  con- 
duct, and  unaltered  by  their  subsequent  successes  against  the  common  ene- 
my ;  and  of  the  richer  colonists,  many  paid  dearly  for  the  attentions  they 
lavished  on  the  British  officers,  in  the  corruption  of  their  own  manners, 
and  the  exaggerated  representations  of  their  wealth  and  luxury  w^hich  were 
transmitted  to  Britain. 

American  hospitahty,  stimulated  to  the  highest  pitch  by  the  presence, 
the  rank,  and  the  services  of  so  many  British  visitors,  overflowed  in  osten- 
tatious excesses,  of  which  the  real  character  was  veiled  by  the  pride  and 
politeness  of  the  entertainers  and  misapprehended  by  the  ignorance  of  their 
guests.  The  provincial  families  the  most  distinguished  by  their  hospitality 
to  the  British  officers  customarily  embellished  their  festivities  by  borrowing 
each  other's  gold  and  silver  plate  ;  but  they  were  afterwards  highly  incensed 
at  the  effect  of  this  artifice  of  vanity,  when  they  found  that  their  guests  had 
been  not  only  completely  deluded  by  it,  but  prompted  to  circulate  in  Eng- 
land such  accounts  of  the  wealth  of  the  Americans,  as  inspired  the  English 
with  the  hope  of  drawing  from  so  copious  a  mine  some  alleviation  of  the 
pressure  of  their  national  debt.^  To  the  Americans  it  seemed  the  height 
of  insolence  and  ingratitude,  that  their  munificent  hospitality  should  be  ac- 
knowledged and  celebrated  by  the  objects  of  it,  only  as  an  additional  reason 
for  aggravating  the  burdens  with  which  they  were  already  loaded.     While 

'  Grant's  Memoirs  of  an  Jimerican  Lady.  Belknap.  Gordon.  Franklin's  Memoirs  and 
Correspondence.  Dvvight's  Travels.  The  Athenians  seem  to  have  been  confirmed  in  the 
purpose  of  their  unjust  and  unhappy  expedition  ai^ainst  Syracuse  bv  a  misconception,  similarly 
engendered,  of  the  wealth  of  the  inhabitants  of  Egesta.   "Thucydi'des,  Book  VI. 


352  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

the  inhabitants  of  the  parent  state  were  cherishing  the  delusive  expectation 
of  shifting  from  themselves  to  their  colonies  the  burden  of  their  financial 
embarrassments,  the  provincial  authorities  were  laboring  assiduously  to  ex- 
tirpate the  foolish  and  pernicious  habits  which  had  contributed  to  the  pro- 
duction of  that  erroneous  notion.  In  the  year  1761,  an  address  of  the 
assembly  to  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  deplored  the  prevalence  of  "all 
sorts  of  luxurious  and  vicious  public  diversions,"  and  entreated  his  assist- 
ance "  to  preserve  the  character  which  this  province  has  hitherto  borne, 
of  a  sober,  sedate,  industrious,  frugal,  and  religious  people."  A  more 
energetic  effort  to  attain  the  same  end  was  made,  in  the  year  1765,  by  the 
province  of  Connecticut,  where  an  ancient  ordinance  of  New  England  was 
revived,  for  the  appointment  of  overseers  to  guard  the  interests  and  restrain 
the  expenses  of  fools  and  prodigals.^ 

Sensible  of  the  prodigious  advantage  that  the  arms  of  Britain  had  obtained 
during  the  war  from  American  cooperation,  the  British  government  eagerly 
exerted  itself  to  fix  and  improve  a  principle  so  conducive  to  its  naval  su- 
periority. With  this  view,  soon  after  the  treaty  of  Paris,  the  Lords  of  the 
Admiralty  of  Britain  formed  contracts  with  every  province,  island,  and  set- 
tlement in  America  for  an  instant  supply  of  provisions,  rigging,  and  all  man- 
ner of  naval  stores  to  all  British  ships  of  war  arriving  on  the  American 
coasts.^ 

In  the  year  1760  was  published  the  first  volume  of  Hutchinson's  History 
of  Massachusetts.  The  second  volume,  which  carried  forward  the  provin- 
cial history  till  1749,  was  not  published  till  several  years  afterwards  ;  and 
the  third  not  till  many  years  after  the  author's  death.  It  is  a^work  of  great 
industry  and  ability,  but  written  in  a  harsh,  ungraceful  style.  Many  ju- 
dicious remarks  and  ingenious  reflections  of  this  author  lose  half  their  force 
from  the  indistinct  terms  and  disproportloned  strain  of  the  language  in  which 
they  are  expressed.  The  third  volume,  in  addition  to  this  defect,  is  per- 
vaded by  a  disagreeable  vein  of  personal  ostentation  and  political  partiality, 
and  Is  not  more  advantageous  to  Hutchinson's  reputation  as  a  writer,  than 
the  scenes  which  It  describes  were  to  his  character  as  a  statesman.  In  vain 
we  seek  in  the  pages  of  this  author  for  the  decent  composure,  the  calm, 
majestic  survey,  becoming  a  historian.  His  genius  seems  to  have  received 
a  mean  bias  from  long  and  inveterate  devotion  to  the  interests  of  a  party, 
and  from  his  evil  fortune  in  reaping  from  his  labors  a  plentiful  harvest  of 
popular  dislike.  It  seems  as  if  he  neither  felt  cordial  sympathy  with,  nor 
expected  It  from,  the  mass  of  mankind. 

In  1761,  there  occurred  a  transit  of  the  planet  Venus  across  the  sun's 
disk  ;  and  as  Newfoundland  was  the  most  westerly  part  of  the  earth  whence 
the  conclusion  of  the  transit  could  be  noted.  It  was  generally  desired  by  the 
astronomers  of  the  age  that  some  scientific  observation  should  be  made  from 
that  spot.  Professor  Winthrop,  of  Harvard  College,  whose  eminence  as 
an  astronomer  we  have  already  remarked,  undertook  and  ably  performed 
this  duty.  The  expenses  of  his  voyage  and  operations  were  defrayed  by 
the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts.^ 

A  few  years  before  the  present  epoch,  Benjamin  West,  a  young  Penn- 

'  Annual  Register  for  1761  and  for  1765.  The  process  adopted  in  New  England  strongly 
resembles  the  ancient  Scottish  formula  of  Interdiclion. 

*  Jlnnual  Register  for  1764. 

2  Eliot's  Kew  England  Biography.  This  work,  to  which  I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  re- 
fer, is  9  most  instructive,  impartial,  and  interesting  performance. 


APP.  Ill]  BENJAMIN  WEST.  353 

sylvanian  Quaker,  excited  some  perplexity  among  the  members  of  his  re- 
ligious society  by  an  early,  strong,  and  progressive  indication  of  genius  and 
taste  for  painting.  The  exercise  of  this  art  was  disallowed,  as  a  frivolous  and 
useless  pursuit,  by  the  sectarian  ordinances  of  the  Quakers,  which,  however, 
were  relaxed  in  his  favor  in  consequence  of  the  speech  of  John  Williamson, 
a  Quaker  inhabitant  of  Pennsylvania,  at  a  meeting  of  the  society  held  for 
the  purpose  of  considering  this  subject  and  regulating  young  West's  des- 
tination. "  It  is  true,"  said  Williamson,  "that  our  tenets  deny  the  utility 
of  that  art  to  mankind.  But  God  has  bestowed  on  this  youth  a  genius  for 
the  art ;  and  can  we  believe  that  Omniscience  bestows  his  gifts  but  for  great 
purposes  ?  What  God  has  given  who  shall  dare  to  throw  away  ?  Let  us 
not  estimate  almighty  wisdom  by  our  notions,  —  let  us  not  presume  to  ar- 
raign His  judgment  by  our  ignorance  ;  but,  in  the  evident  propensity  of  the 
young  man,  be  assured  that  we  see  an  impulse  of  the  divine  hand  operat- 
ing towards  some  high  and  beneficent  end."  The  Quakers,  in  accordance 
with  the  views  of  this  speaker,  directed  West  to  follow  the  impulse  of  his 
taste  ;  charging  him,  at  the  same  time,  to  redeem  the  art  of  painting  from  the 
discredit  it  had  incurred  by  ignoble  applications,  and  praying  that  the  Lord 
might  verify  in  his  Hfe  the  utility  of  the  gift  which  had  induced  them,  in 
despite  of  their  sectarian  tenets,  to  permit  him  to  cultivate  the  faculties  of 
his  genius  and  follow  the  peculiar  bent  of  his  disposition.  West  repaired 
to  Rome  in  the  year  1760  ;  and,  afterwards  settling  in  England,  became 
the  greatest  painter  of  the  age.^  Some  of  the  most  remarkable  scenes  of 
American  history  have  been  illustrated  and  perpetuated  by  his  pencil. 
America  has  since  been  bereaved  of  the  presence  of  several  distinguished 
native  painters,  who,  attracted  by  the  patronage  and  munificence  of  the 
princes  and  nobles  of  Europe,  have  forsaken  a  land  where  the  more  equal 
division  of  wealth  leaves  little  superfluity  for  the  pecuniary  recompense  of 
the  fine  arts.  The  residence  in  America  of  the  painters  whom  she  may 
hereafter  produce  must  be  expected,  from  a  more  elevated  and  patriotic 
spirit  among  the  artists,  and  the  progress  of  cultivated  taste  among  their 
countrymen.^  Painters  have  not  been  the  only  eminent  natives  of  America 
who  have  exercised  their  genius  and  achieved  their  fame  in  Europe.  The 
celebrated  Benjamin  Thompson  was  born  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  in 
the  year  1752.  Embracing  the  cause  of  the  parent  state,  in  the  War  of  In- 
dependence, he  received  the  rank  of  knighthood  from  the  British  king.  His 
philosophic  and  philanthropic  labors  subsequently  gained  him,  from  the 
Elector  of  Bavaria,  the  title  by  which  he  is  most  commonly  known,  of  Count 
Rumford. 

A  remarkable  change  had  been  introduced  of  late  years  into  the  system 
of  political  intercourse  between  the  British  colonists  and  the  Indians. 
Originally  it  was  the  practice  of  each  State  to  treat  separately  with  the 
tribes  adjacent  to  its  own  territory  and  settlements.  But  the  mischiefs 
attendant  on  this  practice  at  length  compelled  the  various  provincial  gov- 
ernments to  study  more  concert  and  union  in  their  negotiations  and  arrange- 
ments with  the  savages.  It  sometimes  happened  that  one  province,  with- 
out any  direct  quarrel  between  its  inhabitants  and  the  Indians,  was  prompted 
to  engage  in  war  with  this  people  in  defence  of  some  neighbouring  colony  , 

*  Gait's  Life  of  West.    This  distinguished  man  is  said  to  have  received  some  pictorial  tuition 
in  his  youth  from  certain  members  of  an  Indian  tribe.     Lives  of  Painters. 
See  Note  XXVIIL,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

''OL.  n.  45  •     y  DD*  *        1  , 


354  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [APP.   III. 

and  nothing  was  more  common  with  the  savages  than  to  revenge  upon  one 
provincial  community  the  affronts  they  had  received  from  another.  They 
regarded  all  white  men  who  professed  allegiance  to  the  same  king  as  sub- 
stantially the  same  people,  and  justly  responsible  for  each  other's  actions. 
Before  the  close  of  the  last  century,  we  have  seen  treaties  concluded  with 
the  Indians  by  conventions  of  the  governors  of  several  of  the  British  prov- 
inces. But  from  the  disunion  and  mutual  jealousy  between  the  respective 
provinces,  as  well  as  from  the  dissensions  between  many  of  the  provincial 
assembhes  and  their  governors,  this  improved  diplomatic  system  was  by  no 
means  advanced  to  the  perfection  of  which  it  was  capable.  The  failure 
of  the  project,  which  was  agitated  in  1754,  of  a  domestic  general  government 
in  America,  empowered  to  make  requisitions  of  the  resources  of  all  the 
provinces  for  the  common  defence,  probably  suggested  to  the  British  court 
the  measure,  soon  after  embraced,  of  vesting  the  entire  management  of  In- 
dian affairs  in  the  crown  ;  and  the  great  influence  which  Sir  William  John- 
son had  acquired  with  the  aboriginal  people  recommended  him  to  the  office, 
then  first  introduced,  of  royal  superintendent  of  Indian  affairs  in  the  whole 
of  the  British  colonial  dominions.  To  the  superintendent  and  a  board  of 
commissioners  appointed  by  the  crown  was  committed  the  exclusive  privilege 
of  making  treaties  with  the  savage  tribes,  and  on  those  officers  there  was 
subsequently  bestowed,  by  a  royal  proclamation  issued  shortly  after  the  peace 
of  Paris,  the  exclusive  right  of  purchasing  from  the  Indians  all  lands  not 
already  acquired  and  appropriated  by  the  colonists.  This  important  meas- 
ure, by  which  the  crown  assumed  to  itself  the  control,  so  long  possessed 
by  the  respective  provincial  governments,  over  the  enlargement  of  their  set- 
tlements, excited  little  or  no  jealousy  in  the  colonies  ;  partly  because,  from 
the  short  period  which  elapsed  between  its  announcement  and  the  rupture 
between  Britain  and  America,  sufficient  time  was  not  afforded  to  adopt 
the  necessary  arrangements  for  carrying  it  into  entire  and  effective  opera- 
tion ;  and  partly  because,  as  the  crown  now  undertook  the  expense  of  the 
periodical  presents  to  the  friendly  tribes,  the  provincial  assemblies  were 
sensible  at  first  of  no  other  result  from  the  new  scheme  of  British  policy, 
than  the  relief  they  obtained  from  a  very  heavy  burden. 

After  the  conclusion  of  the  war  with  the  Cherokees,  a  deputation  of 
Cherokee  sachems  or  chiefs  was  conducted,  at  the  expense  of  the  crown, 
to  England,  in  the  year  1762.  These  savage  deputies  were  presented  at 
court  with  all  the  formahties  attending  the  reception  of  ambassadors  from 
independent  states, ^  and  were  entertained  with  the  display  of  whatever  was 
thought  hkely  to  impress  them  with  a  high  idea  of  British  power  and 
grandeur.  Yet,  that  the  Indians  were  regarded  by  their  civilized  entertain- 
ers as  in  reality  a  subordinate  and  inferior  race  may  perhaps  be  inferred 
from  the  fact,  that  on  the  dresses  with  which  they  were  furnished  in  order 
to  qualify  them  for  their  appearance  at  court  the  arms  of  the  British  crown 
were  emblazoned.  An  odious  and  more  significant  testimony  of  the  dene- 
gation  of  social  equality  to  this  race  was  afforded  about  two  years  after, 
when  there  w^as  despatched  from  England  to  America  a  pack  of  blood- 
hounds, by  whose  peculiar  instinct  it  was  expected  that  the  British  troops 

*  "The  head  chief,  called  Oulacite  or  MankUler,  on  account  of  his  many  gallant  actions, 
was  introduced  by  Lord  Eglinton,  and  conducted  by  Sir  Clement  Cotterel,  master  of  the  cere- 
monies. They  were  upwards  of  an  hour  and  a  half  with  his  Majesty,  who  received  'hem 
with  great  goodness ;  and  they  behaved  in  his  presence  with  remarkable  decency  and  mild- 
ness.'     Annual  Register. 


APP.  Ill]  INDIAN  AFFAIR8.  355 

would  be  materially  aided  in  discovering  the  tracks  and  retreats  of  Indian 
foes.  The  British  have  never  stooped  to  the  employment  of  martial  in- 
strumentality of  so  vile  and  barbarous  a  description,  except  in  their  contests 
with  hostile  Indian  tribes  or  revolted  negro  slaves.  Sir  William  Johnson 
was  guided  by  a  policy  equally  adroit  and  liberal  in  his  conduct  to  the  sav- 
age tribes.  He  cultivated  their  good-will  by  the  respect  which  he  showed 
for  their  manners  and  usages,  and  studied  to  promote  their  friendly  co- 
alition with  the  British  colonists  by  encouraging  the  intermarriages  of  the 
two  races.  His  exertions  were  attended  with  some  success  ;  for  we  find, 
that,  in  the  year  1766,  no  fewer  than  eighteen  marriages  were  contracted 
under  his  auspices  between  Indian  chiefs  and  young  white  women  of  South 
Carolina. 1 

After  a  short  and  imperfect  trial  of  the  new  system  which  appropriated 
to  the  crown  the  entire  and  exclusive  management  of  Indian  affairs,  the 
British  government  confessed  its  impatience  of  the  enormous  expense  with 
which  the  system  was  attended.  So  frequent  and  so  considerable  were  the 
drafts  of  the  commissioners  upon  the  British  treasury,  on  account  of  pres- 
ents, real  or  pretended,  to  the  savages,  and  of  the  erection  and  maintenance 
of  the  numerous  posts  which  it  was  necessary  to  estabhsh,  in  order  to  ad- 
minister the  royal  prerogative,  along  the  entire  line  of  the  frontier  settle- 
ments, that  the  cabinet  began  to  entertain  the  purpose  of  restoring  to  the 
respective  provinces  the  conduct  of  their  own  concerns  with  their  rude, 
untamed  neighbours,^  and  were  deterred  from  carrying  this  purpose  into 
effect  only  by  the  progress  of  the  quarrel  in  which  Britain  was  led  to 
invoke  the  aid  of  Indian  arms  against  her  revolted  American  subjects. 

While  the  British  government  and  the  greater  number  of  the  British  col- 
onists, though  occasionally  prompted  by  interested  motives  to  caress  the 
Indians,  yet  despised  them  as  a  savage  and  inferior  race,  and  were  guided 
in  their  intercourse  with  them  solely  by  commercial  or  political  considera- 
tions, there  had  never  been  wanting,  since  the  first  foundation  of  civilized 
society  in  America,  a  class  of  men  who  pitied  instead  of  contemning  the 
barbarism  of  the  indigenous  people,  and  labored  with  generous  zeal  to  elevate 
and  refine  their  temporal  and  spiritual  condition.  We  have  remarked  oc- 
casionally the  missions  which  proceeded  from  New  England  among  the  In- 
dians, and  contemplated  the  holy  labors  of  EHot,  Mayhew,  Brainerd,  and 
other  pious  and  peaceful  conquerors  of  the  souls  of  men.  The  New  Eng- 
land missions  still  continued  to  be  prosecuted,  in  spite  of  the  obstructions 
and  counteracting  influence  of  the  quarrels  and  wars  between  the  two  races 
of  people  ;  ^  and  were  aided  or  imitated  by  the  awakened  Christian  charity 
of  several  others  of  the  provincial  communities.  But,  since  the  death  of 
Brainerd,  by  far  the  most  admirable  and  interesting  efforts  for  the  conver- 

~»  Annual  Register  for  1762, /or  1765,  and /or  1766. 

'  Franklin's  Correspondence. 

3  The  New  England  missions,  about  this  period,  were  impeded  by  the  influence  and  oppo- 
sition of  Sir  William  Johnson,  who  was  devoted  to  the  interests  of  British  ascendency,  and 
averse  to  the  formation  of  friendly  relations  between  the  provincial  governments  and  the 
Indians.     Eliot's  Amo  England  Biogrnphy. 

An  attempt  was  made  to  educate'' three  young  Indians  at  New  York,  and  at  first  it  seemed 
likely  to  be  attended  with  a  happy  issue.  Two  of  the  pupils,  having  acquired  a  considerable 
stock  of  polite  accomplishments,  returned  to  their  native  tribes,  who,  instead  of  regarding  them 
with  respect,  received  them  with  unanimous  scorn  and  contempt.  The  third  became  an  actor 
in  the  New  York  theatre,»and  had  attained  considerable  histrionic  distinction,  when  he  was 
recalled  to  the  woods  by  the  menacing  mandate  of  his  savage  kinsmen,  who  were  incensed  at 
his  degradation.     GdXi's  Life  of  West 


356  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

sion  and  civilization  of  the  Indian  race  proceeded  from  the  society  of  the 
Moravian  brethren,  —  a  class  of  Christians  which  must  be  acknowledged  to 
have  surpassed  every  other  in  North  America  (prior  to  the  Revolutionary 
War),  in  the  patience  and  assiduity,  the  wisdom,  self-denial,  and  efficacy  of 
the  conduct  by  which  they  studied  to  promote  the  welfare  of  mankind  and 
enlarge  the  acknowledged  dominion  of  God.  There  had  arisen,  unques- 
tionably, among  the  Puritans  as  excellent  individual  missionaries  as  have 
ever  existed  in  the  world,  since  the  days  of  those  men  of  whom  infallible 
wisdom  has  pronounced  that  the  world  was  not  worthy  ;  but  by  no  class 
of  Protestant  Christians  was  so  much  missionary  merit  acquired  as  by  the 
Moravian  brethren.-  In  the  education  of  their  own  children,  not  less  than 
in  their,  exertions  to  instruct  adult  heathens,  the  members  of  this  society 
were  preeminently  successful.  One  main  cause,  doubtless,  was,  that  they 
regarded  tuition,  whether  of  children  in  years  or  children  in  understanding, 
as  a  process  calculated  alike  for  the  benefit  of  the  instructors'and  of  the 
pupils  ;  and  were  primarily  careful  to  apply  to  themselves,  and  practically 
demonstrate  in  their  intercourse  with  others,  the  influence  of  the  doctrines 
and  precepts  which  they  communicated. 

We  have  already  remarked  the  first  resort  of  the  Moravian  brethren  to 
North  America,  and  have  occasionally  adverted  to  the  qualities  by  which 
this  portion  of  the  colonial  population  was  distinguished,  —  their  indefati- 
gable industry,  their  habits  of  neatness,  order,  and  tranquil  propriety,  their 
mild  and  pacific  manners,  their  devout  sentiments  and  charitable  conduct, 
their  disclamation  of  all  authority  beyond  the  precincts  of  their  own  religious 
society,  and  their  abstinence  from  the  employment  of  negro  slaves.^  An 
incident  which  occurred  in  the  year  1736  served  to  animate  the  purpose, 
which  the  Moravian  society  in  Europe  had  cherished  for  some  time,  of  at- 
tempting the  instruction  of  the  North  American  Indians.  In  the  winter  of 
that  year,  Conrad  Weisser,  a  Pennsylvanian  colonist  of  German  descent, 
and  interpreter  between  the  provincial  government  and  the  Indians,  was 
despatched  by  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania  to  treat  with  the  Six  Nations 
and  dissuade  them  from  making  war,  which  they  were  preparing  to  do,  on 
an  Indian  tribe  within  the  territory  of  Virginia.  In  performing  this  journey, 
of  nearly  five  hundred  miles,  Weisser,  forcing  his  way,  mostly  on  foot, 
through  deep  snow  and  thick  forests,  was  nearly  exhausted  by  toil  and  hard- 
ship, when  he  met  with  two  Indians  who  exhorted  him  not  to  faint,  but  to 
take  courage,  —  adding,  that  the  sufferings  endured  by  a  man  in  his  mortal 
body  cleansed  the  imperishable  soul  from  sin.  On  his  return,  Weisser  related 
this  occurrence  to  Spangenberg,  a  bishop  of  the  Moravian  society  in  Penn- 
sylvania, by  whom  it  was  reported  to  the  brethren  in  Europe.  They  were 
greatly  struck  with  it,  and  determined  to  spare  no  pains  to  instruct  these 
blind  yet  thinking  heathens  in  the  knowledge  of  a  better  way  to  that  expia- 
tion of  which  they  obscurely  felt  the  necessity,  and  impart  to  them  the  ex- 
perience of  the  only  fountain  capable  of  cleansing  the  human  soul  from  sin. 

Ranch,  a  Moravian  missionary,  arriving  at  New  York  from  Europe  in  the 
year  1740,  commenced  a  course  of  apostolic  labor  among  a  tribe  of  poor, 
ferocious,  and  dissolute  savages,  inhabiting  the  borders  of  Connecticut  and 
New  York.  The  sachem,  or  chief  of  the  tribe,  declared  of  himself  and 
his  people  that  they  were  all  helplessly  sunk  in  misery,  drunkenness,  and 
every  vice  and  crime  that  could  defile  and  degrade  human  nature  ;  and 
'  AntCi  Book  IX  ,  and  Book  X.,  Chap.  I.  and  11. 


APR  III.]  MORAVIAN  MISSIONS.  357 

protested  that  the  missionary  would  confer  an  inexpressible  benefit  upop 
them,  if  he  could  teach  them  how  to  lead  a  wiser  and  happier  life.  The} 
listened  with  profound  astonishment  to  the  first  promulgation  of  the  doctrines 
of  Christianity,  but  soon  rejected  them  with  unanimous  derision.  Rauch, 
however,  was  not  to  be  discouraged  ;  he  persisted  in  his  pious  labors, 
without  any  other  visible  fruit  except  increased  unpopularity  and  ridicule 
among  the  Indians  ;  till  one  day  the  chief,  who  was  himself  the  worst  man 
of  the  tribe,  earnestly  requested  him  once  more  to  explain  how  the  blood 
of  a  Divine  Redeemer  could  possibly  expiate  and  obliterate  the  defilement 
of  the  human  soul.  Rauch  declared  that  the  most  valuable  gift  in  the 
world  could  not  have  afforded  him  a  gratification  comparable  to  the  delight 
with  which  that  question  inspired  him.  He  who  so  felt  was  formed  to 
conquer  in  this  glorious  and  happy  field.  Appearances  of  mental  conversion 
and  a  considerable  reformation  of 'manners  ensued  among  the  tribe.  But 
now  was  aroused  the  jealousy  of  a  numerous  band  of  European  traders 
who  derived  a  guilty  gain  from  the  dependence  to  which  the  savages  were 
reduced  by  their  vices  and  poverty.  Some  of  them  threatened  to  shoot 
Rauch,  if  he  remained  longer  in  the  country  ;  others  assured  the  Indians 
that  the  missionary's  instructions  tended  to  delude  them,  and  that  his  real 
purpose  was  to  carry  their  children  beyond  seas  and  sell  them  for  slaves. 
The  abused  and  ignorant  people,  as  credulous  of  this  falsehood  as  they  had 
been  slow  to  believe  divine  truth,  began  to  regard  the  missionary  with  rage 
and  detestation,  and  meanwhile  were  copiously  supplied  with  strong  liquor 
by  those  perfidious  counsellors,  for  the  purpose  of  exciting  them  to  wreak 
their  erring  fury  on  their  benefactor. 

Rauch  overcame  this  opposition  by  a  wisdom  and  virtue  equal  to  every 
emergence.  He  softened  the  resentment  of  some  of  the  white  settlers  and 
traders  by  the  mild  courtesy  of  his  manners,  and  gained  the  protection  of 
one  of  them  by  teaching  his  children  to  read  and  write.  To  the  Indians  he 
behaved  with  an  unabated  tenderness  and  confidence,  which  powerfully 
appealed  to  their  remaining  virtue,  —  to  that  sense  of  good  which  is  never 
wholly  obliterated  while  human  life  endures.  They  were  struck  with  the 
new  proof  which  he  afforded  of  the  efficacy  of  the  principles  which  he  had 
preached,  in  shielding  their  professor  from  evil  and  fear  and  rendering  him 
always  secure  and  happy  ;  they  were  astonished  that  a  man,  whom  they 
studiously  endeavoured  to  insult  by  contumely  and  terrify  by  menace,  should 
persist  in  following  them  with  patience,  benedictions,  tears,  and  every 
other  demonstration  of  affectionate  and  disinterested  regard  ;  and  one  of 
them,  who  had  made  an  attempt  to  take  the  missionary's  life,  contemplating 
him  as  he  lay  stretched  in  placid  slumber  on  the  floor  of  the  Indian's  own 
hut,  was  constrained  to  acknowledge  to  himself,  "  This  cannot  be  a  bad 
man  ;  he  fears  no  evil  ;  not  even  from  us  who  are  so  savage  ;  but  sleeps 
comfortably  and  places  his  Hfe  in  our  hands."  The  Indians  at  length  be- 
came generally  convinced  that  evil  could  not  be  meditated  by  a  man  who 
was  himself  so  completely  exempted  from  the  suspicion  of  it  ;  his  influence 
was  restored  and  augmented,  and  his  ministry  attended  with  happy  effects. 
All  the  Moravian  missionaries  were  charged  by  their  ecclesiastical  supe- 
riors to  study  rather  the  confirmation  of  the  faiih  than  the  increase  of  the 
numbers  of  professed  converts.  Rauch's  first  congregation  consisted  of  ten 
baptized  Indians,  whose  devotion,  simple  yet  profound,  enthusiastic  yet  sin- 
cere  and  sustained,  excited  the  grateful  delight  of  their  pastor  and  his  as- 


358  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  Hi 

sociates,  and  the  wonder  and  the  admiration  of  the  wildest  of  the  surrounding 
savages.  Meanwhile,  from  the  increasing  resort  of  members  of  the  Mora- 
vian brotherhood  to  Pennsylvania,  there  were  formed  the  principal  settle- 
ments of  the  society  at  places  which  obtained  the  names  of  Nazareth  and 
Bethlehem  ;  and  from  which,  with  all  convenient  speed,  missionaries,  ani- 
mated with  the  same  spirit  as  Rauch,  carried  the  benefit  of  their  instruc- 
tions and  example  among  the  Delaware  Indians,  with  the  usual  varieties  of 
success  which  ever  attend  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  and  which  are  far 
more  strikingly  manifested  in  tribes  and  nations  to  which  the  tidings  are  de- 
livered for  the  first  time,  than  in  societies  which  have  long  been  nominally 
Christianized,  and  where  habit  blunts  the  force  of  impressions  and  veils  the 
significance  of  language. 

In  the  year  1742,  Count  Zinzendorf,  who  was  chief  bishop  or  warden 
of  the  society  of  Moravian  brethren,  having  visited  their  settlements  in  Amer- 
ica, travelled,  along  with  Conrad  Weisser,  Peter  Boehler,  and  other  associ- 
ates, into  the  Indian  territories,  and  preached  to  a  great  variety  of  tribes. 
Some  of  the  fiercest  warriors  of  the  Six  Nations,  who,  from  a  recent  quar- 
rel among  themselves,  had  been  roused  to  a  state  of  high  and  dangerous 
excitement  at  the  time  when  he  casually  met  them,  were  exceedingly  struck 
with  the  mixture  of  simplicity,  authority,  and  benevolence  that  characterized 
his  address  to  them  ;  and,  after  some  consultation,  thus  replied  to  it  ;  — 
"  Brother,  you  have  made  a  long  voyage  over  the  seas,  to  preach  to  the 
white  people  and  to  the  Indians.  You  did  not  know  that  we  were  here  ; 
and  we  knew  nothing  of  you.  This  proceeds  from  above.  Come  there- 
fore to  us,  both  you  and  your  brethren  ;  we  bid  you  welcome  ;  and  take 
this  fathom  of  wampum  in  confirmation  of  the  truth  of  our  words."  After 
a  short  but  successful  ministry  in  America,  Zinzendorf  returned  to  Europe 
in  1743,^  leaving  a  numerous  and  increasing  body  of  missionaries  to  pursue 
the  labors  thus  felicitously  begun.  It  was  a  rule  with  these  missionaries  to 
earn  their  own  livelihood  by  bodily  labor  for  behoof  of  the  objects  of  their 
pious  concern  ;  and  this  rule  their  Christian  moderation  enabled  them  gen- 
erally to  practise,  although  their  savage  employers  could  afford  only  a  slen- 
der recompense  of  their  toil  ;  but  whenever  they  could  not  subsist  in  this 
manner,  they  were  supplied  with  the  necessaries  of  life  by  the  society  at 
Bethlehem.  They  lived  and  dressed  in  the  Indian  style  ;  insomuch  that 
they  were  sometimes  mistaken  for  Indians  by  travellers  ;  and  Frederick 
Post,  one  of  their  number,  did  not  scruple  to  marry  a  baptized  Indian 
woman.  In  addition  to  the  inevitable  drudgery  and  privation  which  they 
incurred,  they  were  frequently  exposed  to  insult  and  danger  from  those  sav- 
ages who  rejected  the  boon  of  the  gospel  with  contempt,  and  heard  its  tes- 
timony against  the  corruption  of  human  nature  with  indignation.  Gideon 
Mack,  one  of  the  missionaries,  having  been  waylaid  by  an  Indian  who  pre- 
sented his  gun  and  desired  him  to  prepare  to  die,  for  insulting  the  Indians 
by  talking  perpetually  of  their  need  of  Christ,  replied  calmly,  "  If  Christ 
does  not  permit  you,  you  cannot  shoot  me."  The  savage,  struck  with  the 
language  and  demeanour  of  his  intended  victim,  dropped  his  gun,  retired 
in  silence,  and  soon  after  embraced  the  faith  which,  he  perceived,  was 
calculated  to  form  the  highest  style  of  human  character. 

'  He  died  at  London  in  the  year  1760,  admired  and  lamented  in  the  Old  World  and  tho 
New.  Many  of  the  Indians,  though  seventeen  years  had  elapsed  since  his  visit  to  them, 
W'-re  affected  to  tears  by  the  tidings  of  his  death.  *  . 


APP.  Ill]  '       MORAVIAN  MISSIONS.  359 

A  curious  objection,  which  reminds  us  of  incidents  and  reproaches  that 
attended  the  first  promulgation  of  the  gospel  upon  earth,  was  raised  by 
some  Indians,  who,  observing  their  friends  greatly  moved  by  the  discourses 
of  the  missionaries,  exclaimed  that  these  men  must  be  sorcerers  and  in 
league  with  evil  spirits,  for  that  nothing  but  magic  could  produce  such 
effects.  The  most  formidable  opposition  was  created  by  a  number  of 
white  traders,  who  were  incensed  at  the  influence  which  the  missionaries 
exerted  in  persuading  the  savages  to  abstain  from  the  purchase  of  spirit- 
uous liquors,  to  avoid  contracting  debts,  and  to  exchange  hunting  for  agri- 
culture. They  were  aided  by  some  weak  and  ignorant  or  bigoted  colonists 
of  New  York  and  New  England,  who  looked  on  the  Moravian  society  as  a 
branch  of  the  church  of  Rome,  and  were  convinced  that  the  spread  of  their 
tenets  and  influence  would  promote  the  interests  of  France  among  the  In- 
dian race.  Several  of  the  missionaries  were  seized  as  Romish  teachers  by 
the  inhabitants  of  Connecticut,  and  detained  in  custody  for  some  days,  till 
they  were  liberated  by  command  of  the  provincial  governor.  But  in  New 
York,  which  abounded  with  traders  hostile  to  the  conversion  of  the  Indians, 
and  contained  a  number  both  of  clergymen  and  laymen  devoted  exclusively 
to  the  church  of  England,  the  opposition  grew  daily  stronger,  and  was  in- 
flamed by  the  fluctuating  politics  of  the  Six  Nations.  Some  of  the  colo- 
nists assured  their  savage  neighbours  that  the  Moravian  brethren  were  not 
legally  entitled  to  undertake  the  pastoral  office  which  they  exercised,  —  a 
statement  which  the  Indians  were  totally  unable  to  comprehend  ;  others, 
and  especially  certain  persons  engaged  in  the  Indian  trade,  attempted  to  de- 
bauch the  new  converts  and  seduce  them  to  resume  the  vices  they  had 
forsaken  ;  and  the  provincial  magistrates  committed  several  of  the  missiona- 
ries to  prison,  as  enemies  of  the  British  government  and  corrupters  of  its 
Indian  allies.  The  most  respectable  inhabitants  of  the  province,  who  had 
at  first  imbibed  prejudices  against  the  missionaries,  were  speedily  dis- 
abused, and  not  only  encouraged  them  to  persevere  in  their  useful  labors, 
but  openly  declared  of  them,  that  they  were,  of  all  men,  the  best  instruments 
of  the  security  of  the  colonists  and  the  happiness  of  the  Indians.  At  length, 
however,  in  consequence  of  a  report  that  a  number  of  the  Indian  converts 
had  wholly  detached  themselves  from  their  previous  friendly  connection  with 
Britain,  the  public  rage  was  kindled  to  such  a  pitch,  that  an  act  of  the  New 
York  assembly  was  passed,  prohibiting  any  member  of  the  Moravian  soci- 
ety from  preaching  or  residing  among  the  tribes  connected  with  the  province. 
This  policy  was  little  calculated  to  soothe  or  conciliate  the  Indians,  who 
had  generally  conceived  a  high  regard  for  the  missionaries,  —  of  whom  some 
now  quitted  the  province,  and  others,  lingering  in  it  with  the  hope  of  being 
yet  permitted  to  resume  their  pious  labors,  were  afterwards  thrown  into 
prison  and  treated  with  great  severity.  The  Indians  who  seemed  most  at- 
tached to  them  became  the  objects  of  a  strong  aversion  and  jealousy  to 
many  of  the  colonists,  who  loudly  and  fiercely  importuned  the  government 
to  send  troops  to  destroy  them.  Not  long  after  the  departure  of  the  mis- 
sionaries, a  number  of  converted  Indians  of  the  confederacy  of  the  Six  Na- 
tions, forsaking  their  country  and  kindred,  followed  their  teachers  to  Penn- 
sylvania, and  established  themselves  at  Bethlehem. 

In  the  mean  time,  and  for  several  years  after,  Spangenberg,  Nitschman, 
CammerhofF,  and  a  great  many  other  pastors,  supplied  by  the  Moravian 
brotlierhood,  were  actively  and  successfully  engaged  in  proselytizing  and 


360  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

civilizing  the  savage  tribes  adjacent  to  the  colonial  settlements  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, Delaware,  and  New  Jersey.  The  laborsof  these  excellent  men,  to 
which  we  can  advert  but  briefly,  have  been  recorded  with  great  minute- 
ness, yet  in  a  very  interesting  and  agreeable  manner,  by  the  historian  of 
the  Moravian  missions  in  America.'  They  collected  various  Indian  socie- 
ties, in  which  the  duties  of  morality  were  practised,  the  habits  of  civilized 
life  studied  and  pursued,  and  the  profession  of  Christianity  embraced  with 
a  sincerity  which  was  tried  and  attested  by  severe  suffering  and  patient  vir- 
tue. The  Indian  converts  and  their  children  were  taught  to  read  ;  and 
some  portions  of  the  Christian  Scriptures  were  translated  into  various  di- 
alects of  the  Indian  tongue.  So  far  from  pretending  to  any  civil  superiority 
over  their  converts,  the  missionaries  appeared  at  once  their  teachers  and 
their  servants  ;  and,  at  all  the  settlements,  not  only  participated  in  their 
rural  labors,  but  appropriated  to  themselves  the  heaviest  part  of  every 
drudgery,  in  consideration  of  the  incompetence  of  Indian  constitutions  for 
steady  and  continuous  toil.  The  progress  of  these  beneficent  exertions 
was  interrupted  by  the  outbreak  of  the  last  war  with  France,  and  by  the  rav- 
ages which  the  Indian  allies  of  the  French  inflicted  on  the  borders  of  Penn- 
sylvania. Many  of  the  Pennsylvanian  colonists  were  progressively  incensed 
to  such  a  degree,  by  the  devastation  of  their  country,  the  massacre  of 
their  friends,  and  the  danger  of  their  families,  that  they  conceived  an  incura- 
ble hatred  and  jealousy  against  the  whole  Indian  race. 

A  sect  of  fanatics  now  sprung  up  in  Pennsylvania,  who  clamorously 
demanded  the  total  extirpation  of  the  aboriginal  tribes,  lest  the  vengeance 
of  Heaven  should  fall  upon  the  Christians  for  not  destroying  the  heathen, 
as  the  Israelites  by  divine  command  had  been  directed  to  destroy  the 
Canaanites  of  old.  The  general  delusion  was  increased  by  the  publication 
of  a  letter,  which  was  said  to  have  been  intercepted  by  the  British  forces, 
purporting  to  have  been  written  by  a  French  officer  at  Quebec  to  one  of 
his  friends,  and  extolling  the  Moravian  brethren  as  the  secret  partisans  and 
useful  agents  of  France.  This  letter,  whether  the  offspring  of  French  or 
of  English  artifice,  produced  all  the  effect  that  its  fabricators  designed.  A 
universal  cry  was  raised  through  the  British  colonies,  that  the  Moravian 
settlers  were  snakes  in  the  grass,  and  the  most  dangerous  because  the 
most  perfidious  enemies  of  Britain.  The  persons  and  settlements  of  these 
calumniated  men,  in  Pennsylvania,  were  now  exposed  to  the  greatest  dan- 
ger ;  and  the  provincial  government,  though  sincerely  inclined  to  protect 
them,  was  evidently  incapable  of  withstanding  the  headlong  rage  with  which 
the  great  body  of  the  people  imprecated  vengeance  on  the  Moravian  breth- 
ren and  their  Indian  flocks.  The  mildness  and  patience  with  which  this  in- 
justice was  endured  by  the  objects  of  it  was  insufficient  to  quell  the  pop- 
ular fury,  which  was  on  the  point  of  venting  itself  in  some  notable  outrage, 
when,  to  the  general  surprise,  a  sudden  attack  was  made  by  the  Indian 
allies  of  France  on  a  considerable  Moravian  settlement,  in  which  a  number 
of  the  brethren  and  of  their  Indian  associates  were  slain.  This  circum- 
stance, concurring  with  the  willingness  of  some  of  the  Moravian  settlers  to 
prepare  for  defensive  war  against  the  enemy,  and  the  liberal  contributions  of 
others  to  relieve  the  wants  of  their  fellow-colonists  who  had  suffered  from 
hostile  rage,  produced  a  great  and  sudden  abatement  of  the  pubhc  jealousy 
and  displeasure.  The  blessings  of  tranquillity  and  security  were  now  en- 
»  Loskiel.    See  Not6  XXIX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.      ~"       '-     J"  ^. .  . 


APP.  Ill]  MORAVIAN  MISSIONS.  3gl 

joyed  in  the  Moravian  settlements  till  the  year  1763,  when  all  the  hatred 
and  fear  that  the  Indian  race  had  ever  excited  in  Pennsylvania  were  revived 
with  augmented  violence  by  the  great  Indian  war  which  broke  out  at  that 
period,  and  the  dreadful  desolation  of  the  frontiers  of  this  province  which 
attended  the  first  explosion  of  its  fury.  A  general  attack  was  now  pro- 
jected by  a  great  number  of  the  colonists  on  the  Indian  inhabitants  of  the 
province,  of  whom  many  were  forced  to  fly  ;  some  were  conveyed  to  Phil- 
adelj^hia  by  order  of  the  government,  which  tendered  them  its  protection  ; 
and  some  were  cruelly  slain. 

In  the  county  of  Lancaster  there  had  resided  for  several  years  a  small 
society  of  Indians,  who  always  demeaned  themselves  in  a  peaceable  and 
friendly  manner  towards  the  white  colonists.  Yet  a  number  of  these  colo- 
nists, consisting  chiefly  of  Irish  emigrants,  who  inhabited  the  township  of 
Paxton,  in  the  county  of  York,  now  resolved  on  the  destruction  of  that 
harmless  and  defenceless  society  ;  and  assembling  on  horseback  for  this 
purpose,  repaired  to  the  Indian  settlement.  Intelligence  of  the  approaching 
attack  was  conveyed  to  its  intended  victims  ;  but  they  disbelieved  it,  and, 
accounting  the  white  people  their  friends,  rejected  all  apprehension  of  dan- 
ger from  them.  When  the  party  who  marched  from  Paxton  arrived  at  the 
Indian  settlement,  they  found  only  the  old  men,  the  women,  and  the  children; 
all  the  rest  of  the  tribe  being  absent  at  their  various  agricultural  avocations. 
But  the  minds  of  the  assailants  were  steeled  by  prejudice  and  passion  beyond 
the  prevalence  of  prayer,  and  the  claims  of  age,  infancy,  and  sex  ;  and  every 
individual  of  the  Indian  race  who  fell  into  their  hands  was  murdered.  This 
bloody  deed  excited  grief  and  horror  in  all  the  sober  and  humane  portion 
of  the  provincial  community  ;  and  the  remainder  of  the  unfortunate  Indians, 
who  by  absence  escaped  the  massacre,  were  promptly  conducted  to  the 
town  of  Lancaster,  and  lodged  in  its  jail  as  a  place  of  security.  The  gov- 
ernor of  Pennsylvania  at  the  same  time  issued  a  proclamation,  expressing 
the  strongest  disapprobation  of  the  deed,  offering  a  reward  for  the  discovery 
of  its  perpetrators,  and  prohibiting  all  future  violence  to  peaceable  inhabit- 
ants, whether  white  men  or  Indians.  In  contempt  of  this  proclamation,  a 
party  of  the  assassins,  reassembling  shortly  after,  marched  to  Lancaster, 
where  they  broke  open  the  jail  and  butchered  all  the  unhappy  objects  of 
their  animosity  who  were  placed  there  for  shelter.^  Another  proclamation 
was  issued  ;  but,  like  the  former,  it  seemed  rather  to  inflame  than  to 
allay  the  popular  rage  ;  for  a  strong  detachment  of  Pennsylvanian  colonists 
now  marched  towards  Philadelphia,  with  the  declared  purpose  of  slaying 
the  Indians  who  had  been  conveyed  thither  ;  and  from  the  temper  of  a 
great  part  of  the  populace  of  that  city,  it  was  manifest  that  they  were  more 
disposed  to  favor  than  resist  the  bloody  enterprise.  From  the  English 
soldiers  who  were  stationed  in  the  town  no  aid  could  be  obtained  by  the 
provincial  government  ;  they  refused  to  permit  the  Indians  to  be  quartered 
in  their  barracks  ;  and  crowds  of  people  gathered  around  these  persecuted, 
yet  mild  and  patient  beings,  and  loaded  them  with  imprecations,  disclosing 
so  much  bitterness  and  blindness  of  anger  and  malevolence,  that  the  slightest 
retort  would  infallibly  have  produced  the  most  tragical  consequences.     In 

*  These  unhappy  beings  threw  themselves  on  their  knees,  and  protested  their  innocence 
of  any  hostile  design  against  Britain.  "  In  this  posture  they  all  received  the  hatchet."  "  The 
murderers  have  given  out  such  threats  against  those  who  disapprove  their  proceedings,  that 
the  whole  country  seems  to  be  in  the  utmost  terror,  no  one  daring  to  speak  what  he  knows  " 
Annual  Register  for  1764. 

VOL.     II.  46  EE 


352  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [APP.  III. 

this  emergency,  a  number  of  the  more  respectable  citizens  of  the  place,  with 
weapons  in  their  hands,  proclaimed  their  determination  to  prevent  Philadel- 
phia from  being  defiled  by  the  unresisted  bloodshed  of  innocent  men.  The 
Quakers  were  particularly  active  on  this  occasion  ;  and  many  of  the  younger 
members  of  this  society,  with  a  generous  ardor,  more  admirable,  perhaps, 
than  the  most  rigid  adherence  to  their  sectarian  principles,  flew  to  arms  in 
defence  of  the  unfortunate  Indians. 

The  insurgents  having  advanced  to  Germantown,  within  seven  miles  of 
Philadelphia,  the  governor  of  the  province  in  dismay  fled  for  safety  and 
counsel  to  the  house  of  Dr.  Franklin  ;  and  Pennsylvania  seemed  to  be  on 
the  brink  of  civil  war.  Franklin,  however,  and  some  other  popular  individ- 
uals, undertook  to  meet  and  expostulate  with  the  insurgents  ;  and  in  the 
conference  that  ensued  exerted  their  sense,  address,  and  influence  so  effect- 
ually, as  to  prevail  with  them  to  relinquish  their  ferocious  purpose  and  re- 
turn to  their  homes.  To  improve  this  happy  success,  Franklin  immediately 
after  composed  and  pubhshed  a  pamphlet  in  defence  of  the  Indians,  which 
produced  a  considerable  efi^ect  in  soothing  the  passions  of  his  countrymen 
and  restoring  tranquillity.  But  the  wrathful  and  jealous  aversion  with  which 
the  European  colonists  regarded  the  aboriginal  race  of  people,  though  ap- 
peased, was  by  no  means  eradicated  ;  and  how  easily  its  savage  energy 
could  be  reawakened  was  manifested  in  the  year  1768,  when  some  Penn- 
sylvanian  planters,  having  committed  an  unprovoked  and  barbarous  murder 
of  ten  Indians,  were  rescued  by  popular  insurrection  from  the  visitation  of 
public  justice.  From  the  year  1763,  however,  till  the  revolt  of  America 
from  the  dominion  of  Britain,  no  general  or  considerable  opposition  resisted 
the  exertions  of  the  Moravian  brethren  to  disseminate  among  the  objects 
of  their  care  the  principles,  habits,  and  benefits  of  piety,  morality,  and  civ- 
ilization. During  this  interval,  they  pursued  their  labors  with  patient  and 
well  rewarded  diligence  ;  combining  the  zeal  of  the  Puritans  with  the  mild- 
ness of  the  Quakers  and  the  address  of  the  Jesuits  ;  and  rejoicing  in  the 
promotion  of  divine  glory  and  human  good,  attested  by  numerous  conver- 
sions of  Indians,  who  hved  in  the  faith,  and  died  in  the  conscious  solace,  of 
the  gospel.  Nor  were  these  exertions  relaxed  even  by  the  serious  obstruc- 
tion which  their  efficacy  received  from  the  events  of  the  Revolutionary 
War.i 

^  Loskiel's  History  of  the  Mission  of  the  United  Brethren  among  the  Indians  in  JVorth  Ameri' 
ca.  Annual  Register  for  1768.  Franklin's  Memoirs.  Some  of  the  Indians  slain  in  1768  were 
the  kinsmen  of  a  chief  united  by  friendship  to  the  rulers  of  Pennsylvania.  To  a  message  from 
an  officer  of  the  provincial  government,  deploring  the  crime,  denying  all  accession  to  it,  and 
threatening  vengeance  on  its  perpetrators,  the  Indian  chief  returned  the  following  answer:  — 
"  Brother,  I  am  glad  to  hear  from  you.  I  understand  that  you  are  very  much  grieved,  and 
that  the  tears  run  from  your  eyes.  With  both  my  hands  I  now  wipe  away  those  tears  ;  and 
as  I  do  not  doubt  but  your  heart  is  disturbed,  I  remove  all  sorrow  from  it,  and  make  it  easy 
as  it  was  before.  I  will  now  sit  down  and  smoke  my  pipe.  I  have  taken  fast  hold  of  the 
chain  of  friendship ;  and  when  I  give  it  a  pull,  if  I  find  my  brothers,  the  English,  have  let  it 
go,  it  will  then  be  time  for  me  to  let  it  go  too,  and  take  care  of  my  family." 


BOOK     XI. 

PROGRESS  OF  THE  STATES  OF  NORTH  AMERICA,  TILL  THEIR 
ASSUMPTION  OF  NATIONAL  INDEPENDENCE. 

CHAPTER    I. 

Relative  Position  of  Britain  and  her  Colonies.  —  Policy  of  the  British  Court  —  Severe  En- 
forcement of  the  existing  commercial  Restrictions  —  Aggravation  of  the  commercial  Restric- 
tions.—  Project  of  the  Stamp  Act.  —  Remonstrances  of  the  Americans.  —  Idea  of  American 
Representatives  in  the  House  of  Commons.  —  The  Stamp  Act  debated  in  England  —  and 
passed.  —  Act  for  quartering  British  Troops  in  America.  —  Proceedings  in  Massachusetts  — 
and  Virginia.  —  Ferment  in  America.  —  Tumults  in  New  England. —  The  Stamp  Officers 
resign.  —  Convention  at  New  York.  —  Political  Clubs  in  America.  —  Tumult  at  New  York. 

—  Non-importation  Agreements.  —  The  Stamp  Act  disobeyed  —  Deliberations  in  England 

—  Act  declaratory  of  parliamentary  Power  over  America  —  the  Stamp  Act  repealed. 

The  notion  which  we  have  remarked^  as  having  been  suggested  to  the 
people  of  New  England,  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by  the 
failure  of  various  demonstrative  essays  of  the  British  government  to  conquer 
Canada, — that  it  was  not  the  will  of  Providence  that  North  America  should 
be  subject  to  the  sole  dominion  of  one  European  state,  —  was  substantially 
prophetic.  The  solitary  superiority  which  Britain  at  length  acquired  over 
America  was  destined  to  be  short-lived  ;  and  the  concentration  was  nearly 
coeval  with  the  dissolution  of  European  ascendency  and  monarchical  power 
in  this  quarter  of  the  world. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  Great  Britain,  even  by  the  mildest 
and  most  liberal  system  of  policy,  could  have  retained  the  American  prov- 
inces in  perpetual  submission  to  her  authority.  Their  great  and  rapid  ad- 
vancement in  population,  and  the  vast  distance  by  which  they  were  disjoined 
from  the  parent  state,  cooperated  with  other  causes  to  awaken  and  nourish 
ideas  of  independence  in  the  minds  of  their  inhabitants,  and  portended  an 
inevitable,  though,  in  point  of  time,  an  indefinite,  limit  to  the  connection 
between  the  two  countries.  A  separate  and  independent  political  existence 
was  the  natural  and  reasonable  consummation  to  which  the  progress  of  so- 
ciety in  America  was  tending  ;  and  Great  Britain,  eventually,  had  but  to 
choose  between  a  graceful  compliance  or  a  fruitless  struggle  with  this  irre- 
pressible development.  By  wisdom  and  prudence,  she  might,  indeed,  have 
retarded  the  catastrophe,  and  even  rendered  its  actual  oqpurrence  instru- 
mental to  the  confirmation  of  friendship  and  good-will  between  the  two  coun- 
tries ;  but  her  conduct  and  policy  w^ere  perversely  calculated  to  provoke 
and  hasten  its  arrival,  and  to  blend  its  immortal  remembrance  with  im- 
pressions of  resentment,  enmity,  and  strife. 

It  has  been  justly  remarked  by  an  accomplished  and  intelligent  American 
historian^  of  the  Revolutionary  War  between  Britain  and  his  country,  that 
great  and  flourishing  colonies,  the  offspring  of  a  free  people,  daily  increas- 
ing in  numbers,  and  already  grown  to  the  magnitude  of  a  nation,  planted 
~^»  ^ra77,  BoolT Vlll7c hli^I.  ~~~~~ 

'  Ramsay.     I  have  been  obliged  to  alter  his  language  in  order  to  develope  his  thought. 


354  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

at  a  vast  distance  from  their  parent  country,  and  governed  by  constitutions 
as  liberal  as  her  own,  were  novelties  in  the  history  of  the  world.  To  com- 
bine durably  and  satisfactorily  colonies  so  circumstanced  in  one  uniform 
system  of  government  with  the  parent  country  required  in  the  statesmen 
who  might  entertain  such  a  design  the  most  profound  and  varied  knowl- 
edge of  mankind,  and  the  most  extensive  comprehension  and  righteous  esti- 
mate of  actual  and  probable  things.  A  scheme  so  arduous  was  beyond  the 
aim,  and  far  beyond  the  grasp,  of  ordinary  statesmen,  whose  guides  were 
precedents,  and  who  regarded  artificial  usage  and  formality  as  principles 
of  human  nature.  An  original  genius,  unfettered  by  hereditary  or  official 
prejudice,  and  exalted  by  just  conceptions  of  human  worth  and  rights,  and 
of  the  mutual  duties  and  obligations  of  mankind,  might  have  struck  out 
some  plan  that  would  have  prolonged  at  least  the  political  union  of  the  two 
countries,  by  securing  as  much  liberty  to  the  colonies  and  as  great  a  degree 
of  supremacy  to  the  parent  state  as  their  common  good  required.  But 
no  statesman  equal  to  such  views,  actuated  by  such  sentiments,  or  en- 
dowed with  such  knowledge  and  capacity,  now  presided,  or  perhaps  ever 
did  preside,  over  the  helm  of  political  affairs  in  Great  Britain. 

We  have  beheld  various  disputes  and  controversies  arise  from  time  to 
time  between  Britain  and  her  colonies,  and  a  reciprocal  and  progressive 
jealousy  mingle  with  the  other  sentiments  that  resulted  from  their  connec- 
tion. Of  the  controversies  that  had  already  occurred  between  royal  or 
national  prerogative  and  provincial  liberty,  some,  without  being  adjusted  to 
the  satisfaction  of  either  party,  had  terminated  by  leaving  each  in  posses- 
sion, if  not  in  the  exercise,  of  pretensions  inconsistent  with  the  avowed 
claims  of  the  other  ;  and  though  in  certain  instances  the  colonists  were 
obliged  reluctantly  to  yield  to  the  superior  power  which  backed  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  parent  state,  the  rapid  increase  of  their  strength  and  num- 
bers manifestly  rendered  a  submission  thus  obtained  unstable  and  precarious. 
It  was  to  royal  charters,  and  not  to  the  national  generosity  of  the  parent 
state,  that  the  Americans  owed  those  liberal  domestic  institutions  which 
protected  the  interests  and  cherished  the  spirit  of  liberty  among  them.  The 
whole  strain  of  parliamentary  legislation  proclaimed  that  America  was  re- 
garded by  the  British  government  and  by  the  merchants  and  manufacturers 
who  influenced  its  colonial  pohcy,  less  as  an  integral  part  than  a  dependent 
and  tributary  adjunct  of  the  British  empire  ;  and  with  the  growth  of  the 
American  States,  there  had  grown  an  indignant  conviction  in  the  minds 
of  many  of  their  inhabitants,  that  their  enjoyment  of  the  hard  earned  fruits 
of  the  dangers,  toils,  and  sufferings  by  which  they  had  added  so  many  prov- 
inces to  the  British  crown  was  unjustly  and  tyrannically  circumscribed,  for 
the  advantage  of  the  distant  community  whence  oppression  had  compelled 
them  or  their  fathers  to  emigrate,  and  as  the  tribute  for  a  protection  which 
they  always  reproached  as  scanty  and  inefficient,  and  daily  found  less  requi- 
site to  their  security.  We  have  seen,i  t^^t,  long  before  the  conquest  of 
Canada  was  achieved,  the  American  colonists  were  prepossessed  with  the 
conviction  that  Britain  dreaded  this  acquisition  as  perilous  to  the  stability 
of  her  colonial  empire.  The  occasion  they  had  judged,  or  supposed  her  to 
judge,  so  critical  to  their  political  relation  now  arrived.  The  late  war, 
which,  among  other  results,  enlarged  the  British  empire  by  the  conquest 
of  Canada,  loaded  Britain  with  a  vast  addition  to  her  national  debt,  and 
'  »  .5»fe,  Book  X.,  Chap.  II.  ~~ 


CHAP.  I]  SYSTEM   OF  COMMERCIAL  RESTRICTIONS.  5(35 

finally  issued  in  a  treaty,  of  which  all  parties  perceived,  as  soon  as  the  heat 
of  controversy  and  the  illusions  of  national  glory  subsided,  that  the  grand 
effect  consisted  in  the  accession  that  was  made  to  the  domestic  strength 
and  resources  of  the  British  settlements  in  America. 

While  the  issue  of  the  contest  was  thus  favorable  to  America,  and,  in 
immediate  effect,  profitless,  if  not  disadvantageous,  to  Britain,  its  history 
afforded  to  the  parent  state  occasion,  more  specious  than  just,  to  impute 
all  her  efforts  to  a  generous  concern  for  the  protection  and  defence  of  her 
colonial  offspring.  From  this  there  was  a  short  and  easy  step  to  the 
persuasion,  that  the  dependent  people  who  reaped  such  high  and  exclusive 
benefit  from  the  war  should  be  compelled  not  only  to  relieve  the  parent 
state  of  the  burdens  which  it  had  entailed  on  her,  but  to  incur  such  addi- 
tional sacrifices  as  might  exempt  the  parent  state  from  the  apprehension  of 
their  abusing  the  advantages  and  opportunities  now  placed  within  their  reach. 
If  it  was  natural  that  such  views  should  be  impressed  on  the  friends  of 
British  supremacy  by  the  issue  of  the  late  war,  it  was  not  less  natural  that 
this  issue  should  inspire  the  partisans  of  American  liberty  with  opposite 
hopes  and  ideas.  They  naturally  expected  to  reap  advantage  from  the 
crisis  whence  their  political  opponents  derived  auguries  of  danger  and  trouble. 
Perhaps,  if  Pitt  had  still  directed  the  policy  of  the  British  cabinet,  a  line 
of  conduct  might  have  been  devised  on  the  part  of  Britain,  congenial,  or  at 
least  less  uncongenial  than  that  which  was  actually  adopted,  to  the  wishes 
and  sentiments  of  the  colonists.  But  Britain  had  been  precipitated,  partly 
at  least  by  Pitt's  genius,  into  an  emergency  from  which  she  was  left  to  ex- 
tricate herself  by  the  counsel  and  exertion  of  feebler  and  inferior  spirits  ; 
and  the  treaty  of  Paris,  while  it  seemed  to  extirpate  all  future  cause  of  dis- 
pute between  Britain  and  France,  manifestly  enlarged  and  rendered  more 
distinct  and  important  every  dispute  that  had  hitherto  occurred  or  that  was 
likely  to  occur  between  Britain  and  her  colonies.  This  treaty,  in  fact,  was 
nearly  coeval  with  the  commencement  of  that  quarrel  or  series  of  quarrels 
which  issued  in  the  revolt  of  America  from  Britain. 

In  surveying  the  first  introduction  of  the  system  of  commercial  restric- 
tions which  Britain  imposed  on  her  colonies  by  the  Acts  of  Navigation,  we 
had  occasion  to  remark  1  that  a  pohtical  connection  between  two  countries 
of  which  the  weaker  is  not  entirely  enslaved,  founded  upon  or  interwoven 
with  such  a  commercial  system,  manifestly  carried  within  itself  the  princi- 
ples of  its  own  dissolution.  Britain  termed  herself  the  parent  state  ;  and, 
in  conformity  with  the  ideas  suggested  by  this  title,  exacted  from  the  Amer- 
ican colonies  an  obedience  analogous  to  that  filial  submission  which  recog- 
nizes the  authority  without  discussing  the  reasonableness  of  parental  com- 
mands. Unfortunately,  she  was  not  consistent  in  transferring  to  her  colonial 
policy  the  principles^  which,  in  domestic  life,  regulate  the  conduct  of  every 
wise  parent  towards  his  offspring,  and  teach  him  gradually  to  relax  his  con- 
trol, and  finally  to  content  himself  with  an  affectionate  and  reverential  defer- 
ence, the  fruit  of  habitual  respect  and  long  remembered  kindness.  On  the 
contrary,  the  views  entertained  and  the  objects  pursued  by  Britain  were 
such  as  necessarily  required  her  to  aggravate  the  severity  of  her  control, 
in  proportion  to  that  very  increase  in  the  strength  and  resources  of  the 
colonies  which  rendered  them  increasingly  averse  to  endure  and  additionally 
qualified  to  reject  it.     Doubtless,  the  lapse  of  time,  though  in  the  main  in- 

»  ^nte,  Book  I.,  Chap.  III. 


5g6  HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK   XI. 

jurious,  was  yet  in  some  degree  propitious  to  the  authority  of  Britain  and  to 
the  connection  between  the  two  countries.  The  commercial  restrictions  had 
subsisted  so  long,  that  habit,  without  endearing  them  to  the  colonists,  had 
trained  many  minds  to  regard  them  with  a  temper  little  less  favorable  to 
their  continued  endurance  ;  and  in  the  course  of  various  controversies  in 
which  the  colonists  defended  their  chartered  privileges  and  domestic  insti- 
tutions against  British  aggression,  their  leading  politicians  had  seemed  to 
vindicate,  if  not  to  applaud,  the  commercial  restrictions,  which  they  charac- 
terized as  the  only  legitimate  channel  by  which  the  authority  of  Britain  could 
be  exerted  or  her  revenue  augmented  at  the  expense  of  America. 

Assuredly,  even  although  no  other  subject  of  quarrel  had  presented  itself, 
the  commercial  restrictions  alone  must  in  process  of  time  have  occasioned 
the  disruption  of  the  American  provinces  from  the  British  empire.  Every 
step  in  the  progressive  advancement  of  those  distant  communities  was  a 
step  towards  potential  independence.  This  was  acknowledged  by  all  the 
political  writers  and  reasoners  in  Great  Britain  ;  but  they  indulged,  and 
not  altogether  unreasonably,  the  hope  that  the  day  was  yet  far  distant  when 
Britain  must  either  voluntarily  forego  her  authority,  or  behold  its  bonds  vio- 
lently broken  and  cast  off.  They  beheved  or  hoped  that  America  would 
advance  slowly,  silently,  and  blindly  to  the  consummation  of  political  and 
commercial  independence  ;  and  they  w^ere  totally  insensible  to  the  advantage 
and  dignity  of  treating  her  with  liberal  kindness  during  her  political  nonage, 
and  of  openly  acknowledging  her  independence,  as  a  just  consequence  of 
her  national  maturity,  and  a  foreseen  and  prepared  concession  to  the  ex- 
pressed desire  of  her  people.  Their  opinion  respecting  the  remoteness  of 
the  period  when  America  must  necessarily  be  enfranchised  from  the  com- 
mercial fetters  imposed  by  the  parent  state  was  partly  derived  from  a  con- 
sideration, exaggerated  perhaps,  of  the  divisions  and  mutual  jealousies  by 
which  united  counsel  and  action  on  the  part  of  the  American  colonies  was 
obstructed.  None  of  them,  except  Lord  Camden,  was  able  to  foresee  the 
erring  course  of  policy  by  which  Britain  herself  was  to  assist  her  colonies 
to  surmount  this  obstruction.  Even  the  most  liberal  and  considerate  of 
these  politicians  failed  to  perceive  that  the  time  was  now  come  for  anticipat- 
ing, by  a  gradual  relaxation,  that  entire  removal  of  the  commercial  bonds 
of  America  which  they  all  acknowledged  to  be  finally  inevitable.  An  ab- 
rupt and  total  enfranchisement  of  American  commerce,  conceded  at  last  to 
irresistible  force,  was  a  prospect  humihating  to  Britain,  and  unpropitious 
to  the  lasting  subsistence  of  friendship  and  good-will  between  the  two  coun- 
tries. When  we  consider  the  apprehensions  that  had  prevailed  in  Britain 
of  the  probable  influence  of  the  conquest  of  Canada  in  accelerating  the  era 
of  American  independence,  and  the  knowledge  which  the  British  politicians 
must  have  possessed  that  the  same  events  had  been  prospectively  united  in 
the  speculations  of  the  Americans,  it  seems  strange  that  not  one  British 
writer  or  statesman  should  have  perceived  that  now  was  the  time  for  Britain 
to  retreat  with  dignity  and  honor  from  the  dangerous  career  in  which  she 
had  so  long  persisted,  and  to  infuse  the  influence  of  more  liberal  principles 
into  the  relations  she  maintained  with  the  American  colonists,  —  increased 
and  rapidly  increasing  as  they  were  in  strength  and  numbers,  and  elated  by 
a  conquest  which  delivered  them  from  the  fear  of  every  power  except  their 
own  parent  state, ^  and  excited  their  spirits  to  a  pitch  of  fervor  which  must 
'  The  French  court,  though  mortified  by  the  loss  of  Canada,  was  by  no  means  insensible 


CHAP.  I.]    EXTENSION  AND  AGGRAVATION  OF  CONTROL.       35 

have  rendered  them  pecuharly  susceptible  of  the  strongest  impressions 
of  gratitude  or  resentment. 

This  oversight,  however,  was  but  a  trivial  error  in  comparison  with  tho 
rash  and  fatal  conclusion  which  the  British  court  and  its  counsellors  em- 
braced in  the  present  critical  juncture,  —  that  the  existing  circumstances  of 
the  empire  required  an  immediate  extension  and  aggravation  of  the  control 
exercised  by  the  parent  state  over  the  colonies  ;  and  that  Britain,  for  the 
preservation  of  her  ascendency,  endangered  by  the  growth  and  the  security 
of  America,  must  forthwith  embrace  a  course  of  policy  tending  at  once  to 
undo  all  the  advantage  she  had  gained  to  her  own  interest  and  reputation  by 
conquering  Canada,  amd  to  confirm  all  the  distinct  and  opposite  impressions 
of  advantage  resulting  to  America  from  the  abstract  circumstance  of  this 
conquest  having  been  effected.  The  superior  force  of  Britain  had  been 
the  instrument,  and  her  tutelar  care  the  pretext,  for  a  tyrannical  system  of 
colonial  policy,  which  she  now  prepared  to  push  to  extremes  of  rigor  never 
before  attempted,  and  at  a  period  when  the  original  relations  of  strength  be- 
tween herself  and  her  colonies  had  undergone  a  signal  modification,  and  when 
she  had  just  concluded  a  series  of  efforts  tending  certainly  to  their  protection 
and  advantage,  but  tending  to  it  so  effectually  as  to  render  her  guardian  aid 
in  future  unnecessary  to  them.  Desirous  to  impress  her  colonial  subjects 
with  the  belief  that  British  protection  was  essential  to  their  security,  she  long 
refrained  from  subduing  the  neighbouring  settlements  of  France  ;  and  having 
eventually  been  provoked  to  undertake  this  conquest,  she  committed  the 
great,  but  by  no  means  unnatural,  blunder  of  expecting  to  reap  at  least 'as 
much  benefit  from  the  service  by  which  she  dehvered  her  colonies  from  the 
danger  of  hostile  vicinity,  as  she  had  formerly  gained  from  their  conviction 
that  her  assistance  was  requisite  to  counteract  and  repel  it.  Often,  before 
the  actual  conquest  of  Canada,  did  the  American  colonists  urgently,  but  in- 
effectually, implore  the  protecting  or  vindictive  aid  of  British  troops.  It  was 
not  till  after  this  conquest  was  effected,  that  they  learned,  from  the  same 
English  newspapers  which  announced  the  treaty  of  Paris,  the  intentions  of 
the  government  of  the  parent  state  to  maintain  permanently  a  regular  army 
in  America,  and  support  it  at  the  expense  of  the  colonies. 

V(e  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  advert  to  the  smuggling  which  pre- 
vailed in  all  the  American  provinces,  and  which  from  the  first  establishment 
of  the  Navigation  Laws  created  and  preserved  channels  of  traffic  contradic- 
tory of  their  provisions.  This  contraband  trade  continued  to  exist  and  in- 
crease, notwithstanding  the  opposition  it  received  from  the  custom-house 
officers  appointed  by  the  British  government,  whose  utmost  exertions,  indeed, 
would  have  been  inadequate  to  suppress  it,  and  whose  activity  in  the  dis- 
charge of  their  unpopular  duties  was,  in  almost  all  the  colonies,  somewhat 
relaxed  by  the  apprehension  of  provoking  an  ebullition  of  public  rage,  the 
more  dangerous  to  them  because  they  could  expect  only  a  languid  and  re- 

of  the  disadvantageous  position  in  which  Britain  was  placed,  relatively  to  her  own  colonies, 
by  the  acquisition  of  it.  In  the  commencement  of  their  revolutionary  struggle,  the  Americans 
besought  the  aid  of  France  not  only  to  free  them  from  the  yoke  of  Britain,  but  to  enable  them 
to  conquer  Canada,  Nova  Scotia,  and  Florida.  The  French  court,  it  is  certain,  refused  to  ac- 
cede to  the  projected  conquests ;  and  some  time  after  declined  even  the  more  tempting  pro- 
posal of  reacquiring  Canada  to  itself  "  The  cabinet  of  Versailles  was  compelled  by  good 
policy  to  regard  the  supremacy  of  England  over  Canada  as  a  valuable  source  of  inquietude 
and  jealousy  to  the  Americans.  The  neighbourhood  of  a  formidable  enemy  necessarily  en 
hanced  the  value  which  they  attached  to  the  friendship  and  support  of  the  French  monarch." 
Sevelinges's  Introduction  to  Butta's  History  of  the  War  of  American  Independence, 


368  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

luctant  support  from  the  provincial  magistrates  and  assemblies.  In  the  in- 
terval which  elapsed  between  the  conquest  of  Canada  and  the  peace  of 
Paris,  the  trade  of  the  British  settlements  in  America  was  largely  and  rapid- 
ly extended  ;  and,  as  the  contraband  will  always  keep  pace  with  the  legitimate 
commerce  which  is  unnaturally  confined,  the  same  period  was  signalized  by 
a  proportionate  increase  of  smuggling.  This  circumstance  was  regarded 
with  great  and  disproportioned  jealousy  by  the  British  ministers,  who  hastened 
to  adopt  a  system  of  remedial  measures  more  forcible  than  judicious,  and 
announcing  entire  ignorance  or  neglect  of  that  fundamental  maxim  of  sound 
policy  which  forbids  the  employment  of  violent  counteraction  in  the  cure  of 
evils  intimately  connected  with  the  sources  of  national  prosperity.  Meditat- 
ing a  more  complete  subjection  of  America  to  the  dominion  of  the  parent 
state,  they  resolved  to  begin  by  a  more  strict  and  vigorous  exertion  of  the 
national  prerogative  in  those  instances  in  which  the  colonists  were  already 
accustomed  to  submit  to  its  operation  and  to  acknowledge  its  legitimacy. 

In  pursuance  of  this  design,  an  attempt  was  made,  shortly  after  the  es- 
tablishment of  peace,  by  a  novel  expedient,  ascribed  to  George  Grenville, 
the  chancellor  of  the  British  exchequer,  to  deal  a  blow  which  it  was  sup- 
posed would  prove  destructive  to  the  contraband  trade  of  the  colonies.  All 
the  commanders  and  other  officers  of  British  ships  of  war  stationed  off  the 
American  coasts,  or  cruising  in  the  American  seas,  now  received  injunction 
and  authority  from  the  crown  to  act  in  the  capacity  of  officers  of  the  cus- 
toms :  they  were  compelled  to  take  the  usual  oaths  of  office  administered  to 
the*  civil  functionaries  with  w^hom  they  were  thus  associated  ;  and  they  were 
encouraged  to  reconcile  themselves  to  what  might  otherwise  have  been  reck- 
oned a  degradation  of  their  service,  by  the  extension  to  them  of  the  usual 
custom-house  policy  which  assigns  an  ample  share  of  contraband  and  confis- 
cated cargoes  as  the  reward  of  the  immediate  captors.  This  measure  at  once 
afixDrded  a  great  addition  to  the  executive  force  of  the  custom-house  estab- 
lishment in  America,  and  introduced  a  sudden  and  striking  change  in  the  style 
and  temper  by  which  the  exertion  of  this  force  was  characterized.  Uncon- 
versant,  and  sometimes  totally  unacquainted,  with  the  laws  they  were  now 
required  not  merely  to  guard,  but  to  administer,  the  British  naval  officers  in 
the  discharge  of  their  new  functions  exerted  against  their  fellow-subjects  the 
same  rough  and  impetuous  energy  which  they  had  recently  displayed  with  so 
much  advantage  and  applause  against  the  common  enemy  ;  and  while  they 
augmented  the  odium  of  an  unpopular  system  by  fully  developing  its  vigor, 
they  exposed  even  their  legitimate  operations  to  additional  obloquy  by  num- 
berless blunders  and  mistakes,  into  which  they  were  hurried  by  their  igno- 
rance and  habitual  disregard  of  caution,  and  which  rendered  lawful  com- 
merce almost  as  perilous  to  the  colonists  as  contraband  trading.  Some  car- 
goes were  unjustly  confiscated  ;  many  vessels  were  unreasonably  detained, 
to  the  heavy  detriment  of  their  owners  ;  and,  in  several  instances,  these 
violation?  of  justice  were  ascribed  rather  to  eager  cupidity  and  confidence  of 
impunity  than  to  involuntary  error.  The  regular  custom-house  officers  sta- 
tioned in  America  were  acquainted  with  the  limits  of  the  powers  and  duties 
committed  to  them  ;  and  were  deterred  from  overstraining  the  one  or  violat- 
ing the  other  by  the  fear  of  popular  indignation,  or  of  the  justice  of  the  pro- 
vincial tribunals.  But  these  restraints  were  derided  by  the  naval  officers, 
who  exercised  their  new  authority  with  a  hardihood  congenial  to  their  pro- 
fessional  character,  and  confirmed  by  the   consciousness,  that,   whatever 


CHAP.  I]  FOREIGN  COLONIAL  TRADE.  S69 

wrongs  they  might  commit,  no  nearer  redress  was  competent  to  the  suffer- 
ers than  what  might  be  obtained  by  an  application  to  the  admiralty  or  treasury 
of  England. 

To  conceive  the  extent  of  the  mischief  thus  inflicted,  it  is  necessary  to 
recollect  that  the  British  naval  officers  at  that  period  were  in  general  a 
race  of  persons  very  inferior  to  the  humane,  honorable^  well  educated, 
and  high-minded  men  by  whom  this  branch  o^  public  service  has  been 
subsequently  adorned.  The  ministers  of  Great  Britain  were  perplexed  and 
provoked  by  the  incessant  complaints  of  these  acts  of  injustice,  and  of  the 
injury  inflicted  by  their  measures  on  that  regulated  commerce  which  it  was 
the  declared  and  immediate  object  of  their  policy  to  foster  and  encourage. 
They  persisted,  however,  in  the  obnoxious  experiment  to  which  they  had 
resorted  ;  either  from  unwillingness  to  betray  symptoms  of  retraction  in  the 
very  outset  of  an  extensive  and  arduous  scheme  of  policy,  or  because  they 
hoped  that  the  naval  officers  would  acquire,  from  longer  familiarity  with 
their  new  functions,  a  discrimination  sufficient  to  restrain  them  from  illegal 
outrage  or  dangerous  excess. 

But  evils  of  still  greater  magnitude,  and  still  more  embarrassing  in  their 
nature,  were  destined  to  ensue  from  the  employment  of  the  naval  officers, 
whose  conduct,  in  proportion  as  they  gained  farther  acquaintance  with  the 
regulations  of  the  commercial  code  which  they  were  required  to  administer, 
became  proportionally  more  grievous  and  irritating  to  the  Americans,  and 
more  detrimental  both  to  the  distinct  and  the  united  interests  of  the  col- 
onies and  the  parent  state.  A  traffic  had  subsisted  for  many  years  between 
the  British  and  the  Spanish  colonies  in  North  and  South  America,  to  the 
great  advantage  of  both,  but  especially  of  the  former,  and  proportionally  of 
their  parent  state  ;  the  chief  materials  of  this  traffic  on  the  part  of  the  British 
colonists  being  commodities  of  British  manufacture,  or  productions  of  their 
own  plantations,  with  the  price  of  which  they  were  enabled  to  purchase  addi- 
tional quantities  of  British  goods  for  their  own  consumption.  There  had 
also  subsisted  a  commerce  not  less  ancient  and  extensive  between  the  colo- 
nies of  Britain  in  North  America  and  those  of  the  French  in  the  West  In- 
dies ;  which  was  highly  and  mutually  beneficial,  as  it  consisted  chiefly  of 
commodities,  which,  unless  thus  exchanged,  would  have  been  entirely  val- 
ueless or  even  cumbersome  to  their  possessors.  The  British  government, 
sensible  that  these  branches  of  commerce  did  not  contravene  the  spirit  and 
purposes  of  the  Acts  of  Navigation,  and  were  attended  with  great  advantage 
to  the  American  colonies  and  their  parent  state,  connived  at  them  so  broad- 
ly, that  they  were  pursued  without  disguise  or  molestation,  and  were  even 
exempted  from  interruption  during  the  late  war,  till  the  invasion  of  the  French 
West  India  Islands  by  the  British  forces,  when  they  sustained  a  check, 
which,  however,  was  withdrawn  at  the  return  of  peace.  But  though  not 
opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  commercial  code  of  Britain,  they  varied  so  far 
from  the  literal  import  of  its  provisions,  as  to  afford  to  the  new  auxiliaries 
of  the  custom-house  a  plausible  pretext  of  duty  for  measures  to  which  they 
were  prompted  by  the  strongest  temptations  of  interest  ;  and  accordingly 
they  seized,  indiscriminately,  and  confiscated  all  ships,  whether  American 
or  foreign,  engaged  in  conducting  those  branches  of  trade,  which  the  custom- 
house officers  stationed  on  shore  had  hitherto  permitted  to  pass  without 
question  or  notice,  in  consequence  of  a  different  view  of  the  ^aw,  confirmed 
perhaps  by  a  greater  deference  to  popular  sentiment  and  opiniou.     These 

VOL.   II.  47 


370  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

proceedings,  which  are  supposed  to  have  been  equally  surprising  and  un- 
welcome to  the  British  ministers,  excited  much  discontent  in  America 
where  many  persons  declared  that  their  country  would  speedily  be  deprived 
of  all  trade,  whether  legitimate  or  contraband  ;  that  the  regulations  by  which 
their  commerce  had  been  hitherto  fettered  were  now  wantonly  and  violently- 
straitened  to  such  a  degree  as  to  strangle  it  altogether  ;  and,  in  order  to  ren- 
der these  declarations  mone  significant,  proclaimed  their  intention  to  purchase 
in  future  no  British  commodities  with  which  they  could  possibly  dispense, 
since  they  were  disabled  from  paying  for  them  with  the  gold  they  had  hith- 
erto procured  from  the  colonies  of  France  and  Spain. 

It  was  impossible  for  the  British  ministers  to  disregard  the  complaints, 
equally  just  and  forcible,  which  were  provoked  by  this  sudden  and  un- 
looked-for extension  of  the  Trade  Laws.  They  hastened  to  remove  all 
doubts  with  respect  to  the  legitimacy  of  the  commerce  between  the  Ameri- 
can colonies  and  the  settlements  of  France  and  Spain,  by  procuring  an  act 
of  parliament  ^  which  expressly  authorized  this  commerce,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  loaded  the  most  valuable  articles  it  embraced  with  duties  so  heavy  as 
to  amount  to  a  virtual  prohibition.  [April  5,  1764.]  The  system  of  colo- 
nial poHcy  which  Britain  had  so  long  pursued  was  carried  to  the  highest 
pitch,  and  a  new  and  important  pretension  was  broached  in  support  of  it  by 
this  statute,  of  which  the  preamble  announced,  that  "it  is  just  and  neces- 
sary that  a  revenue  be  raised  in  his  JVIajesty^s  dominions  in  America  for 
defraying  the  expenses  of  defending^  protecting j  and  securing  the  same.''^ 
Besides  the  provisions  relative  to  commerce  with  the  French  and  Spanish 
settlements,  the  duties  upon  enumerated  commodities  were  augmented  ;  and 
measures  of  additional  severity  were  proclaimed  against  Americans  violating 
the  commercial  restrictions,  and  foreigners  aiding  or  participating  with  them 
in  contraband  trade.  It  was  farther  enacted,  that  the  penalties  which  might 
in  future  be  incurred  by  the  breach  either  of  this  statute,  or  of  any  of  the 
other  laws  relative  to  the  colonial  trade,  should  be  recoverable  in  any  court 
of  record  within  the  colony  where  the  offence  was  committed,  or  in  any 
court  of  admiralty  in  such  colony,  or  in  any  other  part  of  America,  at  the 
election  of  the  informer  or  prosecutor  ;  and  that  defendants,  even  though 
acquitted,  should  not  be  entitled  to  costs  or  damages,  unless  the  judge 
should  certify  that  the  prosecution  had  been  utterly  wanton  and  malicious. 
Thus,  to  secure  the  execution  of  unpopular  regulations,  was  a  form  of  legal 
process  still  more  odious  employed.  Persons  charged  with  offences  against 
the  revenue  laws  might,  at  the  discretion  of  the  prosecutor,  be  deprived  of 
trial  by  jury,  and  compelled  to  defend  themselves  bei'bre  distant  tribunals, 
where  the  chances  of  conviction  were  multiplied  by  the  rule  which  assigned 
to  the  judges  and  officers  of  admiralty  courts  a  proportion  of  the  fines  and 
forfeitures  awarded  by  their  decrees.^  This  measure  excited  apparently 
more  regret  than  resentment  in  the  minds  of  the  colonists,  who  contented 
themselves  with  expressing  their  sentiments  of  it  in  earnest,  but  ineffectual, 
petitions  to  the  British  government  for  some  modification  of  its  rigor.    J>en 

•  4  Geo.  III.,  Cap.  15. 

^  "  In  this  triumphant  career  of  the  minister,  the  voice  of  America  was  silenced  by  a  rule 
of  the  House  of  Commons  not  to  receive  any  petition  against  a  money  bill.  This  rule,  found 
ed  on  the  supposition  that  the  people  who  are  to  pay  the  tax  are  present  by  their  delegates  in 
parliament,  not  less  manifestly  proved  the  absurdity  and  injustice  of  the  existing  case,  in 
which  the  Americans,  though  the  parties  chiefly  interested,  were  the  only  parties  neither  ac- 
tually nor  virtually  represented."  Minot.  It  is  sometimes  necessary  to  take  liberties  with 
this  author's  language  in  order  to  render  his  meaning  more  easily  intelligible. 


CHAP.   I]  PROJECT  OF  A  DOMESTIC  TAX.  37 1> 

Hutchinson,  the  American  historian  and  politician,  whose  vipws  in  general 
betray  a  strong  bias  in  favor  of  the  system  pursued  by  the  parent  state, 
expresses  the  most  unqualified  reprobation  of  the  impolicy  of  some  of  the 
provisions  of  this  act,  and  ascribes  the  patience  and  submission  with  which 
the  colonists  endured  its  pressure  to  the  practical  relaxation  which  it  re- 
ceived from  the  connivance  or  indulgence  of  the  custom-house  officers.^ 

But  the  submissive  deportment,  which,  in  spite  of  their  discontent,  the 
colonists  maintained  for  a  while  under  this  sudden  and  severe  aggravation  of 
the  commercial  restrictions,  was,  if  not  mainly  occasioned,  at  least  consid- 
erably promoted,  by  the  anxious  expectation  now  awakened  with  regard  to 
the  issue  of  a  legislative  project,  far  more  interesting  and  formidable  to 
their  apprehensions,  which  had  been  for  some  time  entertained  and  openly 
announced  by  the  British  government.  To  this  point  all  the  fears  and 
doubts  engendered  by  previous  rumors  and  speculations  began  to  converge  ; 
and  the  colonists,  absorbed  by  the  interest  of  a  great  approaching  crisis 
which  involved  the  pretensions  of  the  parent  state  to  a  new  and  important 
channel  of  dominion,  were  naturally  impressed  with  more  than  usual  mod- 
eration of  sentiment  in  relation  to  an  exertion  of  British  prerogative,  which, 
although  overstrained  and  oppressive,  was  still  confined  to  a  channel  of  which 
they  customarily  acknowledged  the  legitimacy.  We  have  seen,  that,  at  a 
very  early  period  of  their  history,  the  colonists  on  various  occasions  resented 
their  subjection  to  the  British  commercial  code,  not  merely  on  account  of 
the  oppressive  severity  of  its  regulations,  but  with  express  protestation 
against  the  injustice  of  financial  burdens  imposed  on  them  by  a  parliament 
in  which  they  were  not  represented  ;  and  that,  appealing  sometimes  to  the 
particular  provisions  of  their  royal  charters,  and  sometimes  to  their  general 
character  of  denizens  of  the  British  empire  and  partners  in  the  whole  scheme 
of  British  liberty,  they  questioned  the  competence,  even  while  they  submitted 
to  the  force,  of  parliamentary  statutes,  which,  in  imposing  taxes  on  their 
commerce,  seemed  to  them  to  usurp  the  proper  functions  of  their  own  pro- 
vincial assemblies.^  In  process  of  time,  the  colonists  became  gradually  in- 
ured to  this  authoritative  pretension.  It  had  long  formed  a  prominent  part 
of  the  established  political  system  under  which  the  population  of  America 
was  renewed  and  enlarged  by  domestic  increase  and  foreign  accession  ;  while 
both  the  odium  and  the  pressure  of  its  actual  enforcement  was  mitigated 
by  the  indulgent  moderation  or  timidity  of  the  revenue  officers,  and  the 
growth  and  subsistence  of  an  extensive  contraband  trade.  An  opinion  grad- 
ually arose  in  America,  that  the  regulation  of  foreign  commerce  was  the 
prerogative  by  which  the  legislature  of  the  parent  state  was  distinguished 
from  the  legislative  organs  established  in  the  remote  provincial  settlements. 
The  expediency  of  a  complete  harmony  of  views  and  principles  in  the  en- 
tire system  of  the  national  commerce,  it  was  said,  required  that  there  should 
be  conceded  to  the  metropolitan  legislature  a  privilege,  hmited  indeed  by 
certain  principles,  yet  derogating  considerably  from  the  integrity  of  that 
constitutional  liberty  which  in  abstract  right  belonged  to  the  colonies  as  a 
constituent  portion  of  the  British  empire.  So  far,  but  no  farther,  the 
Americans  were  generally  prepared,  more  or  less  willingly,  to  recognize  the 
subjection  of  their  favorite  principles  to  circumstantial  exigence.     But  in 

*  Annual  Register  for  1765,  and  for  1775.     Minot.     HntcWnson.     Holmes. 
2  See  particularly  ««fc,  Book  n,  Chap.  IV.;    Book  IV.,  Chap.  II.;   Book  VI. ;  Appendix 
I. ;  and  Note  XXVIH.,  at  the  end  of  Vol.  I.  >^v 


372  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

proportion  at  least  to  the  pain  of  this  concession  was  the  jealous  and  res- 
olute vigilance  with  which  they  contended  for  the  sacredness  of  its  re- 
strictive limits  ;  and  while  the  system  of  domestic  liberty  which  they  en- 
joyed contributed  to  enlighten  and  quicken  their  resentful  sense  of  the 
injustice  of  the  commercial  restrictions  to  which  they  were  subjected,  the 
retroaction  of  this  sentiment  served  additionally  to  endear  to  them  every 
principle,  usage,  and  institution  that  supported  or  developed  their  system 
of  domestic  liberty.  So  early  as  the  year  1696,  we  have  seen  that  a  prop- 
osition, originating  in  England,  to  impose  a  domestic  tax  on  the  colonies 
by  parliamentary  ordinance,  was  openly  combated,  as  suggesting  a  measure 
beyond  the  competence  of  the  British  parliament.^  Since  that  period,  we 
have  beheld  the  same  design  more  than  once  resumed  and  abandoned  by 
British  ministers.  Now,  however,  it  was,  if  not  more  deeply  pondered,  at 
least  more  deliberately  entertained  ;  and  the  Americans,  who  had  hitherto 
regarded  it  with  suspicious  aversion  or  contemptuous  incredulity,  were  sud- 
denly aroused  to  the  necessity  of  finally  admitting  or  successfully  resisting 
its  operation,  by  the  intelligence  of  a  near  and  certain  attempt  to  carry  it  into 
execution. 

It  was  in  the  commencement  of  the  present  year  that  the  American 
assemblies  were  apprized,  by  their  agents  at  London,  of  a  communication 
which  they  had  received  from  Grenville,  the  British  minister,  who  acquainted 
them  with  his  intention  of  procuring  forthwith  an  act  of  parliament  im- 
posing a  stamp  duty  on  the  colonies,  but  declared,  withal,  his  willingness 
to  substitute  in  place  of  this  duty  any  other  internal  tax  which  the  colo- 
nists themselves  would  preferably  recommend,  and  which  should  present  the 
likehhood  of  yielding  an  equal  revenue.  Grenville  doubtless  expected  to 
facilitate  the  execution  of  his  adventurous  purpose,  and  to  reduce  some,  if 
not  all,  of  the  American  States  to  the  attitude  of  acquiescence  in  the  new 
pretension  of  parliament  to  administer  their  domestic  taxation,  by  tempting 
them  to  suggest  what  they  would  consider  the  least  obnoxious  form  in 
which  this  pretension  could  be  exercised  ;  and  the  disappointment  of  his 
expectation  in  this  particular  ought  to  have  served  as  a  warning  against  the 
danger  of  undertaking  a  novel  and  important  stretch  of  power  over  a  people 
with  whose  temper  and  sentiments  it  appeared  that  he  was  very  little  ac- 
quainted. For,  instead  of  being  seduced  by  his  overture,  or  even  consid- 
ering it  as  an  expression  of  courtesy  or  good-will,  the  Americans  universally 
regarded  the  invitation  to  suggest  a  tax  on  themselves  to  the  minister  as  a 
greater  affront  even  than  the  projected  measure  of  taxing  them  without  their 
own  consent.  It  was  a  maxim  which  always  regulated  the  poHcy  of  Massa- 
chusetts, and  which  the  example  of  this  province  had  propagated  in  the 
neighbouring  colonies,  that  it  is  better  to  endure  the  worst  extremity  of  in- 
justice with  the  silence  of  despair  or  resignation,  than  to  purchase  a  mitigation 
of  its  severity  by  any  act  tending  to  recognize  the  legitimacy  of  its  principle. 
The  people  who  cherished  this  generous  maxim  only  waited,  whether  con- 
sciously or  not,  the  attainment  of  sufficient  strength,  and  the  occurrence  of  a 
fit  season,  to  assume  the  rank  of  a  free  and  independent  commonwealth. 
Grenville  had  informed  the  American  agents  that  either  the  stamp  duty,  or 
the  substitutional  tax  which  he  expected  the  colonists  to  suggest,  would  be 
imposed  during  the  session  of  parliament  in  the  present  year  ;  but,  whether 
the  disappointment  of  his  expectation  left  him  unprepared  with  the  details 

'  ^nte.  Appendix  I. 


CHAP.  I.]  PROPOSED  STAMP  DUTIES.  373 

of  his  own  particular  measure,  or  whether  he  persisted  in  hoping  yet  to  re- 
ceive from  some  part  of  America  the  suggestion  he  had  invited,  he  ad- 
vanced no  farther  during  this  year  than  to  propose  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons a  resolution  which  was  adopted  simultaneously  with  the  bill  for  ex- 
tending the  commercial  restrictions,  — "  that,  towards  farther  defraying  the 
expenses  of  protecting  the  colonies,  it  may  be  proper  to  charge  certain 
stamp  duties  upon  them."  He  was  again  mistaken,  if  he  expected  that  the 
delay  by  which  he  thus  prolonged  the  alarm,  suspense,  and  dehberations 
of  the  colonists  would  contribute  in  any  degree  to  facilitate  the  execution 
of  his  financial  design.  But,  indeed,  this  design  was  so  desperate  and  so 
fatally  impolitic,  that  no  system  of  subsidiary  operations,  whether  in  itself 
wisely  or  injudiciously  concerted,  could  possibly  have  escaped  the  re- 
proach of  conducting  to  an  issue  disastrous  and  disgraceful. 

The  communication  of  the  British  minister's  project  excited  mingled 
sentiments  of  alarm,  aversion,  and  resentment  in  America  ;  and  the  lan- 
guage in  which  the  unanimous  objection  of  the  colonies  was  conveyed  varied 
only  in  proportion  as  one  or  other  of  those  sentiments  preponderated  in 
the  minds  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  States  and  of  their  leading  po- 
liticians and  counsellors.  In  the  course  of  the  present  year,  this  project  was 
discussed  in  all  the  provincial  assemblies,  and  provoked  from  them  all  peti- 
tions and  remonstrances  to  the  British  government,  which  differed  indeed  in 
their  topics  and  tone,  though  breathing  the  same  sentiment  and  purpose, 
and  some  of  the  more  remarkable  of  which  deserve  a  particular  commem- 
oration. The  Pennsylvanian  assembly  was  distinguished  above  all  the 
others  by  the  temperate,  yet  firm,  dignified,  and  consistent  strain  of  its  de- 
bates and  proceedings  ;  in  w^hich  there  appeared  no  trace  of  those  dissen- 
sions which  had  lately  been  reproduced  in  the  province  by  the  illiberal  policy 
of  the  proprietary  family.  It  was  declared  in  this  assembly,  that  the  prop- 
osition of  the  British  minister  was  a  deviation  from  ancient  usage,  uncon- 
stitutional, unjust,^  and  unnecessary  ;  that  the  parliament  had  no  right  to  tax 
the  colonies  at  all ;  that  it  had  been  hitherto  the  invariable  practice,  when 
pecuniary  subsidies  were  required  from  the  colonies,  that  the  king,  with 
the  advice  of  his  privy  council,  directed  his  secretary  of  state  to  write  cir- 
cular letters  to  the  several  provincial  governments,  explaining  the  particular 
exigence  of  the  public  service,  and  expressing  the  royal  desire  and  con- 
fidence that  they  would  provide  for  it  by  granting  supplies  proportioned  to 
their  abilities  and  loyalty  ;  that  the  colonies  had  always  evinced  a  dutiful 
compliance  with  those  requisitions,  and  during  the  last  war  in  particular  ex- 
erted a  liberality  so  far  exceeding  their  proportionate  liability  to  sustain  the 
general  burdens  of  the  empire,  that  the  king  had  acknowledged  their  claim 
to  a  compensation,  and  the  parliament  for  five  years  successively  returned 
them  a  part  of  their  annual  contributions  ;  that  the  proposition  to  tax  them 
in  parliament  was  therefore  equally  wanton  and  iniquitous  ;  that,  by  the 
constitution  of  the  colonies,  it  was  their  sovereign  alone  who  was  compe- 
tent to  treat  with  them  in  relation  to  subsidies  ;  and  that  it  would  be  deroga- 

'  As  the  charter  of  Pennsylvania  (see  Ante,  Book  VII.,  Chap.  I.)  was  more  favorable  to  iho 
prerogative  of  the  British  parliament  than  any  of  the  other  American  charters,  tne  Pennsyl- 
vamans  never  willingly  cited  it  in  this  controversy.  One  of  their  advocates  preferred  to  c'ite 
the  following  passage,  extracted  from  an  old  European  historian  :  —  "  There  is  neither  king 
nor  sovereign  lord  on  earth,  who  has  beyond  his  own  domain  power  to  lay  the  imposition  of 
one  farthing  on  his  subjects  without  the  consent  of  those  who  pay  it,  unless  he  does  it  by 
tyranny  and  violence."     Philip  de  Comines,  Cap.  108. 

PP 


374  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

tory  both  to  their  rights  and  their  dignity  to  make, any  treaty  on  this  subject 
with  the  British  minister,  whose  appHcation  to  them,  instead  of  commu- 
nicating the  wishes  of  the  king,  conveyed  the  command  or  menace  of  a 
financier,  with  whose  projects,  for  aught  they  knew,  the  king  might  be  totally 
unacquainted.  In  conformity  with  this  latter  sentiment,  they  took  no  formal 
or  official  notice  of  Grenville's  project,  but  sufficiently  indicated  their  opin- 
ion of  it,  while  they  professed  their  readiness  to  sustain  a  just  proportion 
of  the  load  of  debt  with  which  the  British  empire  was  burdened,  by  passing 
and  recording  in  their  journals  a  resolution  of  the  following  tenor  :  — 
"  That  as  they  always  have  thought,  so  they  always  shall  think,  it  their 
duly  to  grant  aid  to  the  crown  according  to  their  abilities,  whenever  required 
of  em  in  the  usual  constitutional  manner."  Dr.  Franklin,  whose  second 
mission  to  England  we  have  already  remarked,  was  charged  on  this  occasion 
with  the  office  of  communicating  the  foregoing  resolution  to  Grenville,  who 
paid  no  farther  regard  to  it  than  what  may  be  imphed  from  the  introduction, 
immediately  after,  of  his  threatened  stamp  bill  into  parliament.  It  was  the 
firm  persuasion  of  Franklin,  that,  if  the  minister  had  embraced  the  plan 
which  was  approved  by  the  colonists,  and  had  demanded  subsidies  of  them 
by  the  intervention  of  requisitional  letters  from  the  king  to  the  provincial 
governments,  he  would  have  obtained  far  larger  sums  from  their  volun- 
tary grants  than  he  expected  to  derive  from  the  stamp  duty. 

The  assemblies  of  Virginia  and  New  York  distinguished  themselves 
on  this  occasion  by  the  positive  and  absolute  contradiction  which  they  for- 
mally expressed  and  published  of  the  legitimacy  of  the  pretension  to  tax 
the  colonies  by  act  of  parliament.  From  Virginia  there  were  transmitted 
petitions  ^  to  the  king  and  both  houses  of  parliament,  referring  to  the  reso- 
lution of  the  House  of  Commons  which  proposed  to  extend  a  stamp  duty 
to  America,  and  affirming,  in  the  plainest  terms,  the  constitutional  exemp- 
tion of  the  colonists  from  parliamentary  taxation.  By  the  influence  of  the 
provincial  council,  however,  there  was  insinuated  into  these  petitions  a 
prudential  distinction  between  the  right  and  the  power  of  the  British 
parliament ;  and  while  the  right  was  absolutely  denied,  the  exertion  of 
the  supposed  power  was  deprecated  in  a  tone  which  though  firm  was  yet 
supplicatory,  and  which  seemed  to  imply  that  no  opposition  beyond  remon- 
strance was  yet  contemplated.  It  was  declared,  indeed,  that  the  taxation 
of  the  colonies  by  a  parliament  in  which  they  cannot  be  represented  would 
necessarily  establish  this  melancholy  truth,  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  col- 
onies are  the  slaves  of  the  Britons  from  whom  they  are  descended  ;  but  while 
the  petitioners  lamented  the  prospect  of  such  bondage,  and  implored  de- 
liverance from  it,  they  breathed  not  a  syllable  that  impHed  either  the  power 
or  the  will  to  resist  its  infliction.  A  wise  and  prudent  government,  how- 
ever, would  have  anticipated  only  the  more  dangerous  and  determined  op- 
position to  its  measures,  from  the  considerate  policy  with  which  the  oppo- 
nents and  victims  of  these  measures,  while  yet  there  w^as  time  to  retract 
them,  separated  the  most  unqualified  censure  of  them  from  the  slightest  ap- 
pearance of  defiance  or  menace.  From  the  views  and  temper  that  prevailed 
with  the  people  and  government  of  Britain  at  this  period,  there  is,  in- 
deed,  every  reason  to   suppose  that  such  reasonable  and  salutary  appre- 

'  These  petitions  were  composed  by  Randolph  (the  attornej^-general  of  the  province),  Lee, 
Carter,  Wythe,  Pendleton,  Bland,  and  other  members  of  the  assembly.  Richard  Henry  Lee 
prepared  and  proposed  to  the  assembly  the  resolutions  on  which  the  petitions  were  founded. 


CHAP.  I]      CONFUSED  COUNSELS  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.         375 

hensions,  however  seasonably  suggested,  would  have  been  entirely  disre- 
garded. It  must  nevertheless  be  acknowledged  that  the  Virginian  petition 
did  not  arrive  in  Britain  till  after  the  Stamp  Act  proposed  by  Grenville 
was  actually  introduced  and  considerably  advanced.  The  petition  of  the 
assembly  of  New  York,  in  addition  to  similar  disadvantage  in  respect  of 
the  date  of  its  transmission,  was  so  intemperate  and  unguarded  in  its  rep- 
robation of  the  pretended  prerogative  of  the  British  legislature,  that  the 
agent  of  the  province  was  unable  to  prevail  with  any  member  of  parliament 
to  undertake  the  office  of  presenting  it. 

The  dehberations  of  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  were  similarly  re- 
tarded, partly  by  the  difference  of  opinion  which  prevailed  in  this  province, 
and  partly  by  the  policy  of  Governor  Bernard,  who  interrupted  the  sessions 
of  the  assembly  by  long  prorogations,  and,  with  the  assistance  of  his  deputy, 
Hutchinson,  perplexed  its  debates  and  obstructed  its  proceedings.  There 
was,  indeed,  no  portion  of  the  American  population  more  generally  animated 
with  a  spirit  of  jealous  opposition  to  British  encroachment,  or  more  united 
by  a  common  sentiment  of  aversion  to  the  project  of  parliamentary  taxation, 
than  the  people  of  New  England  ;  yet,  from  the  general  diffusion,  perhaps, 
of  political  knowledge,  and  the  prevalence  of  pohtical  speculation  and  dis- 
cussion among  them,  they  certainly  betrayed  on  this  important  occasion  a 
remarkable  discordance  in  the  views  they  expressed  and  the  principles 
they  maintained  and  appealed  to.  Never  had  New  England  been  distracted 
by  the  jumble  of  more  confused  and  inconsistent  counsels.  All  or  almost 
all  its  inhabitants  were  prompted  by  the  same  sentiment  of  liberty  to  oppose 
the  most  determined  resistance  to  the  threatened  aggression  ;  but  a  great 
diversity  of  opinion  prevailed  with  regard  to  the  views  and  purposes  which, 
consistently  with  truth  and  reason,  or  with  interest  and  expediency,  might 
or  should  be  promulgated  as  the  vindication  and  definition  of  the  colonial  re- 
sistance. Happily  for  the  credit  of  New  England,  the  identity  of  those 
resentful  feelings,  which  were  additionally  inflamed  by  subsequent  provoca- 
tion, finally  confounded  and  effaced  the  prevalent  diversities  of  pohtical  opin- 
ion ;  though  doubtless  these  diversities  contributed,  with  other  causes,  to 
the  success  with  which  an  adroit  politician  of  Massachusetts  exerted  himself 
to  reduce  the  language  of  his  countrymen  in  the  present  crisis  to  a  moderate 
and  even  submissive  strain,  which  belied  their  real  sentiments  and  tended 
to  delude  the  parent  state. 

In  every  community,  where  a  struggle  with  the  supreme  authority  of 
the  empire  is  provoked  by  tyranny  or  excited  by  faction,  the  poor  are 
always  more  prone  to  precipitate  matters  to  extremity  than  the  rich,  who, 
hoping  less  from  change  and  dreading  more  from  convulsion  and  discomfit- 
ure, are  pecuharly  interested  in  supporting  moderate  measures  and  cherish- 
ing conciliatory  projects  and  ideas.  But  in  addition  to  this  general  source 
of  diversified  opinion  at  a  crisis  like  the  present,  there  were  circumstances 
in  the  particular  situation  of  America  which  gave  scope  to  the  most  per- 
plexing varieties  in  the  views  of  the  pohtical  champions  by  whom  her 
interests  were  advocated.  The  pressure  of  the  commercial  restrictions  had 
lately  been  screwed  to  a  pitch  which  created  extreme  discontent ;  and  the 
discussion  of  this  grievance,  and  of  the  means  most  likely  to  induce  the  Brit- 
ish government  to  redress  it,  naturally  mingled  with  the  consideration  of 
the  more  alarming  project  of  the  Stamp  Act.  Some  politicians  maintained 
that  there  was  a  wide  and  substantial  distinction  between  these  two  meas- 


376  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XT. 

ures  ;  the  first  implying  no  more  than  a  denial  of  indulgence  ;  the  second 
importing  a  violation  of  justice  and  right.  While  they  deplored  the  sever- 
ity of  the  late  commercial  regulations,  they  acknowledged  the  abstract  com- 
petence of  parliament  to  impose  them  ;  but  they  questioned  its  legitimate 
power  to  assume  the  domestic  taxation  of  the  colonies  ;  and  counselled 
their  countrymen  to  solicit  a  mitigation  of  the  one  grievance  as  a  boon  or  act 
of  grace,  but  to  resist  the  introduction  of  the  other  as  an  unwarrantable 
usurpation. 

This  was  certainly  the  most  prevalent  opinion.  Yet  were  there  other 
politicians  who  recognized  no  solid  distinction  between  the  unjust  origina- 
tion of  a  novel  organ  of  power,  and  the  oppressive  exercise  of  authority  in 
a  more  customary  or  constitutional  shape, — between  the  multiphcation  of 
political  fetters,  and  the  aggravation  of  their  weight.  Governor  Bernard, 
whose  insolence  to  the  provincial  assembly,  and  obsequious  devotion  to  the 
British  court,  rendered  him  increasingly  unpopular  in  Massachusetts,  is  said 
by  Hutchinson  to  have  agreed  with  the  majority  of  the  people  in  judging  the 
prerogative  of  parliament  bounded  by  commercial  legislation,  and  that  the 
remonstrances  of  the  colonists  ought  to  be  confined  to  the  project  of  usurp- 
ing their  internal  taxation.  Yet  he  retarded  and  obstructed  their  efforts  to 
vindicate  the  rights  which  he  believed  to  be  their  due  ;  and  he,  published 
a  series  of  letters  on  law  and  polity  in  relation  to  the  colonies,  in  which  he 
maintained  without  distinction  or  restriction  that  the  American  colonists 
were  constitutionally  subject  to  parliamentary  taxation.^  Hutchinson  him- 
self, whose  wise  and  upright  conduct  in  the  office  of  chief  justice  had  re- 
trieved the  loss  of  public  favor  which  he  incurred  by  accepting  this  appoint- 
ment, and  who  was  now  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  short-lived  gleam  of  popu- 
larity, embraced  the  opinion  of  those  who  considered  that  the  distinction  be- 
tween internal  and  external  taxation  was  pressed  by  its  advocates  a  great 
deal  too  far ;  and  that  the  late  parliamentary  statute,  of  which  not  merely 
the  incidental  effect,  but  the  professed  design,  was  to  raise  a  revenue  at  the 
expense  of  the  colonies,  transgressed  as  certainly  the  grounds  of  British  pre- 
rogative as  the  proposed  Stamp  Act  threatened  to  do.  Yet  his  conduct, 
like  that  of  Bernard,  exhibited  a  remarkable  contrast  with  his  opinions  ; 
and  he,  who  deemed  that  the  majority  of  his  countrymen  erred  in  not  per- 
ceiving that  a  violation  of  their  constitutional  rights  was  committed  by  the 
last  as  well  as  menaced  by  the  next  expected  measure  of  the  parliament, 
was  the  agent  by  whom  the  Massachusetts  assembly  was  persuaded,  in  its 
application  to  the  British  government,  practically  to  disavow  this  impu- 
tation against  either  of  those  measures. 

The  views  entertained  by  Hutchinson  were  communicated  only  to  his 
private  friends.  From  a  laudable  desire,  by  which  he  professes  to  have 
been  guided,  of  avoiding  to  distract  the  public  councils,  and  of  cooperating 
with  the  prevalent  party  in  order  to  preserve  from  destruction  as  much 
as  possible  of  the  fabric  of  American  liberty,  he  refrained  from  pubhcly 
expressing  his  opinions,  and  even  dissembled  so  far  as  to  countenance  the 
plea  of  an  entire  distinction  between  external  and  internal  taxation,  in  the 

*  As  a  measure  of  expediency,  indeed,  he  suggested  that  the  Americans  should  be  per- 
mitted to  send  representatives  to  the  British  parliament.  He  recommended  that  the  provin- 
cial governments  should  be  considerably  altered  in  structure  and  reduced  in  number,  "as 
the  surest  means  of  preventing  revolt";  and  that  an  order  of  nobility  should  be  forthwith 
established  by  the  crown  in  America.  Bernard's  letters  excited  much  displeasure  and  inqui- 
( tude  both  in  Massachusetts  and  in  the  other  American  States. 


CHAP.  I.]   VIEWS  OF  INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  TAXATION.     377 

hope  (ne  said)  that  concessions  to  the  one  measure  would  fortify  the  ob- 
jections that  were  urged  against  the  other.  He  even  exerted  so  much 
activity  in  the  support  of  his  country's  interest,  as  to  compose  a  vindication 
of  the  claims  of  America,  which,  however,  with  his  habitual  pohcy,  he 
declined  to  avow,  and  transmitted  for  anonymous  publication  to  one  of  his 
friends  in  England.  The  opinions  of  Bernard,  of  Hutchinson,  and  of  va- 
rious other  politicians  of  double  heart,  who  in  the  progress  of  the  contro- 
versy came  to  be  ranked  as  the  adversaries  of  America  and  the  partisans 
of  Britain,  appear  in  the  outset  of  it  to  have  been  seasoned  not  inconsid- 
erably with  the  principles  of  liberty.  The  main  difference  between  these 
men  and  the  more  constant  and  faithful  friends  of  America  consisted  in 
the  force  of  the  attachment  they  cherished  for  liberal  principles,  and  the 
extent  of  the  sacrifices  they  were  willing  to  incur  for  their  defence  and  pro- 
motion. While  one  class  of  pohticians  in  America,  not  foreseeing  the  fatal 
extremities  to  which  the  dispute  was  tending,  thus  avowed  a  respect  for  hb- 
erty  far  exceeding  the  zeal  and  fortitude  they  were  prepared  to  exert  in 
its  favor,^  the  more  numerous  and  more  ardent  single-hearted  and  determined 
votaries  of  freedom  were  induced,  partly  by  prudence  and  partly  by  a  per- 
plexing discordance  of  opinion,  to  mitigate  the  harshness  of  their  censure 
of  British  ^policy  by  expressions  of  respect  and  submission  to  British  au- 
thority and  power,  which  were  far  from  corresponding  with  the  deliberate 
frame  and  temper  of  their  spirits.  The  majority,  doubtless,  were  favorable 
to  the  plea,  that  the  right  of  domestic  taxation  was  the  exclusive  privilege 
of  the  provincial  assemblies  ;  and,  for  the  preservation  of  this  privilege,  they 
w^ere  willing  to  concede,  for  the  present  at  least,  to  Britain  the  prerogative 
of  external  taxation,  and  even,  if  necessary,  to  submit,  though  with  much 
ill-humor  and  reluctance,  to  the  late  statute  by  which  the  exercise  of  this 
prerogative  was  so  severely  strained. 

But  there  was  also  a  party,  distinguished  less  by  its  numerical  strength 
than  by  the  ardent  zeal  which  pervaded  it  and  the  acknowledged  patriotism 
and  high  popularity  of  the  individuals  who  composed  it,  which  openly  main- 
tained that  the  distinction  currently  received  between  external  and  internal 
taxation  was  chimerical  and  unfounded  :  .that  the  supreme  legislature,  if 
vested  with  the  power  of  imposing  taxes  on  distant  appendages  of  the  em- 
pire, must  possess  this  power  to  an  indefinite  and  indefinable  extent  ;  and 
that  either  the  British  parliament  was  incompetent  to  tax  the  external  com- 
merce of  the  American  States,  or,  if  vested  with  this  prerogative,  must  be 
equally  entitled  to  tax  at  discretion  every  internal  possession,  emolument, 
and  enjoyment  of  the  colonists.  These  views  were  supported,  especially, 
in  a  series  of  pamphlets  composed  by  James  Otis,  of  which  the  first  was 
published  in  the  summer  of  the  present  year  ;  and  which  presented  a  formi- 
dable picture  of  the  boundless  pretensions  and  prerogatives  of  the  parent 
state,  softened,  rather  seemingly  than  effectually,  by  politic  concessions  to 
her  superior  power.  It  was  maintained,  indeed,  in  these  pamphlets,  that  the 
electoral  franchise  and  the  power  of  taxation  ought  to  be  strictly  reciprocal 
and  commensurate  ;  that  the  right  of  the  colonists  to  participate  in  the  ap- 
plication of  this  principle  was  practically  recognized  by  the  institution  of 
their  provincial  assemblies,  of  which  the  functions  could  not  be  absorbed 
by  the  parliament  without  violating  the  principles  of  the  British  constitution, 
unless  representatives  elected  by  America  were  admitted  to  sit  in  the 
House  of  Commons  ;  that  the  parliament  had,  indeed,  the  poicer  to  commit 

VOL.    II.  48  FF  * 


378  HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AJMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

this  usurpation,  which  the  colonists,  in  the  first  instance  at  least,  could 
neither  legally  nor  prudently  oppose,  except  by  petition  and  remonstrance  ; 
and  that,  "when  the  parliament  shall  think  fit  to  allow  the  colonists  a  repre- 
sentation in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  equity  of  their  taxing  the  colonists 
will  be  as  clear  as  their  power  is  at  present  of  doing  it,  if  they  please." 
The  publications  of  Otis  were  so  well  calculated  to  promote  impressions 
of  British  injustice  and  American  danger  and  suffering,  that  the  provincial 
assembly,  of  which  a  majority  was  certainly  wedded  to  more  moderate  and 
practicable  views  than  these  pamphlets  disclosed,  yet  so  far  approved  and 
countenanced  them  as  to  order  that  copies  of  them  should  be  transmitted 
to  England  and  circulated  there  at  the  expense  of  the  province.  What- 
ever effect  they  may  have  produced  in  the  parent  state,  their  influence 
upon  the  colonists  corresponded  with  the  warmest  wishes  of  the  partisans 
of  American  hberty  and  independence.  The  Americans  were  much  more 
alarmed  and  provoked  by  the  writer's  forcible  representations  of  the  strength 
and  stretch  of  British  prerogative,  of  the  harsh  and  inequitable  manner  in 
which  it  was  exercised,  and  of  the  slavish  dependence  to  which  its  farther 
development  was  capable  of  reducing  them,  than  impressed  by  his  cautious 
monitions  of  the  legal  criminality  and  danger  they  -would  incur  by  resisting 
the  exertions  of  this  prerogative,  or  by  his  suggestion  of  the  constitutional 
remedy  by  which  its  inequitable  tendency  might  be  corrected,  and  the  in- 
terest and  duty  of  the  colonies  reconciled  by  admitting  representatives  of 
the  American  people  into  the  British  House  of  Commons.  The  idea  of 
representatives  contributed  by  the  Americans  to  the  legislative  assemblies 
of  the  parent  state,  which  was  first  publicly  suggested  by  the  historian  Old- 
mixon,^  afterwards  more  deliberately  considered  and  recommended  by  Dr. 
Franklin,^  and  now  revived  by  Otis  and  others,  was  never  definitively  aban- 
doned during  the  w^hole  subsequent  controversy  between  the  two  nations. 
At  no  time  was  it  favorably  regarded  by  any  considerable  party  in  either 
country  ;  and  perhaps  there  were  some  of  its  American  partisans  who  were 
induced  to  support  it  because  it  proposed  what  they  deemed  an  impracti- 
cable measure  as  a  condition  requisite  to  the  equitable  subjection  of  Amer- 
ica to  British  taxation.  The  politicians  of  Britain  in  general  considered 
that  it  w'ould  be  impossible  to  adjust  the  proportions  between  the  numbers 
of  the  American  and  British  representatives  ;  that  the  Americans  would  not 
be  contented  with  the  privilege  of  sending  but  a  few  ;  and  that,  if  a  consid- 
erable number  w^ere  admitted,  the  balance  of  the  British  constitution  would 
be  destroyed,  and  a  dangerous  increase  of  power  communicated  either  to  the 
prerogative  of  the  crown  or  to  the  strength  of  the  democracy.  The  Amer- 
icans, on  the  other  hand,  more  justly  dreaded  that  the  parent  state  would 
never  grant  them  a  representative  force  adequate  to  the  effectual  defence 
of  their  interests  ;  and  that  their  distance  from  the  seat  of  government 
and  legislation  would  expose  them  to  much  oppression,  and  weaken  the 
dependence  of  the  American  representatives  upon  their  constituents.  When 
some  discussion  arose  on  this  subject  in  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts, 
one  of  the  members  sneeringly  remarked,  that,  if  his  countrymen  were  de- 
termined to  have  representatives  in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  he 
could  recommend  to  them  a  merchant  who  would  contract  to  carry  the 
American  members  of  parliament  to  England  for  half  the  price  which  the 
royal  court  would  bid  for  them  on  their  arrival.  Yet  this  measure  was  sin- 
~     »  See^nZe^  Note  XXVIII.Tat'thcend  of  Vol  I.  »  ArUe,  Book  X.7ChapTlII.  ~~ 


CHAP.   1.]  INTRIGUE  OF  HUTCHINSON.  379 

cerely  espoused  and  ably  maintained,  till  the  last  stage  of  the  controversy, 
by  a  few  distinguished  supporters.  Adam  Smith,  in  particular,  the  greatest 
master  of  political  philosophy  that  Europe  has  ever  produced,  recom- 
mended it  to  both  countries  in  his  celebrated  treatise  on  the  Wealth  of 
JSTations^^  which  was  first  published  in  the  same  year  that  witnessed  the 
declaration  of  American  independence.  Two  years  after,  and  of  course  too 
late  (even  if  it  could  ever  have  been  seasonably  attempted),  the  British 
government,  with  concession  more  or  less  sincere,  ofiered  to  the  people 
of  America  a  share  of  parliamentary  representation,  together  with  the  re- 
dress of  every  grievance  of  which  they  complained.^ 

The  assembly  of  Massachusetts  had  already  communicated  instructions 
to  their  agents  in  England  to  endeavour  to  procure  a  repeal  of  the  late  act  of 
parliament,  which  they  characterized  with  no  little  warmth  of  complaint  and 
vituperation  ;  and,  above  all,  to  oppose  the  project  announced  by  Grenville, 
with  regard  to  which  they  remarked,  that  ^'  the  right  of  the  subjects  to  be 
taxed  by  their  representatives  is  the  grand  barrier  of  British  liberty ;  and 
though  a  people  may  be  free  and  happy  without  a  particular  branch  of 
trade,  they  can  be  neither,  if  they  have  not  the  privilege  of  assessing  their 
own  taxes."  When,  after  long  prorogations,  which  excited  much  displeas- 
ure againift  the  governor,  they  were  in  the  close  of  the  year  at  length  en- 
abled collectively  to  deliberate  on  the  resolutions  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  favor  of  Grenville's  project,  they  were  naturally  prompted,  by  the 
increased  danger  by  which  their  hberties  were  menaced  and  endeared,  to 
defend  them  with  still  greater  warmth;  and,  in  the  first  fervor  of  their  zeal 
and  resolution,  they  prepared  an  address  to  the  king  wdiich  strongly  asserted 
their  right  to  be  exempted  from  parliamentary  taxation.  They  were  in- 
duced, however,  to  depart  from  the  open  profession  of  this  bold  principle 
by  the  dexterous  and  assiduous  exertions  of  Hutchinson,  who  plausibly  rep- 
resented to  them  that  all  the  interests  of  America  would  be  injured  by  an 
attempt  to  vindicate  any  one  of  them  with  pretensions  so  audaciously  op- 
posed to  the  declarations  of  the  supreme  legislature  of  the  empire  ;  that 
openly  to  deny  the  right  of  parliament  to  pursue,  in  one  particular  instance, 
the  policy  it  had  announced,  w^as  not  only  to  enfeeble  the  objections  urged 
by  the  colonists  against  other  obnoxious  measures,  but  to  provoke  the  par- 
liament by  the  strongest  sense  of  insuhed  dignity  to  persist  even  in  the  meas- 
ure thus  especially  stigmatized,  and  which  it  could  no  longer  retract  with- 
out confession  of  weakness  or  of  injustice  ;  and  that  the  interests  of  Amer- 
ica, in  so  far  as  they  were  affected  by  the  late,  or  menaced  by  the  ex- 
pected act,  would  be  most  effectually  consulted  by  petitioning  against  both 
merely  as  severe,  ungracious,  and  impoHtic  proceedings,  and  forbearing  to 
describe  either  as  an  instance  of  injustice  or  usurpation.  The  hopes  thus 
excited,  of  obtaining  relief  from  the  parent  state,  provided  her  pride  were 
not  interested  in  withholding  it,  were  aided  by  a  prevalent  opinion  that  the 

*  He  admitted  the  difficulties  with  which  this  measure  was  prospectively  threatened,  but 
contended  that  they  were  not  insurmountable  ;  and  that  the  most  considerable  of  them  arose 
not  from  the  nature  of  things,  but  from  the  prejudices  and  opinions  of  the  people  of  both 
countries.  His  scheme  was,  that  the  number  of  American  representatives  should  be  propor- 
tioned to  the  produce  of  American  taxation.  He  maintained,  that,  from  the  rapid  advance- 
ment of  the  colonies,  it  was  far  from  unlikely,  that,  in  less  than  a  century,  the  produce  of 
American  would  far  exceed  that  of  British  taxation,  and  that  the  seat  of  empire  would  then 
be  transferred  to  America.  This  was  a  prospect  neither  flattering  to  the  pride  of  the  English, 
nor  grateful  to  the  democratic  and  economical  predilections  of  the  Americans. 

*  .Annual  Rtgisler  for  1778.  .,..>.- 


380  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

colonial  agents  in  England,  some  of  whom  were  officers  or  pensioners  of 
the  crown,  had  not  sufficiently  exerted  themselves  in  the  late  transactions  to 
defend  the  interests  of  the  colonists  and  make  known  to  the  ministry  the 
strong  aversion  with  which  their  measures  and  propositions  were  regarded. 
The  agents  in  reality  had  made  but  a  feeble  opposition  to  the  regulations 
introduced  by  the  late  act  of  parliament ;  some  of  them  even  declared  their 
opinion  that  these  regulations  would  obtain  general  acquiescence  ;  and 
when  the  proposition  of  the  stamp  duty  was  communicated  to  them,  not 
one  of  them  so  justly  guessed  or  so  honestly  anticipated  the  sentiments  of 
his  constituents  as  to  offer  the  slightest  obstruction  to  it,  except  Joseph 
Sherwood,  a  Quaker,  the  agent  for  Rhode  Island,  who  protested  that  he 
would  never  consent  to  the  imposition  of  taxes  on  America  by  a  British 
parliament. 

In  conformity  with  the  counsels  of  Hutchinson,  though  unfortunately  for 
the  credit  of  their  author  and  the  eventual  satisfaction  of  Massachusetts,  the 
assembly  of  this  province  was  prevailed  with  to^depart  from  its  first  declara- 
tion of  its  own  exclusive  right  to  administer  the  internal  taxation  of  the  peo- 
ple comprehended  within  its  jurisdiction  ;  and,  instead  of  this,  to  address  the 
House  of  Commons  by  a  petition,  which,  forbearing  to  insist  on  right,  sued 
for  favor.  The  colonists  were  represented  as  thanking  the  parent  state  for 
the  kind  forbearance  or  connivance  which  had  so  long  indulged  them  with 
the  exercise  of  internal  taxation  through  the  medium  of  their  own  provincial 
assemblies, 1  and  as  humbly  sohciting  from  British  grace  a  continuance  of  the 
same  boon,  or  at  least  such  a  delay  of  measures  repugnant  to  it  as  might 
affi^rd  time  to  the  petitioners,  in  conjunction  with  the  other  provincial  govern- 
ments, to  present  a  more  ample  and  accurate  exposition  of  the  state  and 
condition  of  the  colonies,  and  of  the  true  interest  of  Great  Britain  with  re- 
gard to  them.  With  objections  sound  enough  in  themselves,  but  very  feebly 
and  frigidly  urged  against  the  late  act  of  parliament,  there  were  mingled 
arguments  against  the  proposed  Stamp  Act,  derived  from  the  inconvenience 
that  would  result  from  draining  the  colonies  of  money,  and  farther  reducing 
the  narrow  means  which  they  possessed  of  purchasing  articles  of  British 
manufacture.  Indeed,  from  the  language  of  the  Massachusetts  petition,  it 
might  have  been  supposed  that  an  enthusiastic  devotion  to  the  interest  and 
advantage  of  Britain  was  the  sole,  or  at  least  the  predominant,  sentiment 
of  a  community  which  was  in  fact  pervaded  almost  unanimously  by  a  re- 
sentful sense  and  vigilant  dread  of  British  injustice  and  oppression.  This 
transaction,  under  whatever  colors  it  may  have  appeared  at  the  time  to 
those  who  actively  or  passively  shared  in  it,  certainly  tended  to  produce 
the  dangerous  effect  of  at  once  deceiving  the  British  government  with  re- 
gard to  the  degree  and  scope  of  the  defensive  spirit  prevalent  among  the 
colonists,  and  of  provoking  this  spirit  to  a  higher  pitch  of  excitation  by 
suggesting  to  the  colonists  that  they  had  sacrificed  the  manly  assertion  of 
their  dignity  and  their  rights   to  a  prudential,  and  yet  perhaps  after  all  a 

'  The  Americans  were  fond  of  comparing  their  political  relation  with  Britain  to  that  which 
then  subsisted  between  Britain  and  Ireland.  About  five  years  afler  the  present  period,  doc- 
trines similar  to  those  which  Hutchinson  now  induced  an  American  assembly  to  profess 
were  broached  in  the  Irish  parliament  by  a  minister  of  the  crown,  Sir  George  (afterwards 
Lord)  Macartney,  son-in-law  of  Lord  Bute,  who  asserted,  "that  Ireland  possessed  a  dependent 
government,  and  owed  to  England  the  highest  obligations  for  the  free  exercise  of  its  privi- 
leges," —  a  proposition  which  excited  the  liveliest  indignation  jn  the  Irish  parliament,  and  oc- 
casioned the  rejection  of  the  measure  in  behalf  of  which  it  was  advanced,  Annual  Register 
for  1769. 


CHAP.  I]     COLONIAL  PETITIONS  AGAINST  THE  PROPOSED  TAX.        33 J 

fruitless,  concern  for  their  interests.  It  was  impossible  for  them  to  reflect 
without  anxiety  on  the  rashness,  disguised  by  politic  show,  which  they  had 
committed  in  sanctioning  the  pretensions  of  the  parent  state,  and  recognizing 
their  enforcement  as  an  act  of  legitimate  authority,  in  the  uncertain  hope  of 
inducing  her  to  depart  from  them  as  an  act  of  lenity  and  indulgence. 

Shortly  after  the  conclusion  of  this  afFaiir,  the  assembly  of  Rhode  Island 
despatched  delegates  to  Boston  to  procure  an  authentic  copy  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts petition,  which  they  purposed  to  use  as  the  model  of  an  application 
from  themselves  in  behalf  of  their  own  provincial  community.  But  these 
delegates  had  hardly  reached  Boston,  when  there  arrived  in  this  city  the 
reports  of  the  transactions  of  the  assemblies  of  Virginia  and  New  York. 
The  deputies  of  Rhode  Island  at  once  declared  their  preference  of  the  sen- 
timents expressed  and  the  language  employed  by  the  New  York  assembly  ; 
and  carried  back  with  them  a  copy  of  its  petition,  which  was  cordially  em- 
braced and  reechoed  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  .their  constituents,  who 
hesitated  not  a  moment  between  the  manly  attitude  of  pleaders  for  right  and 
the  servile  posture  of  suitors  for  grace.  A  corresponding  impression  was 
produced  in  Massachusetts,  where  the  people,  sympathetically  affected  by 
the  brave  and  honest  freedom  with  which  other  provinces,  in  openly  profess- 
ing the  sentiments  which  they  equally  cherished,  had  either  dignified  the 
preservation  of  American  hberty  or  diminished  the  disgrace  of  its  over- 
throw, began  to  review  their  own  conduct  with  sentiments  of  impatience 
and  regret.  They  would  npw  have  acted  very  differently,  if  the  matter  had 
been  still  entire.  Their  uneasiness,  indeed,  was  mitigated  by  the  hope  of 
a  successful  issue  of  their  suit.  Some  circumstances,  nevertheless,  served 
plainly  enough  to  indicate  the  progress  which  a  spirit  of  opposition  to  the 
parent  state  was  making  in  this  and  other  parts  of  America.  Instead  of  the 
former  declarations  of  individuals  in  favor  of  the  policy  of  avoiding  to  pur- 
chase the  manufactures  of  Britain,  more  general  and  extended  associations 
for  the  promotion  of  this  object  began  to  be  formed  ;  and,  as  a  subsidiary 
measure,  encouragements  were  offered  by  patriotic  individuals  and  societies 
to  the  formation  of  domestic  though  inferior  manufactures.  But  it  was  a 
circumstance  still  more  deeply  significant,  that  prudent,  firm,  and  reasonable 
men  throughout  the  American  States  began  to  unite  in  the  opinion  (sug- 
gested, or  at  least  confirmed,  by  the  unequal,  if  not  discordant,  tenor  of  the 
petitions  from  the  several  provinces)  that  their  country's  interest  demanded 
the  establishment  of  some  common  assembly  which  should  deliberately  re- 
volve, and  unequivocally  express,  the  united,  consentaneous  purpose  and 
voice  of  British  America.^ 

So  various  and  dissimilar,  indeed,  was  the  language  of  the  American 
colonies,  that,  if  Britain,  at  the  present  crisis  [1765],  had  retracted  or  mod- 
ified the  system  which  she  had  begun  to  pursue,  it  might  have  been  doubted 
whether  her  altered  policy  was  the  effect  of  interest,  lenity,  or  timidity. 
But  no  such  prudent,  just,  or  generous  purpose  w^as  entertained  by  the  Brit- 
ish cabinet.  Although  the  later  transactions  in  America  were  not  yet  re- 
ported in  England,  the  resolutions  of  the  assembly  of  Pennsylvania  had 
been  communicated  by  Franklin  to  the  ministry,  and  the  general  aversion 
of  the  colonists  to  the  new  pretension  of  parliament  was  known  or  antici- 

^  Annual  Register  for  1765.  Franklin's  Memoirs.  Wirt's  Life  of  Henry.  Minot.  Gor- 
don. Hutchinson.  Bradford's  History  of  Massachusetts.  Fitk'in's  Political  and  Civil  History 
of  the  United  States. 


382  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

pated.  It  was,  doubtless,  in  reference  to  this  feature  in  the  actual  condition 
of  the  empire,  that  the  speech  from  the  throne,  at  the  opening  of  the  ses- 
sion of  parliament  [January  10,  1765],  while  it  recommended  the  establish- 
ment of  such  regulations  as  might  serve  additionally  to  bind  together  and 
strengthen  every  part  of  the  king's  dominions,  expressed  his  Majesty's  re- 
liance on  the  firmness  and  wisdom  of  parliament  in  promoting  the  just  re- 
spect and  obedience  due  to  the  laws  and  the  legislative  authority  of  the 
British  empire.  One  of  the  earliest  measures  proposed  in  this  session  of 
parliament  was  Grenville's  bill  for  imposing  a  stamp  duty  on  the  American 
colonies.  On  the  first  reading  of  the  bill,  it  was  opposed  as  an  unjust  and 
oppressive  measure  by  Colonel  Barre,  an  officer  who  had  served  with  the 
British  army  in  America,  and  who  was  highly  distinguished  in  the  House 
of  Commons  as  an  eloquent  and  zealous  advocate  of  the  principles  of  lib- 
erty. Charles  Townshend,  another  member  of  the  house,  who  afterwards 
succeeded  to  the  officfe  of  Grenville,  supported  the  bill  with  much  warmth, 
and,  after  severely  reprobating  the  animadversions  it  had  received  from 
Colonel  Barre,  concluded  his  speech  by  indignantly  demanding  :  —  "  And 
now,  will  these  Americans,  children  planted  by  our  care,  nourished  by 
our  indulgence  until  they  are  grown  up  to  a  high  degree  of  strength  and 
opulence,  and  protected  by  our  arms,  —  will  they  grudge  to  contribute  their 
mite  to  relieve  us  from  the  heavy  weight  of  that  burden  which  we  lie  un- 
der }  "  Barre,  in  an  explanatory  speech,  after  repelling  the  censure  per- 
sonally addressed  to  himself,  thus  forcibly  replied  to  the  concluding  ex- 
pressions of  Townshend  :  —  "  They  planted  by  your  care  I  No,  your 
oppressions  planted  them  in  America.  They  fled  from  your  tyranny  to  a 
then  uncultivated  and  inhospitable  country,  where  they  exposed  themselves 
to  almost  all  the  hardships  to  which  human  nature  is  liable  ;  and  among 
others  to  the  cruelties  of  a  savage  foe,  the  most,  subtle,  and,  I  will  take 
upon  me  to  say,  the  most  formidable,  of  any  people  upon  the  face  of  God's 
earth  ;  and  yet,  actuated  by  principles  of  true  English  liberty,  they  prefer- 
red all  hardships  to  those  which  they  had  endured  in  their  own  country 
from  the  hands  of  men  who  should  have  been  their  friends.  They  nour- 
ished by  YOUR  indulgence  !  They  grew  by  your  neglect  of  them.  As 
soon  as  you  began  to  care  about  them,  that  care  was  exercised  in  sending 
persons  to  rule  them  in  one  department  and  another,  who  were,  perhaps,  the 
deputies  of  deputies  to  some  members  of  this  house,  sent  to  spy  out  their 
liberties,  to  misrepresent  their  actions,  and  to  prey  upon  them,  —  men, 
whose  behaviour  on  many  occasions  has  caused  the  blood  of  those  sons 
of  liberty  to  "recoil  within  them,  —  men,  promoted  to  the  highest  seats  of 
justice,^  some  of  whom,  to  my  knowledge,  were  glad,  by  going  to  a  foreign 
country,  to  escape  being  brought  to  the  bar  of  a  court  of  justice  in  their 
own.  They  protected  by  your  arms  !  They  have  nobly  taken  up  arms  in 
your  defence  ;  and  have  exerted  a  shining  valor,  amidst  their  constant  and 
laborious  industry,  for  the  defence  of  a  country  whose  frontier  was  drenched 
in  blood,  while  its  interior  parts  yielded  all  their  little  savings  to  your  emolu- 
ment. And  believe  me,  —  remember,  I  this  day  told  you  so,  —  that  the 
same  spirit  of  freedom  which  actuated  that  people  at  first  will  accompany 
them  still;  —  but  prudence  forbids  me  to  explain  myself  farther.  God 
knows  I  do  not  at  this  time  speak  from  motives  of  party  spirit  ;  what  I  de- 

'  Some  disgraceful  instances  of  the  abuse  of  royal  patronage  in  the  appointment  of  Ameri- 
<,an  judges  are  recorded  in  Garden's  Anecdotes  of  the  Revolutionary  War. 


CHAP.  I]      PARLIAMENTARY  DEBATES  ON  THE  STAMP  ACT.  333 

liver  are  the  genuine  sentiments  of  my  heart.  However  superior  to  me  in 
general  knowledge  and  experience  the  respectable  body  of  this  house  may 
be,  yet  I  claim  to  know  more  of  America  than  most  of  you  ;  having 
seen  and  been  conversant  with  that  country.  The  people,  1  believe,  are 
as  truly  loyal  as  any  subjects  the  king  has,  —  but  a  people  jealous  of  their 
liberties,  and  who  will  vindicate  them,  if  ever  they  should  be  violated.  But 
the  subject  is  too  delicate,  —  I  will  say  no  more." 

At  the  second  reading  of  the  bill,  a  petition  was  tendered  against  it  from 
all  the  merchants  of  London  who  traded  to  America,  and  who,  anticipating 
the  effect  of  the  contemplated  measure  in  that  country,  were  struck  with 
alarm  for  the  security  of  their  outstanding  debts  ;  but  it  was  rejected  in  con- 
formity with  a  rule  of  the  house,  that  no  petition  should  be  admitted  against 
a  money  bill  in  its  progress.  General  Conway,  a  member  distinguished  alike 
by  the  liberality  of  his  political  sentiments  and  the  magnanimous  resolution 
of  his  character,  strongly  urged  the  house,  on  so  great  an  occasion,  to  relax 
this  rule,  which,  he  asserted  without  denial,  had  not  always  been  inflexibly 
maintained  ;  but  the  ministers  were  bent  on  enforcing  it  in  the  present  in- 
stance, in  order  to  justify  the  application  of  it  to  the  American  petitions 
which  had  now  arrived  at  London,  and  in  some  of  which  it  was  known  that 
the  right  of  Britain  to  tax  the  colonies  was  openly  denied.  The  ministers 
wished  to  avoid  a  discussion  of  this  dehcate  point,  and  perhaps  imagined 
that  they  had  gained  their  end  and  prevented  the  prerogative  of  the  parent 
state  from  being  pubhcly  questioned,  when  the  various  petitions  from  the 
American  provinces  were  rejected  as  summarily  as  the  petition  of  the  mer- 
chants of  London.  But  in  spite  of  their  efforts  to  smother  the  flarae  of 
this  dangerous  controversy,  it  broke  forth  both  in  the  parliament  and  the 
nation  before  the  bill  could  be  passed.  Alderman  Beckford,  who,  both  as  a 
senator  and  a  magistrate,  supported  the  character  of  one  of  the  boldest 
patriots  in  England,  united  with  General  Conway  in  peremptorily  disputing 
the  right  of  the  British  parliament  to  impose  taxes  on  America.  Pitt  had 
already,  as  he  afterwards  declared,  embraced  the  same  opinion  ;  but  he  was 
prevented  from  yet  publicly  expressing  it  by  a  severe  sickness,  which  ren- 
dered him  at  present  incapable  of  attending  to  business.  The  supporters 
of  the  bill,  thus  constrained  to  argue  in  defence  of  a  principle  which  they 
had  hoped  to  be  allowed  silently  to  assume,  insisted  that  the  functions  and 
authority  of  the  British  .legislature  extended  over  all  the  dominions  of  the 
empire  ;  and  while  they  admitted  the  mutual  connection  and  dependence  of 
the  right  of  being  represented  and  the  power  of  imposing  taxes,  they  as- 
similated the  situation  of  the  colonies  to  that  of  Birmingham^  Manchester, 
and  other  large  towns  in  England,  which,  having  sprung  up  after  the  frame  of 
the  parliament  was  adjusted,  had  never  yet  obtained  a  share  in  the  form  of 
actual  representation, — but,  being  (in  current  phrase)  virtually  repre- 
sented, possessed  all  the  substantial  benefit  of  this  popular  right.  The  op- 
ponents of  the  measure  replied,  that  the  difference  between  the  condition 
of  those  towns  and  the  American  provinces  was  as  wide  as  the  Atlantic 
ocean  ;  that  the  towns  referred  to  might,  not  unreasonably,  be  considered 
as  virtually  represented  in  a  parliament  which  contained  a  copious  infusion 
of  interests  precisely  the  same  as  theirs,  and  which  imposed  no  burdens 
upon  them  but  such  as  were  shared  by  its  own  members  and  the  whole 
population  of  the  realm  ;  but  that  the  commercial  restrictions  by  which 
America  was  so  heavily  loaded,  for  the  real  or  supposed  advantage  of  British 


384  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

merchants  and  commerce,  plainly  demonstrated  how  completely  the  same 
ocean  which  separated  the  two  countries  had  disjoined  the  interests  or 
at  least  the  views  of  their  inhabitants,  and  how  absurd  was  the  pretext  that 
the  Americans  enjoyed  even  a  virtual  representation  in  the  British  parlia- 
ment ;  that  the  situation  of  the  colonies  was  analogous  rather  to  the  condition 
of  Ireland,  which,  though  so  much  nearer  to  Britain,  and  originally  gained 
to  the  British  dominion  by  conquest,  still  retained  her  own  independent  leg- 
islature ;  and  that  the  right  of  the  colonies  to  participate  in  the  same  ad- 
vantage had  been  hitherto  acknowledged  by  the  institution  and  exerted  by 
the  instrumentality  of  the  representative  assembhes  which  they  all  possessed. 

Such  was  the  commencement  of  that  famous  controversy  respecting  the 
right  of  Great  Britain  to  tax  America,  of  which  the  interest  was  afterwards 
so  widely  extended,  and  the  features  and  topics  so  forcibly  illustrated  and 
amply  diversified  by  the  exertions  of  the  ablest  writers  and  poHticians  in  the 
Old  World  and  the  New.  At  present,  indeed,  it  excited  comparatively 
but  httle  attention  in  Britain,  where  its  importance  was  generally  under- 
valued, except  within  some  mercantile  circles,  where  political  foresight  was 
quickened  by  private  interest,  or  aided  by  superior  acquaintance  with  the 
condition  and  sentiments  of  the  colonists.  The  nation  at  large,  accustomed 
to  regard  America  as  a  dependent  state,  and  now  flattered  with  the  prospect 
of  deriving  from  it  a  considerable  mitigation  of  the  burdens  of  the  empire, 
listened  reluctantly  to  arguments  founded  on  previous  instances  of  British 
ascendency  exerted  for  the  benefit  of  particular  mercantile  classes  and 
channels  of  commerce,  and  which  yet  opposed  this  prerogative  in  the  only 
instance  that  had  ever  occurred  of  its  exertion  for  the  general  and  undoubted 
advantage  of  the  British  community.  So  little  impression  was  produced  by 
the  efforts  of  the  opponents  of  the  Stamp  Bill,  that,  after  it  had  finally  passed 
the  House  of  Commons,  where  two  hundred  and  fifty  members  voted  for  it 
and  only  fifty  against  it,  it  was  carried  through  the  House  of  Lords  without 
a  moment's  obstruction  or  a  syllable  of  opposition.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
interesting  topic  of  controversy  awakened  by  the  measure  had  not  yet  pen- 
etrated into  this  elevated  region  of  the  legislature  ;  as,  so  far  from  being 
discussed,  it  was  not  even  adverted  to  by  a  single  peer. 

The  bill  soon  after  received  the  royal  assent,  and  was  passed  into  a  law.i 
[March  22,  1765.]  It  began  by  referring  to  the  statute  of  the  preceding 
year,  and  declaring  the  necessity  of  a  farther  revenue  than  had  been  de- 
rived from  the  operation  of  that  measure.  In  sequence  of  this  preamble, 
it  loaded  the  colonists  with  heavy  duties,  imposed  on  almost  every  transac- 
tion of  a  public,  judicial,  or  commercial  nature  in  America,  and  secured 
by  the  requisition,  that  papers  stamped  by  the  British  government  with  the 
appropriate  duties  should  be  essential  to  the  validity  of  all  such  transac- 
tions. A  farther  security  was  derived  from  the  infliction  of  severe  fines  at- 
tached to  every  instance  of  neglect  or  evasion  of  the  law.  The  details  of 
this  measure  were  by  no  means  calculated  to  palliate  the  tyrannical  injustice 
with  which  its  principle  was  reproached  in  America.  In  addition  to  the 
positive  weight  of  the  various  taxes  imposed  by  the  statute,  many  of  them 
were  attached  to  objects  which  the  colonists  considered  with  a  peculiar 
jealousy  of  regard.  The  taxation  of  judicial  proceedings,  newspapers,  and 
liills  of  lading,  the  indiscriminate  rates  affixed  to  papers  at  the  probate 
offices,  and  the  tax  imposed  on  every  degree  or  diploma  conferred  by  semi- 
'  »  5  Geo.  III.,  Ca^2:  " 


CHAP.  I]  PASSAGE  OF  THE  STAMP  ACT.  335 

naries  of  learning,  have  been  particularized  by  American  writers  as  branches 
of  this  measure  especially  offensive  to  their  countrymen.  To  crown  all, 
it  was  ordained  that  the  penalties  attached  to  violations  of  the  act  should 
be  recoverable  in  the  detested  Courts  of  Admiralty.  This  was,  indeed,  to 
wound  America  in  a  part  yet  galled  and  inflamed  by  prior  provocation. 
And  thus,  with  strangely  misguided  councils,  the  parent  state,  instead  of 
attempting  to  soften  and  facilitate  the  introduction  of  that  obnoxious  preroga- 
tive which  she  now  resolved  to  exert  over  a  people  already  disgusted  with 
her  treatment  of  them,  contrived  to  render  the  first  practical  introduction 
of  it  additionally  odious  and  irritating,  by  the  arbitrary  nature  of  the  col- 
lateral and  subsidiary  measures  with  which  it  was  combined.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  it  was  hoped,  in  the  plenitude  of  ministerial  ignorance,  to  balance  or 
mollify  the  displeasure  of  the  colonists  by  the  opposite  sentiment  with  which 
they  might  be  supposed  to  regard  a  slender  boon  which  the  parliament  at 
the  same  time  conferred  on  them,  in  permitting  American  lumber  to  be  car- 
ried to  all  the  ports  and  markets  of  Europe,  and  even  encouraging  by  a 
bounty  its  importation  into  Britain.  But  so  trivial  was  this  measure  as  a 
compensation,  and  so  unseasonable  as  a  favor,  that  it  was  universally  re- 
garded either  with  scorn  or  total  indifference  in  America,  where  all  other 
sentiments  were  swallowed  up  in  the  alarm  excited  by  the  Stamp  Act. 
Nay,  so  paramount  and  engrossing  was  the  importance  which  the  Americans 
attached  to  this  act,  that  for  a  while  they  hardly  even  remarked  a  contem- 
porary statute  by  which  the  parliament  required  the  provincial  assemblies 
to  provide  quarters  for  all  detachments  of  British  soldiers  in  America,  and 
to  furnish  them  with  beds,  fire,  and  candles,  at  the  expense  of  the  colonies  ; 
though  their  disgust  at  such  a  requisition  was  sufficiently  manifested  when 
their  attention  was  aroused  in  the  sequel  by  an  attempt  to  carry  it  into 
effect.  On  the  day  after  the  Stamp  Act  was  passed,  Franklin  communi- 
cated the  tidings  by  letter  to  a  friend  in  his  native  country,  and  added,  — 
"  The  sun  of  liberty  is  set  ;  you  must  now  light  the  lamps  of  industry 
and  economy."  But  his  friend  prophetically  answered,  that  torches  of  a 
very  different  description  would  be  kindled  in  this  emergency  by  the  Amer- 
icans.^ 

The  colonists  had  firmly  expected  that  the  British  government  would  be 
deterred  by  their  petitions  and  remonstrances  from  persisting  in  the  project 
of  the  Stamp  Act  ;  and  when  they  learned  the  actual  and  opposite  result, 
they  were  struck  with  an  astonishment  approaching,  if  not  amounting,  to 
dismay,  and  which  seemed  at  first  to  quell  every  sentiment  and  confound 
every  purpose  of  resistance.  In  Massachusetts,  particularly,  where  the 
people  had  been  encouraged  to  expect  from  the  policy  into  which  they 
wer«  beguiled  even  greater  advantages  than  mere  deliverance  from  the 
Stamp  Act,  the  disappointment  was  at  once  overwhelming  from  its  magni- 
tude, and  humiliating  from  a  grating  sense  of  the  prostration  by  which 
they  had  ineffectually  attempted  to  evade  it  ;  and  so  profound  and  still 
was  the  pause  during  which  the  spirit  of  freedom  that  pervaded  this  prov- 
ince was  collecting  its  force  and  studying  the  direction  in  which  it  might 
be  exerted  with  the  greatest  advantage,  that  some  of  the  partisans  of  the 
parent  state  mistook  the  preparation  for  the  dispersion  of  a  tempest,  and 
exulted  in  the  fancied  victory  of  British  prerogative,  on  the  very  brink  of 

»  .Annual  Register  for  1765^  Gordon.  Minot.  Rogers.  American  Biographical  Die- 
tionary. 

VOL.    II.  49  66 


386  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

the  conflict  in  which  it  was  fated  to  perish.  Hutchinson,  among  others, 
partook  the  delusion,  and  in  letters  to  England  announced  that  his  country- 
men were  waiting,  not  to  consider  if  they  must  submit  to  a  stamp  duty, 
but  to  learn  when  its  operation  was  to  commence,  and  what  farther  taxes 
were  contemplated  in  case  the  produce  of  such  duty  should  fall  short  of 
the  expectations  of  the  ministry.  This  man's  influence  and  authority  in 
Massachusetts  were  now  entirely  and  for  ever  blasted  ;  yet  was  he  able, 
during  the  first  confusion  of  pubhc  feeling,  by  dint  of  his  address  and  of  the 
remaining  advantages  of  his  situation,  to  procure  from  the  assembly  the  re- 
election of  himself  and  some  of  his  partisans  into  the  provincial  council, 
where,  still  occupying  the  helm  of  affairs,  he  continued  his' exertions  to  direct 
the  constitutional  organs  of  the  State  against  the  adverse  tide  of  popular 
sentiment  and  opinion,  until  it  swelled  to  such  a  height  as  to  overwhelm 
himself  and  all  who  adhered  to  him. 

Governor  Bernard,  in  the  speech  with  which  he  opened  the  session  of 
the  assembly,  forbore  to  make  any  express  reference  to  the  subject  with 
which  every  mind  was  principally  engrossed,  the  Stamp  Act  [June,  1765]  ; 
nor  even  indirectly  alluded  to  it  any  farther  than  by  remarking  that  it  was 
happy  for  the  colonists  that  their  supreme  legislature,  the  British  parliament, 
was  the  sanctuary  of  liberty  and  justice  ;  that  their  monarch  who  presided 
over  the  parliament  realized  the  idea  of  a  patriot  king  ;  and  that,  conse- 
quently, they  would  doubtless  submit  all  their  opinions  to  the  determinations 
of  a  sovereign  authority  so  august,  and  acquiesce  in  its  measures  with  a  per- 
fect confidence  that  the  just  rights  of  every  part  of  the  British  empire  must 
be  safe  in  the  hands  of  the  conservators  of  the  welfare  and  liberty  of  the 
whole.  He  expatiated  on  the  advantage  which  the  colonists  must  derive 
from  the  permission  to  carry  their  lumber  to  European  markets,  which 
w^ould  furnish  them  with  sufficient  means  to  pay  for  the  commodities  they 
imported  from  Britain,  and  obviate  every  motive  for  persisting  in  vain  at- 
tempts to  transplant  manufactories  from  their  ancient  and  settled  abodes. 
This  speech  was  followed  shortly  after  by  a  message  recommending  a 
pecuniary  grant  to  Hutchinson  in  recompense  of  his  services  as  heutenant- 
governor.  Never  were  services  more  unseasonably  recommended  to  grate- 
ful consideration.  The  assembly  took  as  little  notice  of  the  governor's 
speech  as  he  had  taken  of  the  circumstance  most  interesting  to  their  feelings 
and  to  the  hberty  and  happiness  of  their  country  ;  but  to  his  'message  they 
answered  that  they  would  make  no  grant  whatever  to  the  lieutenant-governor. 
Without  a  moment's  delay,  they  proceeded  to  review  and  discuss  the  treat- 
ment they  had  received  from  the  parent  state  ;  and,  more  desirous  to 
mature  their  councils  than  to  divulge  their  sentiments  and  designs,  they 
appointed  a  select  committee  of  their  own  body  to  concert  and  report  the 
measures  most  suitable  to  the  existing  emergency.  In  conformity  with  the 
report  of  this  committee,  they  soon  embraced  a  purpose  of  decisive  efficacy, 
and  which  originated  the  machinery  of  the  American  Revolution.  They 
voted  a  declaration  or  resolution  importing  that  they  were  sensible  of  the 
difficulties  of  the  predicament  in  which  the  American  colonies  w^ere  placed 
by  the  late  British  statutes  ;  that  it  was  highly  expedient  that  there  should 
be  held  with  all  convenient  speed  a  convention  of  committees  from  the  as- 
semblies of  all  the  British  colonies,  to  consult  upon  the  present  circum- 
stances of  the  American  people,  and  the  difficulties  to  which  they  were  and 
must  yet  farther  be  reduced  by  the  operation  of  the  acts  of  parliament 


CHAP.  I]  NEW  YORK  MANIFESTO.  337 

imposing  duties  and  taxes  upon  them,  and  to  concert  a  general  and  humble 
address  to  his  Majesty  and  the  parliament  imploring  relief ;  that  the  meeting 
should  be  held  at  New  York  on  the  first  Tuesday  of  the  month  of  October 
following ;  and  that  letters  should  forthwith  be  prepared  and  transmitted  to 
the  speakers  of  the  respective  assemblies  in  British  America,  acquainting 
them  with  this  measure,  and  inviting  their  accession  to  it. 

The  project,  thus  announced,  of  strengthening  the  voice  and  eventually 
the  force  of  the  American  States,  by  combining  their  councils,  was  so 
firmly  yet  temperately  expressed,  that  the  governor  and  his  party  did  not 
venture  to  oppose  it.  Its  promulgation  was  highly  agreeable  to  the  people, 
whose  hopes  were  farther  animated  and  their  spirit  additionally  roused  by 
the  tidings  which  they  now  received  of  the  courageous  and  determined 
expression,  in  other  colonies,  of  sentiments  congenial  to  their  own.  The 
parliamentary  edict  by  which  the  stamp  duty  was  definitively  decreed  did 
not  deter  some  of  the  patriots  of  New  York  from  repeating  with  undimin- 
ished, nay,  with  increased,  force  and  spirit,  the  objections  by  which  they 
had  previously  withstood  its  proposed  introduction  ;  and  in  a  popular  news- 
paper of  this  province  there  was  published  an  inquiry  into  the  soundness 
of  the  ministerial  pretexts  for  taxing  the  colonies,  which,  considering  the 
sentiments  and  temper  so  recently  displayed  by  the  inhabitants  of  New  York, 
was  calculated  to  produce  a  very  powerful  impression  upon  their  minds,  and, 
being  now  repubhshed  in  New  England,  was  there  perused  by  the  people 
with  equal  avidity  and  approbation.  This  treatise,  or  rather  manifesto,  de- 
monstrated, in  brief,  forcible,  and  perspicuous  terms,  the  absurdity  of  ap- 
plying the  doctrine  of  virtual  representation  in  the  British  parliament  to  the 
American  colonies.  As  every  distinct  interest  in  a  commonwealth,  it  was 
insisted,  ought  to  have  its  due  influence  in  the  administration  of  public  af- 
fairs, so  each  of  those  interests  should  possess  the  power  of  appointing  rep- 
resentatives proportioned  in  number  to  its  own  importance  in  the  general 
scale  of  the  empire.  When  two  interests  are  so  radically  inconsistent, 
that  the  promotion  of  the  one  must  be  necessarily  and  proportionally  in- 
jurious to  the  other,  it  is  impossible  that  these  two  can  unite  in  the  same 
political  system  ;  and  hence,  if  the  interests  of  Britain  and  her  colonies 
cannot  (which,  however,  the  treatise  with  more  or  less  sincerity  denied) 
be  made  to  coincide,  —  if  the  welfare  of  the  mother  country,  for  example, 
require  a  sacrifice  of  the  most  valuable  pohtical  rights  of  the  colonists, — 
then,  the  connection  between  them  ought  to  cease,  and  sooner  or  later  must 
inevitably  be  dissolved,  in  a  manner,  perhaps,  ruinous  to  one  or  both  of 
the  countries.  The  British  nation,  it  was  maintained,  could  not  long  pur- 
sue a  policy  towards  her  colonies  diametrically  opposite  to  the  principles  of 
her  own  domestic  government,  without  either  witnessing  the  conversion  of 
this  government  altogether  into  a  system  of  arbitrary  powder,  or  provoking 
the  colonists  to  reject  their  partial  burdens,  and  assert  that  freedom  w^hich 
was  denied  them  by  men  who  themselves  had  no  better  right  to  it.  The 
doctrine  of  virtual  representation  was  derided  by  the  plea,  that,  if  Americans 
might  be  represented  in  England  without  their  own  knowledge  or  consent, 
Enghshmen  might,  by  parity  of  reason  and  similitude  of  process,  be  repre- 
sented in  America.  The  laws  passed  in  the  colonies,  it  was  declared, 
after  obtaining  the  royal  assent,  were  equivalent  to  acts  of  parliament  ;  and 
hence,  in  conformity  with  the  new  ministerial  doctrines,  the  provincial  as- 
semblies   nught  at   some  future  period  be  rendered   instrumental   by   the 


388  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

crown  to  the  taxation  of  England.  Even  if  it  could  be  proved  (which  was 
denied)  that  there  were  towns  and  corporations  in  England,  of  which  the 
situation  was  entirely  analogous  to  that  of  the  colonies,  this  circumstance,  it 
was  maintained,  could  serve  to  show  only  that  some  of  the  English  as  well 
as  all  the  Americans  were  injured  and  oppressed,  without  affording  the 
slightest  apology  for  the  oppression.  It  was  denied  that  such  terms  as  de- 
pendence or  independence  could  ever  be  justly  employed  to  characterize 
the  situation  of  the  colonies.  They  were  a  part  of  the  British  dominions  ; 
and,  in  an  empire  pervaded  by  the  same  political  principles,  how,  it  was 
asked,  could  one  part  be  said  to  be  dependent  on  another  ?  All  the  parts, 
indeed,  were  reciprocally  dependent  on  each  other  for  the  promotion  and 
the  secure  and  convenient  enjoyment  of  their  common  and  respective 
rights  ;  but  they  derived  these  rights  from  the  Author  of  nature,  and  not 
from  the  generosity  or  indulgence  of  their  equals. 

There  was  nothing  which  contributed  at  this  period  more  effectually  to 
cherish  the  warmth  and  propagate  the  influence  of  sentiments  of  liberty  in 
America,  than  the  resolutions  embraced  and  published  by  the  assembly  of 
Virginia,  —  and  which,  as  they  were  prior  in  actual  date  to  the  proceedings 
of  all  the  other  provincial  assemblies,  have  enabled  this  State  to  claim  the 
honor  of  giving  the  earliest  impulse  to  American  resistance.^  Yet  many 
of  the  inhabitants  and  almost  all  the  leading  politicians  of  Virginia,  though 
they  had  withstood  the  purposes,  were  averse  to  dispute  the  commands,  of 
the  British  government,  and  accounted  the  submission  of  the  colonies  to  the 
Stamp  Act  unavoidable.  Considering  their  countrymen  as  not  yet  able  to 
make  effectual  resistance  to  the  power  of  Britain,  they  shrunk  even  from 
the  discussion  of  a  topic  calculated  to  promote  opinions  and  awaken  pas- 
sions which  might  beget  a  premature  revolt.  Nor  were  these  sentiments 
confined  to  Virginia.  Some  of  the  most  eminent  patriots  and  politicians 
of  the  other  provinces  were  unwilling  to  abet  or  encourage  an  opposition 
which  they  believed  could  not  possibly  be  successful,  and  even  used  means 
to  reconcile  their  countrymen  to  the  Stamp  Act,  or  at  least  to  engage  their 
submission  to  it.  It  was  asserted  in  a  popular  newspaper  of  Pennsylvania,^ 
that  the  produce  of  the  new  stamp  duties,  for  the  first  five  years,  was  to 
be  applied  to  the  improvement  of  roads  and  the  multiplication  of  bridges  in 
America.  Even  Franklin,  who  considered  the  Stamp  Act  as  inferring  the 
total  eclipse  of  American  liberty,  with  a  policy  which  w^ould  have  drawn 
on  any  other  man  the  most  dangerous  suspicions,  engaged  his  friend  Ingersoll, 
a  patriotic  and  respected  citizen  of  Connecticut,  who  was  in  England  with 
him  at  the  time  when  the  act  was  passed,  and  had  aided  him  in  opposing 
it,  to  accept  the  appointment,  which  ihe  ministry  tendered  to  him,  of  dis- 
tributer of  stamps  in  his  native  province  ;  and  so  little  did  he  forebode  the 
opposition  which  was  to  ensue,  or  the  loss  of  popularity  which  his  friend 
was  to  incur  by  accepting  a  share  in  the  administration  of  the  obnoxious  law, 
that,  when  Ingersoll  was  departing  for  America,  he  charged  him  to  commu- 
nicate a  gay,  yet  politic,  counsel  to  the  colonists,  saying,  —  "Go  home, 
and  tell  our  countrymen  to  get  children  as  fast  as  they  can,"  meaning  that 
America  was  not  yet  sufficiently  populous  to  undertake  a  forcible  assertion 

*  It  is  certain,  nevertheless,  that  the  transactions  of  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  were 
concluded  before  the  Virginian  resolutions  were  known  in  that  province.  The  one  assembly 
had  adjourned,  and  the  other  was  dissolved,  before  either  '.vas  acquainted  with  the  transac- 
tions of  the  other. 

*  Peren*7//m/ua  Gaictte,  May  30th.  ,^      ' 


CHAP.  I.]  RESOLUTIONS  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  ASSEMBLY.  339 

of  her  rights.  Many  of  the  Americans,  however,  entertained  a  different 
opinion,  and,  revolting  from  the  idea  of  propagating  slaves,  determined  that 
the  birthright  of  freedom  which  they  inherited  from  their  fathers  should  be 
transmitted  unimpaired  to  their  own  descendants. 

It  was  by  a  party  who  cherished  this  generous  sentiment  that  Patrick 
Henry  was  elected  a  member  of  the  present  assembly  of  Virginia,  for  the 
express  purpose  of  supporting  and  animating  the  expected  opposition  to 
the  late  measure  of  the  British  government.  But  so  much  reluctance  and 
hesitation  to  handle  or  even  approach  this  dangerous  subject  prevailed  in 
the  assembly,  and  especially  among  those  members  whose  rank  and  talents 
had  secured  to  them  hitherto  a  leading  influence  in  its  councils,  that  nearly 
the  whole  of  the  session  was  suffered  to  elapse  without  the  slightest  allusion 
having  been  made  to  the  Stamp  Act ;  when,  at  length,  only  three  days 
before  the  appointed  adjournment  of  the  assembly,  the  topic  which  en- 
grossed every  mind,  though  no  tongue  had  yet  ventured  to  broach  it,  was 
abruptly  introduced  by  Henry.  After  waiting  thus  long,  in  the  hope  of 
being  preceded,  in  a  matter  so  momentous,  by  some  member  of  more  estab- 
hshed  credit  in  the  house,  this  intrepid  politician  produced  to  the  assembly, 
and  proposed  for  its  adoption,  a  series  of  resolutions  affirming,  in  the  most 
unquahfied  terms  and  determined  tone,  that  the  Virginian  colonists  had 
originally  imported  with  them  from  Britain,  and  ever  since  claimed,  en- 
joyed, and  transmitted,  an  entire  participation  in  every  political  right  and 
franchise  competent  to  Britons  ;  that  the  most  substantial  and  valuable  part 
of  their  pohtical  birthright  was  the  privilege  of  being  taxed  exclusively  by 
themselves  or  their^  representatives  ;  that  they  had  uninterruptedly  exercised 
this  privilege  by  the  instrumentality  of  their  provincial  assembly ;  and  that  it 
had  been  constantly  recognized  by  the  king  and  people  of  Great  Britain,  and 
never  yet  voluntarily  resigned  or  justly  forfeited.  This  overture  of  Henry 
was  encountered  with  the  warmest  opposition  ;  nor  is  it  surprising  that 
among  its  most  zealous  opponents  were  some  of  the  persons  who  had  dis- 
tinguished themselves  by  promoting  the  petitions  of  the  preceding  year, 
which  expressed  doctrines  substantially  the  same  with  those  advanced  in . 
the  present  resolutions.  The  same  consideration  of  their  own  superior 
wealth  and  patrimonial  stake  in  the  province,  which  animated  the  zeal  of 
these  persons  in  reprobating  parliamentary  taxation,  naturally  operated  to 
deter  them  from  resisting  it,  —  to  which  they  would  doubtless  seem  to 
pledge  themselves  by  applying  their  former  language  to  the  present  altered 
posture  of  affairs.  That  language,  however,  though  disregarded  by  the 
parent  state  to  which  they  addressed  it,  had  produced  an  effect  far  ex- 
ceeding their  views  and  expectations  in  the  colony,  and  roused  in  the 
great  mass  of  its  inhabitants  a  spirit  of  opposition  to  tyranny,  undiluted  and 
unbounded  by  prudential  considerations. 

The  most  violent  debates  ensued  upon  the  motion  of  Henry,  who,  loaded 
with  abuse  and  galled  by  menaces  from  some  of  his  opponents,  was  pro- 
voked at  one  stage  of  the  discussion  to  a  tone  of  defiance,  which  produced 
a  remarkable  scene.  "Caesar,"  he  exclaimed,  ''had  his  Brutus  !  Charles 
the  First,  his  Cromwell!  and  George  the  Third,"  —  here  he  was  inter- 
rupted by  a  cry  of  Treason  !  raised  by  the  speaker  and  echoed  from  all  parts 
of  the  house  ;  but  drowning  the  cry  by  the  commanding  elevation  of  his 
own  voice,  and  baffling  the  charge  with  superior  presence  of  mind,  he  re- 
sumed the  thread  of  his  discourse  with  these  words,  —  "  George  the  Third, 

GG  * 


390  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

I  say,  may  profit  by  their  example.  If  this  be  treason,  make  the  most 
of  it !  "  We  may  judge  of  the  temper  which  Henry  found  or  created  in 
an  assembly  which  could  embrace  a  measure  thus  advocated,  — thus  openly 
associated  with  revolt  and  regicide.  How  altered  was  the  strain  of  pubHc 
sentiment  in  Virginia,  since  the  days  in  which  the  peculiar  boast  of  this 
province  was  the  romantic  gallantry  with  which  it  espoused  the  interests 
of  monarchy  against  the  arms  of  Cromwell !  i  The  resolutions,  though 
opposed  by  every  member  who  had  hitherto  enjoyed  any  preeminence  or 
particular  consideration  in  the  assembly,  and,  among  others,  by  several 
individuals  who  were  afterwards  distinguished  as  bold  and  generous  champi- 
ons of  American  liberty,  were  finally  carried  [May  28,  1765]  by  a  small 
majority  of  votes.  Fauquier,  the  lieutenant-governor  of  the  province,  no 
sooner  learned  this  proceeding  than  he  dissolved  the  assembly.  But  they 
had  already  set  the  example  of  resistance,  and  kindled  or  seasonably  nour- 
ished a  flame  which  was  to  spread  over  all  America.  Their  resolutions  were 
circulated  and  republished  in  every  one  of  the  States  ;  and  everywhere 
they  produced  a  glow  of  kindred  feeling  and  purpose.^  The  spirit  of  re- 
sistance thus  awakened  was  sustained  by  the  prospect  of  that  powerful  or- 
gan of  its  expression  which  was  suggested  by  Massachusetts,  and  gradually 
mounted  to  such  a  height,  that  before  the  first  of  November,  when  the 
Stamp  Act  was  appointed  to  take  effect,  the  execution  of  this  unhappy 
measure  had  become   obviously  and  utterly  impracticable.^ 

Amidst  the  general  agitation,  all  at  once  a  number  of  party  names  came 
into  vogue,  and  operated  with  their  usual  efficacy  in  augmenting  the  warmth 
and  acrimony  of  political  affections  and  passions.  The  distinctive  epithets 
of  Whig  and  Tory  —  hitherto  little  used  in  America,  where  they  were 
known  merely  as  the  titles  bestowed  on  each  other  by  two  parties  in  the 
parent  state,  of  which  the  one  w^as  understood  to  be  friendly  to  liberty,  and 
the  other  to  arbitrary  power  —  were  now  employed  in  all  the  provinces, 
and  especially  in  Massachusetts,  with  as  much  animosity  as  signaHzed  the 
dissensions  of  that  remarkable  era  when  they  were  first  introduced  into 
England.'*  The  partisans  of  American  liberty  assumed  to  themselves  the 
title  of  Whigs,  and  gave  the  appellation  of  Tories  to  the  custom-house 
officers,  the  other  functionaries  appointed  by  the  crown,  and  in  general 
to  all  persons  who  administered  the  authority  or  supported  the  pretensions 
of  the  parent  state  in  America.  But  the  favorite  appellation  was  suggested 
by  the  speech  of  Colonel  Barre  in  the  House  of  Commons,  which  ob- 
tained in  all  the  provinces  the  warmest  sympathy  and  applause,  and  in 
conformity  with  which  the  more  ardent  patriots  everywhere  appropriated  to 
themselves  the  animating  title  of  Sons  of  Liberty.  The  justice  of  the  pre- 
tensions preferred  by  the  parent  state  was  denied,  and  the  whole  tenor  of 
her  poHcy  towards  America  was  vilified  in  speeches,  pamphlets,  and  news- 
papers, which  addressed  the  reason  and  the  spirit  of   the    colonists  with 

^  Jnte,  Book  I.,  Chap.  II.,  adjinem. 

'  The  Pennsylvania  Gazette  exhibited  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  sudden  change  in  public 
sentiment  occasioned  by  the  Virsfinian  resolutions.  We  have  noted  an  effort  made  by  thjtt 
journal  on  the  30th  of  Maj  .o  reconcile  the  Americans  to  the  Stamp  Act.  On  the  20th  of 
June  it  displayed  a  very  different  spirit  in  the  folloviring  observation  :  —  "We  learn  from  the 
northward,  that  the  Stamp  Act  is  to  take  place  in  America  on  All-Saints'  day,  the  1st  of  No- 
vember next.  In  the  year  1755,  on  the  1st  of  November,  happened  that  dreadful  and  mem- 
orable earthquake  which  destroyed  the  city  of  Lisbon." 

3  Minot.     Bradford,     Wirt.  "^Gordon. 

*  They  were  first  employed  by  English  politicians  in  the  year  1680.  Hume.  Thus,  both 
in  Britain  and  America,  they  proved  the  harbingers  of  revolution. 


CHAP.  I]  GENERAL  FERMENT.  391 

every  argument  and  consideration  fitted  to  kindle  resentment  and  justify 
resistance.  If  liberty,  it  was  declared,  be  the  peculiar  due  of  those  who 
have  sense  enough  to  know  its  value  and  fortitude  enough  to  incur  every  dan- 
ger and  difficulty  for  the  sake  of  its  acquisition,  then  are  the  inhabitants  of 
America  more  truly  entitled  to  this  blessing  than  even  the  people  of  Great 
Britain.  The  founders  of  the  American  commonwealths,  it  was  justly  re- 
marked, had  been  originally  constrained  by  oppression  and  hardship  to  emi- 
grate from  Britain  ;  at  their  own  cost,  and  with  infinite  toil  and  suffering, 
they  had  reared  those  institutions,  and  planted  that  system  of  freedom,  of 
which  Britain  now  attempted  to  bereave  their  descendants.  Their  accept- 
ance of  royal  charters,  it  was  insisted,  could  not  reasonably  infer  any  obli- 
gation beyond  that  allegiance  which  the  supreme  head  of  the  realm  might 
claim  indiscriminately  from  all  its  subjects.  The  assistance  which  Britain 
had  contributed  to  the  defence  of  the  colonies,  it  was  argued,  must  be  ac- 
counted either  a  friendly  or  an  interested  service.  If  it  was  an  act  of  kind- 
ness, the  colonists  were  willing  to  return  a  suitable  proportion  of  gratitude  ; 
if  it  was  a  mercenary  act,  it  was  already  repaid  by  the  tribute  derived  from  the 
restrictions  of  their  commerce.  But  never  had  it  been  demanded  by  Britain, 
or  conceded  by  the  colonists,  that  the  surrender  of  their  liberties  to  her  was 
to  be  the  price  of  this  service.  It  was  denied  that  the  submission  of  the 
colonists,  on  former  occasions,  to  acts  of  parliament  affecting  their  munici- 
pal institutions,  afforded  any  fair  precedent  in  support  of  the  present  claims 
of  Britain.  These  exertions  of  parhamentary  authority,  it  was  passionately 
declared,  were  such  stretches  of  arbitrary  powerj  as  the  Americans  would 
now  no  more  submit  to,  than  the  English  would  endure  a  repetition  of  the 
Star  Chamber  jurisdiction  established  by  Charles  the  First,  or  of  the  dis- 
pensing power  usurped  by  James  the  Second. 

A  controversy,  which  came  home  to  the  bosoms  of  all  classes  of  people  in 
a  great  community,  could  not  long  be  conducted  in  this  animated  strain, 
without  provoking  some  violent  and  tumultuary  proceeding.  It  was  im- 
possible that  the  people  could  hear  it  incessantly  repeated  or  insinuated 
that  America  would  not  submit  to  the  tyranny  of  England,  without  demon- 
strating some  degree  of  readiness  or  inclination  to  verify  the  boast.  The 
tumults  which  ensued  might  perhaps  have  been  averted,  if  it  had  been  pos- 
sible to  convoke  at  an  earlier  period  the  projected  convention,  and  to  have 
soothed  the  general  inquietude  by  presenting  the  image  of  a  deliberative 
body  engaged  in  concerting  the  most  effectual  measures  for  common  de- 
fence, and  on  whose  \Visdom  and  spirit  the  hopes  of  America  might  securely 
repose.  But  ere  the  time  appointed  for  the  convention  had  arrived,  the 
rising  ardor  of  the  people  became  impatient  of  farther  inaction  ;  and  it  was 
additionally  stimulated  by  the  consideration  which  now  began  to  occur,  that 
the  proceedings  of  the  convention  could  not  possibly  have  any  effect  or 
even  be  known  in  Britain,  before  the  date  at  which  the  Stamp  Act  enjoined 
that  its  operation  should  commence.  The  influence  of  this  consideration 
was  not  confined  to  the  poorer  and  less  reflective  classes  of  the  colonists  ; 
it  was  partaken  by  some  of  the  most  distinguished  inhabitants  and  consid- 
erate politicians  of  Massachusetts,  who  fomented  the  ardor  already  over- 
boiling in  the  breasts  of  their  fellow-citizens,  and  cordially  desired  to  wit- 
ness an  explosion  of  popular  violence,  which  they  vainly  expected  to  mod- 
erate and  restrain  from  outrageous  excess,  and  which,  thus  confined,  they 
hoped  would  not  appear  disproportioned  to  the  provocation,  but  operate 


392  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

beneficially  in  illustrating  the  past,  and  imparting  animation  and  efficacy  to 
the  future,  addresses  of  the  American  assemblies  to  Britain.  Perhaps,  also, 
a  vague  hope  was  entertained  that  a  show  of  resistance  might  yet  contribute 
to  avert  the  fatal  precedent  of  even  a  temporary  operation  of  the  Stamp 
Act.  Nevertheless,  it  is  generally  admitted  that  neither  the  populace  of 
Massachusetts  nor  the  more  considerate  directors  of  their  proceedings  con- 
templated the  extent,  whether  of  evil  or  of  good,  that  resulted  from  the 
first  impulse  that  was  given  to  the  whirlwind  of  riot  and  anarchy. 

The  tumultuary  scene  which  had  formerly  been  produced  in  this  province, 
by  the  attempt  to  subject  the  people  to  naval  impressment,^  afforded  an 
instance  where  riot  was  promoted  by  the  leading  inhabitants  without  detec- 
tion, was  conducted  by  the  mass  of  the  people  with  entire  impunity,  and 
issued  in  a  successful  vindication  of  the  provincial  liberties.  It  was  at 
present  the  more  easy,  though,  doubtless,  also  the  more  dangerous,  to  pro- 
duce a  similar  explosion  in  Massachusetts,  from  the  peculiar  impression 
which  the  late  occurrences  were  calculated  to  make  on  the  habitual  temper 
and  favorite  sentiments  of  this  people.  Resolute  and  enterprising,  firmly 
and  ardently  attached  to  liberty,  and  proudly  cherishing  the  conviction  that 
theirs  was  the  leading  province  of  Jlmerica^^  they  had  seen  their  repre- 
sentative assembly  alone,  of  all  the  American  legislatures,  when  menaced 
with  the  approach  of  arbitrary  power,  beseech  exemption  from  it  as  an 
indulgence,  instead  of  protesting  against  it  as  an  act  of  tyranny  and  injus- 
tice ;  and  they  had  envied  the  bolder  tone  of  other  assemblies,  even  while 
they  cherished  the  delusive  hope  of  reaping  advantage  from  the  submissive- 
ness  evinced  by  their  own.  Among  other  sentiments  excited  in  this  prov- 
ince by  the  intelligence  that  the  Stamp  Act  had  passed,  w^as  a  painful 
embarrassment  mixed  with  strong  resentment,  and  derived  from  the  remem- 
brance of  that  language  in  which  they  had  so  lately  characterized  this  meas- 
ure, while  they  ineffectually  petitioned  against  it.  The  embarrassment  of 
the  assembly  was  sufficiently  manifested  by  the  caution  with  which  they 
forbore  now  either  to  repeat  their  former  language  or  abruptly  to  assume 
a  different  strain  ;  and  their  purpose  was  rather  insinuated  than  expressed 
by  the  reference  to  a  general  convention,  in  which  it  was  securely  foreseen 
that  the  resolution  to  assert  the  rights  of  America  would  prevail.  Pro- 
portioned to  the  restraint  thus  imposed  on  the  expression  of  public  sentiment 
and  opinion  through  its  constitutional  organ,  was  the  rage  and  mortification 
which  swelled  in  the  bosoms  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  and  at  length  trans- 
ported them  into  acts  of  unbounded  license  and  disorder.  Whether  the 
first  indulgence  of  their  passion  was  instigated  by  the  counsel,  or  merely 
supported  by  the  known  sympathy  and  approbation,  of  the  more  considera- 
ble inhabitants,  is  matter  of  uncertain  conjecture  ;  but  the  former  suppo- 
sition derives  some  weight  frOm  the  comparative  order  and  limitation  which 
marked  the  outset  of  the  violence,  but  which  were  completely  discarded  in 
the  course  of  its  progress. 

On  the  morning  of  the  14th  of  August  [1765],  there  appeared  suspended 
to  a  tree,  which,  in  the  sequel,  acquired  much  notoriety  and  received  the 
name  of  Liberty  Tree,  in  the  main  street  of  Boston,  effigies  representing 
Andrew  Oliver,  the  brother-in-law  of  Hutchinson,  who  had  been  appointed 
by  the  British  government  to  be  the  distributer  of  stamps  in  Massachusetts, 
and  of  Lord  Bute,  who  was  generally  regarded  and  detested  as  the  secret 
•       '  ^nte.  Book  X.,  Chap.  II.  8"SeelVote~XXIII.,  at  theend~of  the  volume. 


CHAP.  I]  RIOTS  IN  BOSTON.  393 

author  of  every  arbitrary  measure  embraced  by  the  British  king  and  court. 
Hutciiinson,  as  chief  justice,  commanded  the  sheriffs  to  remove  these  in- 
sulting and  menacing  emblems  ;  but  the  sheriffs  either  durst  not  or  were 
not  disposed  to  obey.  The  council,  convoked  by  the  governor,  declined 
in  like  manner  to  exasperate  the  people  by  opposing  a  manifestation  of  their 
sentiments,  which,  though  indecent,  was  attended  with  no  immediate  vio- 
lence or  breach  of  the  peace.  At  night  the  images  were  taken  down  and 
carried  on  a  bier,  amidst  the  acclamations  of  a  vast  multitude  of  people, 
through  the  court-house,  and  thence  down  King  Street  to  the  stamp-office, 
which  Oliver,  in  anticipation  of  his  functions,  had  lately  caused  to  be  erected. 
This  building  was  instantly  levelled  with  the  ground,  and  the  rioters  were 
proceeding  thence  to  Fort  Hill  in  order  to  conclude  their  operations  by 
burning  their  pageantry,  when  the  appearance  of  Oliver's  house,  situated 
in  that  neighbourhood,  tempted  them  with  a  new  object  on  which  to  wreak 
the  rage  with  which  they  were  blazing.  Hutchinson  vainly  endeavoured 
to  exert  his  authority  in  defence  of  his  kinsman's  property  ;  the  insurgents, 
loading  him  with  insult,  roughly  thrust  him  aside,  and  having  broken  into 
the  house,  from  which  the  family  had  fled,  demohshed  the  windows  and 
part  of  the  furniture.  On  the  following  day  [August  15],  Oliver  commis- 
sioned some  of  his  friends  to  announce  at  the  exchange  that  he  had  declined 
the  office  of  stamp-master  ;  a  resignation  which  he  was  compelled  to  repeat 
again  in  the  evening,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  doubts  and  soothe  the  gathering 
passion  of  a  great  concourse  of  people  assembled  round  a  bonfire.  The 
populace,  however,  were  but  partially  appeased.  Accounting  Oliver  no 
longer  a  fit  object  of  resentment,  they  resolved  to  discharge  upon  Hutchin- 
son the  violence  for  which  they  were  prepared  ;  and,  accordingly  marching 
to  his  house,  demanded  immediate  assurance  of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  a 
report  that  he  was  a  favorer  of  the  Stamp  Act.  Hutchinson,  whether  from 
a  punctilious  sense  of  dignity,  or  from  unwillingness  to  commit  himself  by 
any  public  declaration  that  might  be  offensive  to  the  British  government, 
declined  to  appear  before  their  tumultuous  array,  or  to  return  any  answer  to 
their  requisition  ;  and  they  were  on  the  point  of  commencing  a  general  at- 
tack upon  his  house,  when  they  were  diverted  from  this  purpose  by  the 
exertions  of  a  prudent  and  popular  citizen,  who  justly  feared  that  such  an 
outrage  would  discredit  their  cause  and  endanger  the  advantage  which  it  had 
already  obtained.  He  pledged  himself  that  Hutchinson  was  opposed  to 
every  parliamentary  statute  injurious  to  the  country  ;  he  declared  that  it 
was  insulting  and  unreasonable  to  require  the  public  appearance  of  the  heu- 
tenant-governor  and  chief  justice  in  this  disorderly  manner  ;  and  urged  his 
hearers  not  to  stain  their  proceedings  with  the  iniquity  of  maltreating  an  in- 
dividual who  had  spent  forty  years  of  his  life  in  the  service  of  the  province. 
The  people,  yielding  rather  to  their  habitual  deference  to  this  speaker  than 
to  the  force  of  his  arguments,  complied  for  the  present  with  the  counsel 
he  gave,  and  quietly  dispersed  themselves. 

So  far,  the  career  of  popular  violence  seemed  to  be  attended  with  success, 
and  was  almost  wholly  exempted  from  blame.  Hardly  a  voice  was  raised 
m  condemnation  of  disorderly  force  directed  against  an  object  so  unpopular, 
and  yet  exerted  with  so  much  discrimination  and  self-control.  Even  Sam- 
uel Adams,  one  of  the  wisest  and  most  austerely  virtuous  citizens  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, was  known  to  approve  the  demolition  of  the  stamp-office.  The 
misfortune  was  that  the  populace,  inflamed  by  triumphant  and  applauded 

VOL.   II.  50 


394  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

violence,  had  tasted  a  gratification  which  it  was  much  easier  to  tempt  them 
to  repeat  than  to  persuade  them  to  rehnquish  or  restrain  within  moderate 
bounds.  At  the  very  time  when  the  tempest  was  supposed  to  have  entirely 
subsided,  it  burst  out  again  with  redoubled  fury.  Its  second  eruption  was 
preceded  by  various  unfounded  rumors,  and,  among  others,  that,  in  conse- 
quence of  Oliver's  resignation,  the  governor  had  undertaken  to  conduct  the 
distribution  of  the  stamps.  On  Sunday,  the  25th  of  August,  Mayhew,  a 
popular  preacher  in  Boston,  dehvered  from  his  pulpit  a  sermon  in  which 
the  Stamp  Act  was  warmly  condemned,  and  to  which,  with  extreme  rash- 
ness, if  not  from  unbecoming  and  incendiary  zeal,  he  prefixed  the  text, 
*''•  I  would  they  were  even  cut  off  which  trouble  you^ 

At  twilight  on  the  following  day  [August  26,  1765],  the  kindling  of  a 
bonfire  served  as  the  signal  of  assemblage  to  a  large,  disorderly  multitude, 
who  repaired  in  the  first  instance  to  the  house  of  Story,  the  deputy  registrar 
of  the  Court  of  Admiralty,  and,  forcing  their  way  into  it,  destroyed  all  his 
private  papers  as  well  as  the  records  and  files  of  the  court.  Hallowell,  the 
comptroller  of  the  customs,  was  the  next  object  of  their  vengeance.  They 
broke  into  his  house,  and  not  only  demolished  all  his  furniture,  but  rioted 
on  the  liquors  in  his  cellar  till  intoxication  heightened  their  rage  to  frenzy. 
In  this  condition  they  directed  their  course  to  the  dwelling  of  Hutchinson, 
where,  partaking  the  tranquil  happiness  of  domestic  life,  which  the  warmth 
and  tenderness  of  his  private  affections  peculiarly  fitted  him  to  enjoy,  he 
sat  unexpectant  of  the  storm  that  was  preparing  to  burst  upon  him  and  to 
desolate  the  scene  of  his  felicity.  Notice  of  their  danger  was  conveyed  to 
him  and  his  family  barely  in  time  to  enable  them  by  a  precipitate  flight  to 
save  their  lives  from  the  frantic  populace,  w^hose  rage  was  not  satiated  till 
it  had  converted  the  finest  house  in  the  province  into  a  mass  of  ruins. 
The  very  partition-walls  were  beaten  down  ;  the  furniture  destroyed  ;  the 
family  paintings  and  plate  defaced  ;  a  large  sum  of  money  pillaged  ;  and  a 
valuable  collection  of  books  and  manuscripts,  the  fruit  of  thirty  years' 
labor,  almost  entirely  annihilated.^ 

These  acts  of  outrageous  violence  w^ere,  with  more  or  less  sincerity, 
generally  deplored  or  condemned.  A  numerous  meeting  of  the  citizens  of 
Boston,  including  all  the  principal  inhabitants  and  leading  politicians  of  the 
place,  assembled  the  next  day,  and  unanimously  resolved  that  the  select- 
men and  magistrates  should  be  directed  to  employ  their  utmost  endeavours 
to  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  late  disorders,  and  should  be  assisted  in  this 
duty  by  a  civic  guards  which  the  meeting  directly  proceeded  to  organize. 
It  was  not  merely  by  the  wealthy,  the  timid,  and  the  partisans  of  Britain, 
that  this  measure  was  promoted.  So  much  shocked  were  all  the  consider- 
ate friends  of  liberty  with  the  extravagance  which  the  populace  had  com- 
mitted,^ and  so  anxious  to  disavow  it  and  to  manifest  their  zeal  to  guard 
against  its  recurrence,  that,  if  the  attempt  could  now  have  been  made  to 
carry  the  Stamp  Act  into  execution,  the  cause  of  British  prerogative  would 

'  "  Perhaps  the  sun  of  liberty  must  always  rise  in  the  midst  of  anarchy,  and  gradually  dis- 
pel its  noxious  vapors  as  he  ascends  to  his  meridian  lustre."  Minot.  "So  infatuated  were 
the  p«;ople  at  this  period,  that,  if  a  man  had  any  pique  against  his  neighbour,  it  was  only  to 
call  him  a  few  hard  names,  and  his  house  would  be  certainly  pulled  down  and  his  life  put  in 
jeopardy."  Eliot.  "  Le  passage  du  mat  au  bien^  ne  peut  ii  se  faire  que  par  les  votes  de  la 
viiilenref  "      Millot. 

*  Mayhew,  in  particular,  was  so  much  affected,  that,  while  he  denied  all  intentional  acces- 
gion  to  the  riot,  he  protested  that  he  would  willingly  part  with  all  his  property  to  recall  his 
unfortunate  sermon.  We  shall  find,  however,  that  "hia  political  zeal  blazed  out  not  long  after 
with  as  much  fervor  is  ever. 


CHAP.  I]  RIOTS  IN  RHODE  ISLAND.  39g 

have  gained  a  great  and  perhaps  decisive  advantage.  But  this  advantage 
was  lost  by  delay,  and  counterbalanced  by  the  impolitic  behaviour  of  the 
governor.  At  the  very  time  when  he  would  have  been  effectually  supported 
in  measures  tending  to  repress  all  violent  opposition  to  established  authority, 
he  made  an  unseasonable  concession  to  the  popular  desires,  and  gave  a  color 
of  utility  and  good  policy  to  the  late  commotion,  by  publishing  a  declaration 
that  he  had  no  authority  to  distribute  the  stamps,  and  harboured  no  such 
imprudent  purpose  as  the  assumption  of  functions  which  did  not  belong  to 
him.  He  proffered,  indeed,  in  conjunction  with  the  council,  very  large 
rewards  for  the  discovery  of  the  rioters,  and  especially  their  ringleaders  ; 
but  it  was  easier  to  discover  than  to  convict  or  punish  them.  One  of  the 
ringleaders,  a  tradesman  of  some  note,  was  apprehended  by  the  sheriffs, 
but  instantly  released  by  them  without  even  the  formality  of  an  inquiry,  in 
consequence  of  a  threat  from  a  large  and  respectable  portion  of  the  civic 
guard,  that  they  would  disband  themselves  the  moment  he  was  committed 
to  prison.  Eight  or  ten  persons  of  inferior  condition  were  actually  impris- 
oned, and  some  disclosures  injurious  to  more  important  characters  were 
expected  from  them  ;  but  they  were  soon  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  dan- 
ger by  the  resolute  interposition  of  a  numerous  body  of  their  fellow- 
citizens,  who,  assembling  without  noise  or  tumult  in  the  night,  compelled  the 
jailer  to  surrender  his  keys.  The  prisoners  were  liberated  without  ob- 
struction or  commotion,  and  enabled  by  their  friends  to  live  in  exile  or  con- 
cealment till  every  prospect  of  a  judicial  visitation  of  their  offence  had 
vanished.  The  leading  politicians  of  Massachusetts  now  took  especial 
care  to  restrain  the  popular  ardor  from  exploding  again  with  that  active 
violence  which  had  proved  so  dangerous  and  ungovernable  ;  but  gradually 
recovering  their  confidence,  without  discarding  their  caution,  and  animated 
by  the  behaviour  of  the  other  colonies,  they  steadily  pursued  the  purpose 
of  cultivating  among  their  fellow-citizens  a  spirit  of  resistance,  in  unison 
with  a  bias  to  that  policy  without  which  resistance  could  not  be  successfully 
undertaken.  Among  other  expedients  adopted  for  this  purpose  was  the 
institution  of  a  new  political  journal,  of  which  the  tendency  was  illustrated 
by  the  emblematic  device  prefixed  to  it, —  a  snake  cut  into  pieces,  each 
bearing  the  initial  letters  of  the  name  of  one  of  the  American  provinces, 
and  the  whole  surmounted  by  the  motto.  Join  or  Die.^ 

The  explosion  of  popular  wrath  and  impatience  in  Massachusetts  pro- 
duced, or  at  least  promoted,  corresponding  movements  and  convulsions  in 
the  other  colonies,  of  which  those  that  occurred  in  Rhode  Island  and 
Providence  were  the  most  violent.  About  ten  days  after  the  first  commo- 
tion at  Boston,  a  gazette  extraordinary  was  published  at  Providence,  with 
the  motto.  Vox  populi^  vox  Dei,  and  underneath,  the  text.  Where  the  Spirit 

'  Hutchinson.  Annual  Register  for  1765.  Minot.  Bradford.  Holmes.  Eliot.  No  man 
capable  of  just  reflection  has  ever  been  the  eyewitness  of  a  revolution  accomplished  by  vi- 
olence, without  being  deeply  struck  with  the  influence  of  wealth  in  rendering  its  possessors 
chary  of  their  personal  safety.  The  poor,  who  have  nothing  but  thei'r  lives,  promptly  and 
boldly  risk  them  in  defence  of  that  consciousness  of  liberty,  which,  like  Nature's  gifl;  of  air  and 
light,  is  a  blessing  that  cannot  be  supplied  by  any  artificial  good  within  their  reach.  No  gen- 
erous man  ever  saw  a  revolution  be^un  in  a  civilized  community,  and  against  a  powerful  and 
estaljlished  government,  without  feeling  the  inexpressible  usefulness  of  the  poor  as  the  defend- 
ers of  liberty.  The  utmost,  in  general,  that  the  rich  at  first  do,  at  such  seasons,  is  to  impel  or 
promote  the  excitation  of  the  poor,  whose  actual  or  apprehended  violence  affords  to  themselves 
m  the  sequel  a  safe  pretence  for  avowed  interposition,  and  an  occasion  of  assuming  the  com 
pletion  of  an  enterprise  which  they  are  more  fitted  to  consummate  than  to  commence.  The 
popular  riot  produced  the  civic  ^uard  at  Boston 


396  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  Liberty ;  and  effigies  of  persons  accounted  par- 
tisans of  British  prerogative  were  exhibited  with  halters  about  their  necks, 
and  were  hanged  upon  a  gallows,  and  afterwards  cut  down  and  burned  amid 
loud  and  universal  acclamations.  Three  days  after,  a  similar  ceremonial  was 
performed  by  the  inhabitants  of  Newport ;  but  it  seemed  to  have  inflamed, 
instead  of  satiating,  their  rage  ;  for,  assembling  on  the  following  day  [Au- 
gust 28],  they  attacked  and  destroyed  the  houses  of  Howard,  a  lawyer, 
and  Moffat,  a  piiysician,  of  whom  the  first  had  defended  the  pretensions 
of  parliament  with  his  pen,  and  the  second  in  conversation  had  supported 
the  same  opinion.  Johnston,  the  distributer  of  stamps,  saved  his  house 
from  a  similar  fate  by  publicly  declaring  that  he  would  never  undertake  a 
function  offensive  to  his  countrymen.  In  Connecticut,  about  the  same  time, 
the  people  at  sundry  places  exhibited,  in  contumelious  parade,  and  com- 
mitted to  the  flames,  the  effigies  of  Ingersoll,  the  distributer  of  stamps,  and 
of  various  other  individuals  who  advocated  the  authority  of  Britain  or 
recommended  the  submission  of  America  ;  and  the  resentment  at  length 
became  so  general  and  alarming,  that  Ingersoll  thought  proper  to  resign 
the  obnoxious  office,  which  he  had  not  accepted  without  hesitation  and  re- 
luctance, overcome  by  the  urgency  of  Dr.  Franklin.  A  similar  resignation 
was  produced  by  the  spirit  displayed  at  New  York,  where  the  Stamp  Act 
was  contemptuously  reprinted  and  hawked  about  the  streets,  under  the  title 
of  The  Folly  of  England  and  Ruin  of  America.  The  project  of  obstruct- 
ing the  execution  of  this  act  by  inducing  the  officers  charged  with  its  ad- 
ministration to  resign  their  functions  was  successively  embraced  by  all  the 
British  provinces  in  America,  except  Nova  Scotia  and  Canada,  which  sub- 
mitted to  the  act  ;  and  it  was  aided  by  the  policy  which  induced  the  British 
government  to  confide  these  functions  to  natives  of  America.  Messerve, 
the  distributer  of  stamps  for  New  Hampshire,  son  of  a  brave  officer  of  this 
province  who  was  slain  at  the  last  siege  of  Louisburg,  in  deference  to  the 
wishes  of  his  countrymen  resigned  his  office  with  an  alacrity  which  they 
rewarded  with  the  warmest  approbation. 

The  establishment  of  the  first  newspaper  in  New  Hampshire,  which  took 
place  in  the  present  year,  contributed  greatly  to  the  animation  and  diffusion 
of  public  spirit.^  [September,  1765.]  Mercer,  the  distributer  of  stamps 
for  Virginia,  resigned  his  office  as  readily  as  Messerve  had  done,  and  ob- 
tained equal  applause.  The  justices  of  the  peace  for  the  county  of  West- 
moreland, in  this  province,  gave  public  notice  that  they,  declined  any  longer 
to  exercise  judicial  functions  which  might  be  rendered  instrumental  to  the 
ruin  of  their  country's  liberty  ;  and  the  Virginian  lawyers  in  general  de- 
clared their  resolution  rather  to  abandon  their  occupation   than  conduct  it 

1  We  find  that  newspapers  had  also  been  introduced  into  North  Carolina  and  Georgia  at 
this  period.  Prior  to  1750,  there  were  only  seven  newspapers  in  the  American  colonies.  In 
the  present  year  (1765)  there  were  twenty-six.  This  is  the  machinery,  which,  collecting, 
combining,  and  organizing  the  force  of  those  political  sentiments  and  principles  which  are 
scattered  throughout  Society,  have  produced  that  great  living  stream  of  public  opinion  of  which 
the  resistless  energy  has  been  so  surprisingly  developed  since  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Before  newspapers  were  known,  the  great  mass  of  the  inhabitants  of  every  coun- 
try were  very  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  .domestic  policy  of  their  rulers  and  the  senti- 
ments and  interests  of  their  fellow-citizens ;  and  only  from  the  pages  of  history  could  they 
learn  to  appreciate  the  foreign  policy  to  which  their  own  national  force  had  been  made  sub- 
servient, and  the  emergencies,  however  interesting  to  themselves,  that  had  befallen  neighbour- 
ing states.  The  invention  of  newspapers  formed,  in  every  country  where  they  were  intro- 
duced, a  channel  for  the  expression  of  common  interest  and  the  flow  of  public  opinion  ;  and 
their  multiplication  has  tended  to  combine  and  ally  the  force  of  all  the  contemporary  streams. 


CHAP.  I.]  CONVENTION  AT  NEW  YORE.  :  397 

with  stamped  papers.  Hood,  the  distributer  for  Maryland,  to  avoid  re- 
signing his  office,  fled  to  New  York  ;  but  he  was  quickly  pursued  thither 
by  a  number  of  the  freeholders  of  his  native  province,  whose  remon- 
strances induced  him  to  subscribe,  and  even  attest  on  oath  before  a  magis- 
trate, a  document  importing  his  absolute  and  final  resignation.  In  Penn- 
sylvania, Allen,  the  son  of  the  chief  justice,  and  other  public-spirited  pol- 
iticians, chiefly  of  the  Presbyterian  persuasion,  endeavoured,  vainly  for 
some  time,  to  persuade  Hughes,  the  distributer,  to  resign  his  office. 
Even  the  proprietary  party  united  with  them  in  this  attempt,  from  personal 
dislike  to  Hughes,  who  had  seconded  all  Franklin's  measures  and  been  the 
chief  promoter  of  his  late  mission  to  England,  and  whom  Franklin,  in  re- 
turn, had  recommended  to  the  British  government  as  a  fit  person  to  execute 
the  Stamp  Act  in  Pennsylvania,  if  the  Stamp  Act  were  to  be  executed  at 
all.  That  Franklin's  own  popularity  escaped  unharmed  by  so  much  active 
cooperation  with  the  policy  of  the  British  government  is  not  the  least  mem- 
orable instance  of  the  good  fortune  that  controlled  and  shaped  the  ends 
of  his  political  career.  Hughes  was  supported  in  his  refusal  to  resign  by 
the  Quakers,  and.  by  a  number  of  the  Baptists  and  of  the  partisans  of  the 
church  of  England,  who  were  willing  to  submit  to  the  statute.  The  as- 
sembly, however,  of  which  the  Quakers  no  longer  possessed  the  command, 
gave  a  vigorous  impulse  to  the  public  spirit  by  unanimously  protesting  that 
the  only  legal  representatives  of  the  provincial  population  were  the  per- 
sons elected  to  serve  as  members  of  assembly  ;  and  that  the  taxation  of 
the  province  by  any  other  persons  whatsoever  was  unconstitutional,  unjust, 
subversive  of  liberty,  and  destructive  of  happiness.  Resblutions  of  the 
same  tenor  were  passed  shortly  after  by  the  assemblies  of  Connecticut  and 
Maryland.  Finally,  Hughes  was  constrained  to  resign  [October  5]  by 
the  strong  manifestation  of  public  feeling  produced  in  Philadelphia  by  the 
approach  of  the  ships  conveying  the  stamped  papers  from  England  ;  on 
which  occasion  all  the  vessels  in  the  harbour  hoisted  their  colors  half- 
mast  high,  and  a  melancholy  peal  was  tolled  from  the  muffled  bells  of 
the  churches.  Ere  the  arrival  of  the  day  when  the  execution  of  the  Stamp 
Act  was  appointed  to  commence,  every  distributer  of  stamps  in  America 
had  resigned  his  office.  The  hopes  and  spirits  of  the  colonists  were  ani- 
mated by  the  tidings  of  the  change  of  ministry  which  took  place  in  Eng- 
land in  the  course  of  the  summer,  when  Grenville  and  his  colleagues  were 
deprived  of  power,  in  consequence  of  a  disagreement  between  them  and 
the  king  respecting  the  terms  of  the  regency  bill ;  and  a  new  administration 
was  formed,  at  the  head  of  which  was  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham,  a  lib- 
eral Whig,  and  in  which  the  office  of  secretary  of  state  was  held  by  Gen- 
eral Conway. 1 

The  time  had  now  arrived,  when  the  measure  suggested  by  Massachu- 
setts was  to  be  carried  into  effect  ;  and  on  the  appointed  day  there  assem- 
bled, in  the  town  of  New  York,  a  convention,  composed  of  twenty-eight 
delegates  from  the  assemblies  of  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Connecti- 
cut, New  lork.  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Delaware,  Maryland,  and 
South  Carolina.  The  assembly  of  New  Hampshire,  for  some  unexplained 
reason,  neglected  to  send  delegates  to  this  convention  ;  and  the  assemblies 
of  Virginia,   North  Carolina,   and  Georgia  were  prevented  from   electing 

1  Ramshy's  American  ReToluti(m.  Annual  Reffister  for  176o.  Gordon.  Belknap-  Holme«. 
Dwight's  Travels.  -.    ,..,.,,,,*./  ,.       .    ;    C 

HH 


398  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

delegates  by  the  expedient  of  long  adjournments  which  the  governors  of 
these  provinces  had  recourse  to  for  this  purpose.  But  no  substantial  ad- 
vantage was  gained  by  this  attempt  to  disunite  the  colonies.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  were  prompted  more  strongly  than  ever  to  cherish  the  purpose 
of  union  by  the  opposition  which  this  purpose  received  from  the  detested 
partisans  of  British  prerogative  ;  and  the  assemblies  of  the  four  colonies 
which  were  not  represented  on  this  occasion  took  the  earliest  opportunity 
to  pass  resolves  and  transmit  memorials  and  petitions  studiously  accommo- 
dated to  the  sentiments  and  language  of  its  proceedings.  Golden,  the  gov- 
ernor of  New  York,  attempted,  by  the  expedient  of  adjournment,  to  prevent 
the  assembly  over  which  he  presided  from  contributing  to  the  composition 
of  the  convention  ;  but  a  committee  of  management,  which  the  assembly  had 
elected  in  the  preceding  year  to  conduct  extraordinary  business  emerging 
during  its  adjournments,  undertook,  with  general  approbation,  to  counteract 
the  governor's  policy,  and  elect  delegates  to  represent  itself  and  its  constit- 
uents. In  Massachusetts,  Bernard  and  Hutchinson,  instead  of  withstanding 
the  nomination  of  delegates,  had  endeavoured  to  make  it  fall  upon  their 
own  partisans.  Their  intrigues  for  this  purpose  were  but  partially  success- 
ful ;  and  though  they  were  able  to  introduce  dissension  among  the  delegates 
of  Massachusetts,  they  failed  in  the  attempt  a  second  time  to  stifle  or  dis- 
guise the  sentiments  of  the  province.  Ruggles,  whose  appointment  to  be 
one  of  the  delegates  was  the  fruit  of  their  exertions,  refused  to  acquiesce  in 
the  measures  of  his  colleagues  ;  but  his  dissent  was  disregarded  by  the  con- 
vention, and  punished  in  his  native  province  by  a  censure  of  the  assembly 
and  by  the  general  contempt  and  displeasure  of  the  people.  Ogden,  one  of 
the  delegates  from  New  Jersey,  also  refused  his  assent  to  the  proceedings 
of  his  colleagues  ;  for  which  he  was  afterwards  hanged  and  burned  in  effigy 
by  his  fellow-citizens. 

The  first  measure  of  the  convention  was  a  declaration  of  the  rights 
and  grievances  of  the  American  colonists  ;  in  whose  behalf  they  claimed 
a  full  participation  in  all  the  franchises  and  liberties  of  subjects  born  within 
the  realm  of  Great  Britain,  —  of  which  the  most  essential  were  the  exclu- 
sive power  of  taxing  themselves,  and  the  privilege  of  trial  by  jury.  The 
grievance  chiefly  complained  of  was  the  Stamp  Act,  which,  by  taxing  the 
colonists  without  their  own  consent,  and  by  extending  the  jurisdiction  of 
Courts  of  Admiralty,  was  declared  to  have  a  direct  tendency  to  bereave 
them  of  their  birthright  of  freedom.  In  conformity  with  these  views,  a 
petition  to  the  king  and  a  memorial  to  each  house  of  parliament  were 
composed  and  signed  by  the  members  of  the  convention  ;  representing, 
in  firm,  yet  loyal  and  respectful  language,  that  they  were  animated  not  less 
by  attachment  to  the  person,  family,  and  government  of  the  king,  than  by 
zeal  for  the  preservation  of  those  principles  of  liberty  which  had  been  incor- 
porated with  the  first  establishment  of  all  the  American  communities  ;  that 
they  acknowledged  a  due  subordination  to  parliament,  consistently  with  the 
possession  of  an  equal  share  in  the  system  of  political  liberty  enjoyed  by 
the  natives  of  Britain  ;  that,  while  all  British  subjects  were  entitled  to  the 
privilege  of  being  taxed  only  by  their  own  representatives,  the  remote  situ- 
ation of  the  colonies  rendered  it  impracticable  that  they  should  be  repre- 
sented except  in  their  own  subordinate  legislatures  ;  that,  as  the  colonial 
settlements,  on  the  one  hand,  had  contributed  to  render  Britain  the  most  ex- 
tensive and  powerful  empire,  in  the  world,  so  the  colonists,  on  the  other, 


CHAP.  I.]  POLITICAL  €LUBS.  399 

esteemed  a  connection  with  Britain  their  greatest  happiness  and  safeguaj^  ; 
that  the  permanence  of  this  connection  would  be  most  securely  establisned 
by  making  liberty  and  justice  its  pillars,  and  practically  demonstrating  that 
the  inherent  rights  and  liberties  of  the  people  of  America  reposed  on  the 
principles  of  the  British  constitution ;  that  the  American  legislatures  pos- 
sessed in  sound  theory,  and  in  actual  practice  had  always  hitherto  enjoyed, 
the  same  authority  which  the  parhament  of  Ireland  still  retained,  and  which 
the  Americans  had  never  deserved  to  forfeit  nor  consented  to  forego  ;  that 
the  commercial  duties  lately  imposed  by. parliament  invaded  this  rightful 
authority,  and  introduced  an  odious  distinction  between  the  Americans  and 
their  fellow-subjects  in  Europe  ;  that,  without  waiving  their  claim  to  be  ex- 
empted from  such  impositions  altogether,  they  complained  of  them  as  bur- 
densome in  their  extent  and  grievous  in  their  particular  operation  ;  and  that 
they  earnestly  and  humbly  entreated  the  redress  of  their  wrongs  and  restora- 
tion of  their  just  rights  and  hberties. 

Having  concluded  these  transactions,  and  transmitted  along  with  the  re- 
ports of  them  a  recommendation  to  all  the  colonies  to  appoint  special  agents 
in  England  who  should  unite  their  utmost  endeavours  in  soliciting  justice 
to  America,  the  convention  dissolved  itself.  The  general  approbation  with 
which  its  proceedings  were  regarded  tended  to  promote  the  growing  incli- 
nation of  the  colonists  in  favor  of  a  system  of  united  councils  ;  and  as  the. 
provincial  assemblies  could  not  yet  venture  to  advance  this  system  to  ma- 
turity by  establishing  a  permanent  convention,  the  more  zealous  politicians  in 
several  of  the  States  sought  to  attain  the  same  object  by  different  and  less 
regular  paths,  and  cultivated  the  principle  of  union  in  a  form  which,  with- 
out seeming  to  combine  the  force  of  the  colonies,  was  peculiarly  fitted  to 
assimilate  the  sentiments  and  inflame  the  passions  of  the  people.  Political 
clubs  and  associations  were  formed  in  almost  all  the  provinces,  and  as- 
sumed the  title  of  The  Sons  of  Liberty.  These  clubs  now  began  to  form 
treaties  of  union  and  correspondence  with  each  other  ;  and,  being  totally 
irresponsible  for  their  conduct,  freely  indulged  and  inflamed  their  mutual 
ardor  in  secret  councils  and  rival  flights  of  the  most  daring  spirit  of  resist- 
ance and  language  of  menace.  Several  of  them  instituted  processions,  in 
which  copies  of  the  Stamp  Act,  after  having  been  exposed  to  public  op- 
probrium, were  burned  along  with  the  efiigies  of  its  chief  promoters.  One 
of  them  proceeded  so  far  as  to  circulate  printed  placards,  which  were  even 
affixed  to  the  doors  of  public  offices,  denouncing  vengeance  on  the  person, 
house,  and  effects  of  every  man  who  should  presume  either  to  distribute  or 
even  to  make  use  of  stamped  paper.  The  club  established  at  Boston  sig- 
nified its  commands  to  Oliver,  long  after  he  had  resigned  the  office  of 
stamp-master,  that  he  should  appear  on  a  certain  day  at  the  foot  of  Liberty 
Tree,  and  there  read  aloud  a  declaration  signifying  what  he  had  done,  and 
attest  it  upon  oath  in  presence  of  a  magistrate.  In  vain  he  appealed  to  his 
former  resignation,  and  entreated,  that,  if  a  repetition  of  this  ceremony  were 
necessary,  it  might  be  performed  in  the  town-house  ;  the  club  peremptorily 
refused  to  qualify  its  mandate  or  spare  his  humiliation,  and  he  was  compelled 
to  obey.  Innumerable  satires,  political  proverbs,  caricatures,  and  pas- 
quinades were  published  ;  and  incessant  activity  was  exerted  over  all 
America  to  render  British  prerogative  and  its  partisans  hateful,  contempt! 
ble,  and  ridiculous,  and  to  fortify  the  cause  of  liberty  by  uniting  it  with  at- 
tractions adapted  to  every  variety  of  human  taste,  temper,  and  disposition. 


400  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

TJp  most  promptly  efficacious  are  not  always  the  most  creditable  or  whole- 
some measures  ;  and  notwithstanding  the  unquestionable  benefit  which  the 
interests  of  liberty  derived  from  those  clubs,  it  is  probable  that  to  their  op- 
eration must  be  ascribed  the  harsh  and  illiberal  features  by  which  some 
of  the  scenes  of  the  American  Revolution  were  defaced.  The  mystery 
which  overhangs  such  associations  frequently  secures  to  their  mandates  and 
measures  a  respect  and  acquiescence  from  the  mass  of  society,  which  a 
disclosure  of  their  real  elem-ents  and  composition  would  neither  merit  nor  be 
able  to  obtain  ;  and  in  the  secrecy  of  their  conclaves,  the  dishonest,  the 
cruel,  and  the  dastardly  are  temptingly  encouraged,  and  too  often  success- 
fully enabled,  to  urge  their  ferocious  and  malignant  suggestions  in  prefer- 
ence to  the  calmer  counsels  of  the  just,  the  liberal,  and  the  truly  brave. 

The  assembling  of  the  convention  at  New  York  was  an  important  event 
for  the  American  States  ;  and  that  they  fully  appreciated  its  importance 
was  plainly  shown  by  the  eagerness  with  which  they  approved  the  proceed- 
ings of  that  body,  adopted  its  sentiments  and  language,  and  complied  with 
its  directions.  Among  other  consequences  that  resulted  from  it  was  the 
deliverance  of  the  Massachusetts  assembly  from  the  embarrassment  which 
had  hitherto  restrained  its  free  and  open  assertion  of  the  rights  of  its  con- 
stituents. In  the  month  of  September,  before  the  convention  was  held, 
Governor  Bernard,  having  convoked  the  assembly,  addressed  [September 
25]  an  elaborate  speech  to  it  upon  the  alarming  aspect  of  pubHc  afiairs. 
After  referring  to  the  recent  tumults  at  Boston  with  expressions  of  suit- 
able disapprobation,  he  undertook  the  defence  of  the  late  ministers  of  Brit- 
ain and  of  the  measures  they  had  pursued.  He  declared  his  conviction  of 
the  supreme  and  unlimited  authority  of  parhament ;  and  farther,  on  grounds 
of  expediency,  recommended  the  unqualified  submission  of  the  province  to 
the  mandates  of  a  power  which  it  could  not  resist  without  augmented  dis- 
tress and  inevitable  ruin.  The  ordinary  executive  government  of  Massa- 
chusetts, he  observed,  was  plainly  too  weak  to  contradict  authoritatively 
the  late  popular  declarations  that  the  Stamp  Act  should  not  be  executed 
within  the  province,  or  to  oppose  the  force  by  which  these  declarations 
\vere  supported  ;  and  therefore  he  now  invited  the  provincial  legislature 
either  to  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  executive  officers  in  proportion  to  the 
emergency,  or  at  once  to  acknowledge,  that,  as  the  Stamp  Act  could  not 
be  executed,  so  also  must  all  commerce  be  abandoned,  all  judicial  and 
magisterial  functions  suspended,  and  the  whole  community  resigned  to  anar- 
chy and  confusion.  It  was  the  more  especially  their  interest,  he  assured 
them,  to  embrace  the  former  part  of  the  alternative,  that  they  might  con- 
fidently rely  on  the  redress  of  all  their  grievances,  provided  they  yielded 
in  the  first  instance  an  imphcit  obedience  to  the  authority  of  the  parent 
state. 

The  assembly,  though  still  constrained  to  dissemble  the  sentiments  which 
they  longed  to  avow,  would  have  been  more  perplexed  by  this  address, 
if  it  had  immediately  succeeded  the  Boston  riots,  or  if  it  had  preceded  the 
intelligence  already  received  of  the  change  in  the  British  cabinet,  and  of 
the  determination  expressed  by  the  other  provinces  to  resist  the  execution 
of  the  Stamp  Act.  After  some  delay,  which  they  would  willingly  have 
prolonged,  but  which  the  anxious  expectation  of  the  people  induced  them 
to  abridge,  they  returned  to  the  governor's  address  a  vague  and  cautious 
answer,  importing,  that,  in  a  qualified  sense,  they  acknowledged  the  su- 


CHAP.  I]  MASSACHUSETTS  DECLARATION  OF  RIGHTS.  40] 

f)reme  authority  of  parliament ;  that  they  could  not  presume  to  adjust  the 
Imlts  of  this  authority,  but  could  as  little  hesitate  to  declare  that  "  there 
were  bounds  to  it"  ;  that,  if  an  act  of  parHament  was  just,  it  needed  nei- 
ther aid  nor  confirmation  from  a  subordinate  legislature  ;  that,  if  it  was  un- 
just and  tyrannical,  it  was  null  and  void,  as  were  formerly  declared  all  stat- 
utes inconsistent  with  the  franchises  of  Magna  Charta  ;  and  that  it  was 
strange  doctrine,  and  highly  disrespectful  to  parliament,  to  affirm  that  it 
required  obedience  to  an  unjust  law  as  a  preliminary  condition  essential 
to  its  repeal  ;  that  they  must  desire  to  be  excused  from  assisting  in  the 
execution  of  an  act  of  parliament  which  their  constituents  regarded  as 
subv^ersive  of  liberty,  and  inconsistent  with  the  fundamental  principle  of  the 
British  constitution,  that  taxation  and  representation  are  commensurate  ; 
that  they  knew  of  no  general  declarations  by  their  countrymen  of  an  inten- 
tion to  prevent  the  operation  of  the  act  of  parliament,  otherwise  than  by 
refraining  from  the  proceedings  and  transactions  which  it  loaded  with  im- 
posts ;  that  they  saw  much  misery,  but  no  criminality,  in  this  choice  ;  and 
"  therefore  must  consider  it  unkind  in  your  Excellency  to  reflect  on  a 
province,  whose  unshaken  loyalty  and  indissoluble  attachment  to  his  Maj- 
esty's person  and  government  was  never  before  called  in  question,  and, 
we  hope  in  God,  never  will  again." 

But  no  sooner  were  the  well  foreboded  proceedings  of  the  New  York 
convention  promulgated  in  this  province,  than  the  assembly,  renouncing  all 
further  reserve  and  ambiguity,  by  a  unanimous  vote  [October  29],  declara- 
torily  resolved,  that  there  were  certain  essential  rights  recognized  by  the 
political  constitution  of  Great  Britain,  which  were  founded  on  the  law  of 
God  and  nature,  and  were  the  common  property  of  mankind  ;  that  the  peo- 
ple of  Massachusetts,  both  by  the  general  principle  of  birthright  and  by  the 
particular  terms  of  their  charters,  were  entitled  to  participate  in  these  ad- 
vantages, and  could  not  justly  be  divested  of  them  by  any  law  of  society; 
that  no  man  could  rightfully  take  either  the  whole  or  a  part  of  the  property 
of  another  without  the  proprietor's  consent  ;  and  that  on  this  principle  re- 
posed the  main  pillar  of  the  British  constitution,  namely,  the  representation 
of  the  people  in  the  same  branch  of  the  legislature  to  which  the  power  of 
taxing  the  people  was  confided  ;  that  the  citizens  of  Massachusetts  never 
had  been  and  never  could  be  adequately  represented  in  the  British  parlia- 
ment ;  that,  in  accordance  with  their  general  rights  and  their  particular  cir- 
cumstances, they  had  always  till  now  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  being  taxed 
by  their  domestic  assemblies  alone  ;  that  all  statutes  imposing  taxes  on 
them,  and  enacted  by  any  other  authority  whatever,  were  infringements  of 
their  inherent  and  unalienable  rights  as  men  and  British  subjects ;  and,  final- 
ly, that  these  resolutions  should  be  preserved  on  record,  in  order  that  a  just 
sense  both  of  liberty  and  of  loyalty  might  be  trajismitted  to  posterity.  Ber- 
nard, infatuated  by  insolence  and  selfish  ambition,  perceived  now  the  failure 
of  his  policy,  without,  however,  discerning  or  acknowledging  its  folly.  In 
a  wrathful  and  intemperate  address  which  he  delivered  soon  after  to  the 
assembly,  he  accused  them  of  having  countenanced  all  the  riots  that  had  oc- 
curred in  Massachusetts,  and  of  being  themselves  on  the  eve  of  open  re- 
bellion. To  this  charge  the  assembly  promptly  replied,  that  they  repelled 
with  scorn  and  indignation  the  pretext  that  they  had  either  encouraged  or 
justified  the  late  riots  ;  but  they  plainly  declared  their  opinion  that  the  ob- 
noxious laws  which  provoked  the  tumults  would  never  have  been  embraced 

VOL.    II.  51  HH* 


402  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

by  the  British  parliament  without  the  sinister  instigation  and  pernicious  coun- 
sel of  the  functionaries  of  Britain  in  America.  "  Impartial  history,"  they 
declared,  "  will  record  that  the  people  of  this  continent,  after  giving  the 
strongest  testimonies  of  their  loyalty  to  his  Majesty,  by  making  the  utmost 
exertions  to  defend  his  territories  and  enlarge  his  dominions  in  this  part  of 
the  world,  gave  an  equal  testimony  of  a  love  of  Hberty  and  a  regard  to 
those  principles  which  are  the  basis  of  his  Majesty's  government,  by  a  glo- 
rious stand,  even  against  an  act  of  parliament^  because  they  plainly  saw  that 
their  essential,  unalienable  right  of  representation  and  of  trial  by  jury,  the 
very  foundation  of  the  British  constitution,  was  infringed,  and  even  annihi- 
lated by  it."i 

The  day  on  which  the  operation  of  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  appointed  to 
commence  [November  1,  1765]  was  not  suffered  to  elapse  without  some 
remarkable  tokens  of  pubhc  feeling  in  various  parts  of  America.  At  Bos- 
ton, it  was  ushered  in  by  the  tolling  of  bells  ;  shops  and  warehouses  were 
closed  ;  effigies  of  the  authors  and  abettors  of  the  act  were  carried  about 
the  streets,  and  afterwards  torn  in  pieces  by  the  populace.  In  New  Hamp- 
shire, the  people,  who  had  hitherto  behaved  with  a  remarkable  degree  of 
calmness  and  self-control,  were  now  restrained  from  a  general  riot  only  by 
the  assurance  of  their  domestic  government  that  no  attempt  would  be  made 
to  execute  the  obnoxious  law.  At  Portsmouth,  the  metropolis  of  this 
State,  as  well  as  in  the  towns  of  Newcastle  and  Greenland,  the  bells  were 
tolled  to  denote  the  decease  of  liberty,  and  all  the  friends  of  the  departed 
goddess  were  invited  to  attend  her  funeral,  of  which  the  ceremony  was  per- 
formed with  much  pomp  and  solemnity.  A  coffin,  splendidly  decorated, 
and  bearing  the  inscription,  "  Liberty,  aged  CXLV.  years,"  ^  was  carried 
in  funeral  procession  from  the  State-house  of  Portsmouth,  attended  with  the 
music  of  unbraced  drums.  Minute  guns  were  fired  until  the  coffin  reached 
the  place  of  interment  and  was  deposited  in  a  grave  prepared  for  its  re- 
ception, when  an  oration  was  pronounced  in  honor  of  the  deceased  friend 
of  the  people.  Scarcely  was  the  oration  concluded,  when  some  remains  of 
life,  it  was  pretended,  were  discovered  in  the  body,  which  thereupon  was 
eagerly  snatched  from  the  grave.  The  inscription  on  the  lid  of  the  coffin 
w^as  immediately  altered  to  Liberty  revived ;  a  cheerful  peal  resounded  from 
the  bells,  and  every  countenance  brightened  with  joy.  Childish  and  even 
ridiculous  as  this  pageant  may  appear  to  philosophic  minds  or  tranquil  spirits, 
it  was  well  calculated  to  preserve  the  sentiment  and  cherish  the  earnest  pur- 
pose of  liberty  in  all  classes  of  the  people  of  New  Hampshire. 

At  New  York,  the  day  was  signalized  by  an  eruption  of  popular  violence, 
partly  provoked  by  the  impoHtic  behaviour  of  the  governor  in  demonstrating 
his  expectation  of  some  such  occurrence.  In  consequence  of  the  resigna- 
tion of  the  stamp-master,  Golden  took  possession  of  the  first  cargo  of  stamps 
that  arrived  from  England,  and  lodged  them  in  Fort  George.  He  was  al- 
ready the  object  of  much  popular  dislike,  which  he  contrived  to  augment 
by  the  ostentatious  precautions  he  now  adopted  for  the  defence  of  the  stamps 
in  his  custody.  Offended  by  this  appearance  of  menace  or  defiance,  the 
])eople  began  to  assemble  in  crowds  in  the  streets,  and,  with  the  usual  issue 

'  Bradford.  Gordon.  Minot.  [Here  ends  the  narrative  of  Minot  ;  and  here,  accordingly, 
in  tracing  the  labyrinth  of  American  politics,  we  lose  a  guide  more  liberal,  moderate,  and 
impartial  in  his  sentiments,  than  vigorous  or  perspicuous  in  his  language.]  Holmes.  Hutch- 
inson. 

*  Computed  from  the  landing  of  the  first  colonists  of  New  England  at  Plymouth,  in  1620. 


CHAP.  I  ]  NON-IMPORTATION  AGREEMENT.  4QJ 

of  angry  and  multitudinous  congregations,  were  easily  impelled  to  perpetrate 
the  violence  which  Golden  had  imprudently  suggested.  They  began  by 
seizing  the  governor's  coach,  in  which  they  carried  an  effigy  of  himself  to 
the  public  gallows,  where  they  suspended  the  effigy  along  with  a  stamped 
bill  of  lading  and  a  figure  intended  to  represent  the  devil  ;  and  then,  with 
shouts  of  execration,  transporting  the  coach,  gallows,  and  effigies  to  the  fort, 
they  burned  the  whole  in  triumphant  challenge  under  the  very  muzzles  of 
the  guns.  Thence  they  proceeded  to  the  house  of  Major  James,  who  had 
expressed  approbation  of  the  Stamp  Act,  and,  after  plundering  it  and  ravag- 
ing his  garden,  consumed  every  article  of  the  furniture  in  a  bonfire.  On 
the  following  day,  they  readily  assembled  again  at  the  summons  of  one  of 
their  ring;leaders,  Isaac  Sears,  who  had  formerly  commanded  a  privateer  ; 
and,  in  conformity  with  his  suggestion,  clamorously  demanded  that  the 
stamped  paper  should  be  surrendered  to  their  hands.  After  some  negotiation, 
the  governor  submitted  to  deliver  it  up  to  the  corporation  of  the  city,  and  it 
was-  accordingly  deposited  in  the  town-hall.  Ten  boxes  of  stamped  paper, 
which  afterwards  arrived,  were  promptly  seized  by  the  people  and  com- 
rhitted  to  the  flames. 

The  supporters  of  colonial  rights  in  the  higher  classes  of  society  at 
New  York  were  struck  with  alarm  at  the  riotous  outrage  committed  by 
their  townsmen,  and  perceived  the  expediency  of  constituting  prudent  lead- 
ers for  the  management  and  control  of  the  multitude.  Having  convoked  a 
general  meeting  of  the  inhabitants  [November  6] ,  they  proposed  a  resolution, 
which  was  readily  embraced,  to  confide  the  interests  of  the  province,  with 
respect  to  British  prerogative,  to  a  committee  who  were  authorized  to  in- 
stitute a  correspondence  with  all  the  other  colonies.  Sears  and  four  other 
persons  were  charged  with  this  function,  which  they  exercised  w^ith  much  zeal 
and  efficiency.  From  the  want  of  such  communication  with  each  other, 
and  consequently  of  union  among  themselves,  many  nations  have  lost  their 
liberties,  or  failed  in  their  attempts  to  regain  them.  In  every  age  and  country, 
the  predominance  of  the  few  has  been  supported  by  the  lack  of  union 
among  the  many  ;  and  human  wisdom  has  never  devised  a  system  more  sub- 
servient to  the  political  advancement  and  illumination  of  the  mass  of  society 
than  a  reciprocal  exchange  of  sentiment  and  intelligence  by  corresponding 
committees.  One  of  the  earliest  effects  of  the  correspondence  which  was 
now  established  was  the  general  adoption  and  extension  of  a  measure  which 
Originated  at  New  York,  and  proved  eminently  serviceable  in  creating  within 
the  parent  state  an  interest  in  unison  with  the  desires  of  the  colonists.  The 
merchants  of  New  York  were  the  first  who  exemplified  the  policy  of  direct- 
ing their  British  correspondents  to  ship  no  more  goods  for  them  until  the 
Stamp  Act  should  be  repealed  ;  and  they  farther  declared  that  they  would 
riot  sell  on  commission  any  goods  shipped  from  Britain  after  the  first  of  Jan- 
uary, in  the  ensuing  year,  until  the  tidings  of  such  repeal  should  be  received. 
This  spirited  and  patriotic  purpose  was  diffiised  by  the  clubs  and  corre- 
sponding committees  over  all  America,  and  everywhere  awakened  applause 
and  imitation.  A  similar  non-importation  agreement  was  framed  by  the  mer- 
chants of  Boston  and  Philadelphia  shortly  after  ;  and  it  a  meeting  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Philadelphia  [December],  it  was  resolved,  though  not  unani- 
mously, that,  till  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  no  lawyer  should  support  the 
suit  of  an  English  creditor  against  an  American  debtor,  nor  any  American 
make  remittances  to  England  in  navment  of  debts.     These  Philadelphia 


404  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

resolutions  were  extremely  unjust,  but  by  no  means  unnatural ;  for  nothing 
is  more  congenial  to  the  temper  of  mankind  than  to  retaliate  the  injustice 
which  provokes  their  own  impatience  and  complaint.  Even  when  remon- 
strating against  arbitrary  power,  the  Americans  refused  to  permit  Quakers, 
and  other  timid  or  conscientious  individuals,  to  submit,  as  they  were  in- 
clined, to  the  Stamp  Act ;  and  to  reinforce  their  own  protestations  against 
the  injustice  of  the  British  parhament,  they  refused  or  obstructed  the  pay- 
ment of  their  debts  to  the  very  merchants  who  had  strenuously  endeav- 
oured to  prevent  the  injustice  of  which  they  complained.  It  may  be  rea- 
sonably surmised,  that,  both  in  this  and  in  other  instances,  the  heated  pas- 
sions of  the  multitude  were  artfully  directed  into  channels  corresponding 
with  the  private  interest  of  sordid  and  hypocritical  counsellors.  The  non- 
importation agreement  was  gradually  propagated  throughout  all  America 
[1766],  though  its  terms  were  not  everywhere  the  same  ;  for  in  some  parts, 
and  especially  in  New  England,  it  was  resolved  to  adhere  to  it,  until  not  only 
the  Stamp  Act,  but  also  the  previous  commercial  impositions  were  abol- 
ished. In  every  colony  and  every  class  of  society,  these  compacts  were 
enforced  by  the  guardian  care  of  the  political  clubs,  and  aided  by  the  for- 
mation of  collateral  conventions,  which  adopted  subsidiary  purposes.  To 
encourage  a  woollen  manufacture  in  America,  it  was  recommended  to  the 
colonists  to  abstain  from  eating  the  flesh  of  lambs.  Not  a  butcher  durst  af- 
terwards expose  a  lamb  for  sale.  Instead  of  wearing  British  cloth,  which 
was  formerly  accounted  a  mark  of  fashion  and  gentility,  the  wealthiest 
colonists  now  set  the  example  of  clothing  themselves  in  old  or  in  homespun 
habiliments  ;  and,  instead  of  being  married  by  licenses,  on  which  a  duty 
was  now  imposed  by  the  Stamp  Act,  the  richer  Americans  agreed  to  imi- 
tate the  procedure  of  their  humbler  countrymen,  and  neither  to  contract  nor 
countenance  marriages  celebrated  by  any  other  authority  than  public  procla- 
mation in  church.  Associations  were  formed  and  resolutions  expressed  to 
abstain  from  particular  luxuries  which  could  be  procured  only  from  Britain. 
The  American  women  distinguished  themselves  by  the  eagerness  with  which 
they  promoted  these  purposes,  and  rendered  both  themselves  and  the  interests 
of  liberty  additionally  dear  to  their  countrymen  by  their  prompt  and  cheerful 
surrender  of  every  ornament  and  indulgence  of  which  the  use  was  accounted 
a  demonstration  of  servility  or  a  contribution  to  the  resources  of  arbitrary 
power.  The  domination  of  Britain  was,  indeed,  much  more  seriously  en- 
dangered by  the  prevalence  of  industrious  and  frugal  habits  among  the  col- 
onists, than  by  the  most  violent  and  menacing  declarations  of  their  pro- 
vincial assemblies.  Economy  is  essential  to  national  as  well  as  to  indi- 
vidual independence.  "  Save  your  money,  and  you  save  your  country" 
became  a  proverb  with  the  people  of  New  England.  The  self-control 
and  endurance  practised  by  those  who  dispensed  with  the  costly  British  lux- 
uries to  which  they  had  been  accustomed  served  at  once  to  loosen  the  de- 
pendence of  America  on  Britain,  to  prepare  the  Americans  for  the  rigors 
of  warfare,  and  to  diminish  the  resources  of  their  enemy  and  oppressor. 
So  forcibly  were  these  considerations  impressed  on  the  mind  of  Franklin, 
that,  when  the  proposition  for  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  was  afterwards 
entertained  in  England,  he  declared  his  opinion  that  the  interests  of  America 
would  be  more  effectually  promoted  by  a  suspension  of  this  act,  which 
would  at  once  postpone  a  struggle  dangerous  to  the  weakness  of  the  col- 
onists and  promote  among  them  habits  of  virtue  inconsistent  with  final  or 
listing  subjugation. 


CHAP.  I.]  THE  STAMP  ACT  DISOBEYED.  4Q5 

The  only  semblance  of  respect  which  the  Stamp  Act  obtained  in  America 
was  the  general  suspension  of  commercial  and  judicial  business  that  ensued 
for  a  while  in  almost  all  the  provinces.  This  state  of  things  could  not  and 
did  not  last  long  ;  the  people  soon  resumed  their  former  pursuits,  and  the 
provincial  magistrates  their  functions,  and  risked  the  consequences  of  ex- 
ercising them  in  defiance  of  the  act  of  parliament.  Courageous  traders  sent 
their  vessels  to  sea,  without  any  new  ceremony  of  precaution  ;  more  timid 
merchants  and  ship -masters  gave  a  color  of  legitimacy  to  their  transactions 
by  obtaining  certificates  that  the  persons  who  were  appointed  distributers  of 
the  stamps  refused  to  deliver  them.  So  strong  was  the  current  of  public 
will,  that  the  custom-house  officers  hesitated  not  a  moment  to  give  way  to 
it,  and  granted  clearances  to  every  vessel  that  sailed,  without  a  syllable  of 
objection  to  the  want  of  stamps.  In  Rhode  Island,  the  courts  of  law  were 
never  closed  for  a  single  day.  In  Virginia  and  Maryland,  before  they  had 
been  closed  a  single  month,  they  were  reopened  by  general  consent.  In 
Massachusetts,  most  of  the  judges  in  the  inferior  courts  gave  notice  that 
they  would  discharge  their  functions  as  usual ;  but  the  judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court  firmly  refused  at  first  to  entertain  any  legal  proceedings  without  stamps; 
and  even  the  most  patriotic  of  the  lawyers  were  prompted,  by  inveterate  pro- 
fessional prejudice,  to  account  it  impossible  to  conduct  judicial  business  in 
open  disregard  of  a  subsisting  act  of  parliament,  however  unjust  and  tyranni- 
cal. At  length  [January  23,  1766]  the  popular  party  prevailed  so  far  as 
to  obtain  from  the  assembly  a  resolution  "  that  the  shutting  up  the  courts 
of  justice  is  a  very  great  grievance  ;  and  that  the  judges,  justices,  and  all 
other  public  officers  in  this  province  ought  to  proceed  as  usual."  The 
judges  were  compelled  to  yield  obedience  to  this  resolution  ;  and  the  colo- 
nists enjoyed  the  triumph  of  beholding  the  mandate  of  their  domestic  legis- 
lature prevail  over  the  command  of  the  British  parliament.  The  judges, 
however,  declared  that  they  submitted  only  for  self-preservation,  —  being 
sensible  that  they  were  in  the  hands  of  the  populace  ;  and,  by  the  conni- 
vance of  the  lawyers,  but  little  judicial  business  was  transacted.  In  South 
Carolina,  the  governor  still  refused  his  sanction  to  the  transaction  of  public 
business  without  stamps  ;  but  the  assembly,  having  ascertained  that  the  copy 
of  the  Stamp  Act  transmitted  to  him  from  England  had  been  sent  in  an 
irregular  and  unusual  manner,  laid  hold  of  this  pretext,  and  insisted  that 
he  had  received  no  such  formal  notification  of  the  act  as  to  render  it  incum- 
bent on  them  or  him  to  pay  any  attention  to  its  injunctions. 

The  consciousness  of  having  thus  practically  disavowed  the  authority  of 
parliament  and  defied  its  power  seemed  to  inspire  the  colonists  with  addition- 
al boldness  of  tone,  and  to  impart  additional  spring  and  latitude  to  their  spec- 
ulations and  purposes.  Treatises  were  published  in  the  journals  of  New 
York,  openly  denying  that  the  British  parliament  possessed  even  the  shadow 
of  jurisdiction  over  America,  and  limiting  the  constitutional  relation  between 
Britain  and  America  to  the  common  subjection  which  the  two  countries  ac- 
knowledged to  the  same  monarch.  The  clubs  and  corresponding  commit- 
tees redoubled  their  exertions  to  influence  and  unite  public  feeling  ;  and  all 
who  had  distinguished  themselves  by  peculiar  intemperance  of  language  or 
conduct  consulted  their  safety  or  vented  their  zeal  in  efforts  to  impHcate  the 
great  body  of  their  countrymen  as  deeply  as  themselves  in  demonstration  of 
resistance.  A  union  of  all  the  clubs  in  America  was  proposed,  approved, 
and  partially  accomplished ;  the  members  pledging  themselves   with  their 


406  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

lives  and  fortunes  to  defend  the  British  constitution  in  America  against  the 
measures  disclosed  in  "  a  certain  pamphlet  which  has  appeared  in  the  shape 
of  an  act  of  parliament,  called  and  known  by  the  name  of  the  Stamp  Act "; 
to  support  each  other  in  all  their  past  and  future  opposition  to  those  meas- 
ures ;  and  to  bring  to  condign  punishment  all  betrayers  of  their  country  who 
should  promote  such  measures  by  assistance  or  submission.  The  people  in 
various  places  were  invited  to  form  associations  for  the  protection  of  their 
fellow-citizens  who  had  signalized  themselves  by  generous  zeal  for  American 
liberty.  To  these  invitations  the  most  cordial  assurances  of  support  were 
generally  returned.  [February.]  Most  of  the  towns  in  Massachusetts  replied 
to  an  appHcation  of  this  nature,  by  signifying  the  determination  of  their  in- 
habitants to  march  with  their  whole  force  to  the  support  of  the  British  constitu- 
tion^  and  consequently  the  relief  of  those  that  shall  or  may  be  in  danger  from 
the  Stamp  Jlct  or  its  abettors.^  Popular  license,  in  short,  was  carried  to 
the  highest  pitch  it  could  admit  without  assuming  a  different  name. 

The  tidings  of  all  these  remarkable  events  in  America  were  successively 
transmitted  to  Britain,  where  they  produced  a  strong  impression  on  the 
public  mind,  together  with  much  contrariety  of  purpose  and  opinion.  One 
point,  indeed,  became  every  day  more  undeniably  manifest  and  more  pres- 
singly  urgent.  All  parties  agreed  that  affairs  could  no  longer  be  suffered  to 
remain  in  their  present  posture,  and  that  Britain  must  either  forthwith  exert 
her  utmost  force  to  carry  the  Stamp  Act  into  execution,  or  promptly  repeal 
it.  Each  of  these  views  of  poHcy  was  espoused  by  different  statesmen, 
and  warmly  supported  by  numerous  partisans.  The  new  ministers,  and  es- 
pecially Secretary  Conway,  who  formerly  denied  the  power  of  parliament 
to  tax  America,  were  desirous  to  repeal  the  Stamp  Act ;  but  their  senti- 
ments were  perplexed  and  their  language  modified,  partly  by  the  violent 
opposition  to  any  such  measures  by  the  members  and  friends  of  the  late 
cabinet,  and  partly  by  the  pride  naturally  attending  the  possession  of  power, 
and  by  aversion  to  bend  or  even  to  seem  to  bend  in  concession  to  the  hos- 
tile and  menacing  attitude  which  America  displayed.  To  make  war  on  the 
Americans  in  support  of  the  act  seemed,  if  not  absolute  suicide,  at  least  tan- 
tamount to  making  use  of  one  arm  to  cut  off  the  other.  The  prior  declara- 
tions of  parliament  and  the  present  temper  aroused  in  the  British  people  for- 
bade every  thought  of  repealing  the  act  on  the  ground  of  incompetence  ;  and 
the  violent  conduct  of  the  Americans  rendered  it  difficult  to  reconcile  the  dig- 
nity of  the  British  empire  with  a  repeal  founded  on  the  plea  of  expediency. 
In  circular  letters  to  the  provincial  governors,  Conway  expressed  the  royal 
displeasure  at  the  riots  which  had  taken  place,  but  added  withal  that  it  was 
"  hoped  that  the  resistance  to  the  authority  of  the  mother  country  had  found 
place  only  among  the  low^er  and  more  ignorant  of  the  people."  In  fact, 
many  respectable  tradesmen,  and  even  some  of  the  principal  inhabitants 
of  various  parts  of  America,  had  both  promoted  and  partaken  the  resistance 
of  their  countrymen  ;  and  of  this  the  ministers  received  ample  and  even  ex- 
aggerated information  from  the  letters  of  the  royal  governors.  But,  eager  to 
procure  a  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  both  as  a  measure  of  good  policy  and  a 
stigma  upon  their  predecessors,  they  willingly  countenanced  the  idea  that  the 
agitations  in  the  colonies  were  neither  general  nor  formidable  ;  they  wished 
to  confine  the  discussion  of  the  matter  to  considerations  of  equity  and  com- 

^  jinnual  Recrister  for  176o  and  for  1766.    Belknap.     Gordon.     Holmes.     Franklin's  JI/«- 
moirs.     Hutchinson.  . 


CHAP.  I.]  FRANKLIN'S  EXAMINATION.  4Q7 

mercial  expediency  ;  and  affecting  to  believe  that  the  distress,  of  which 
many  Enghsh  manufacturers  loudly  complained  at  this  period,  was  wholly 
occasioned  by  the  non-importation  compacts  of  the  Americans,  they  pro- 
moted petitions  to  parliament  for  a  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  from  the  prin- 
cipal trading  and  manufacturing  towns  in  England.  No  instigation  was 
needed  to  prompt  the  merchants  of  London  to  aid  this  purpose  ;  they  pe- 
titioned and  exerted  all  their  influence  to  obtain  the  repeal. 

The  wishes  of  the  ministry  were  ably  seconded  by  the  American  agents 
in  Britain,  and  especially  by  Dr.  Franklin,  who  was  examined  at  the 
bar  of  the  House  of  Commons  [February  3]  with  regard  to  the  actual 
condition  of  America,  and  the  sentiments,  opinions,  and  conduct  of  his 
countrymen.  The  genius  which  he  displayed  on  this  occasion,  with  a  steady 
self-possession  that  gave  it  the  fullest  effect,  —  the  extent  and  variety  of 
knowledge  he  manifested,  —  the  clearness  and. comprehension  of  his  views, 
—  and  the  graceful,  perspicuous,  and  forcible  language  in  which  his  testi- 
mony was  delivered,  attracted  universal  attention  and  general  praise.  O^ 
some  of  his  statements  the  inaccuracy  is  certain  ;  and  the  good  faith  with 
which  they  were  propounded  is,  at  least,  doubtful.  He  was  perplexed  by 
the  inconsistent  desires  of  vindicating  the  conduct  and  protecting  the  interests 
of  his  countrymen,  on  the  one  hand,  and  yet  of  avoiding  to  wound  the  pride 
of  the  British  nation  and  government,  on  the  other.  After  delivering  a 
succinct  and  interesting  description  of  America,  he  defended  the  Ameri- 
cans with  equal  force  and  ingenuity.  He  affirmed  that  they  were  willing 
to  submit  to  external  taxes  imposed  by  parhament  ;  but  reckoned  themselves, 
both  as  partakers  of  the  British  constitution,  and  also  in  conformity  with  a 
just  interpretation  of  their  provincial  charters,  exempted  from  the  authority 
of  parliament  in  relation  to  internal  taxes  ;  that  the  Stamp  Act  was  calcu- 
lated to  operate  with  especial  disadvantage  in  America,  and  was  the  cause 
of  the  diminished  affection  of  the  colonists  to  the  parent  state,  and  of  the 
late  non-importation  agreements  to  which  they  had  resorted  ;  that  the  effect 
of  a  longer  subsistence  of  these  agreements  would  be  the  permanent  estab- 
lishment of  domestic  manufactures  in  America,  and  the  extinction  of  the 
colonial  market  for  British  manufactures  ;  that  the  riots  were  mere  transient 
and  unpremeditated  ebullitions  of  popular  passion,  condemned  by  the  repre- 
sentative assemblies,  and  disavowed  by  all  respectable  Americans  ;  and 
that  it  would  be  absurd  to  send  a  military  force  to  America  in  order  to  ex- 
ecute the  Stamp  Act,  as  the  soldiers  would  find  nobody  prepared  or  disposed 
to  contend  with  them,  and  would  have  no  occasion  to  use  their  arms,  unless 
they  were  to  employ  them  in  slaying  men  for  refusing  to  buy  stamped  pa- 
per. A  British  army  despatched  to  America,  he  said,  would  not  find,  but 
might  easily  create,  a  rebellion  in  that  country.  Franklin,  during  his  present 
stay  in  England,  had  been  hitherto  agent  only  for  the  province  of  Pennsyl 
vania  ;  but  such  was  the  impression  of  his  political  genius  and  sagacity  pro 
duced  in  America  by  the  report  of  this  examination,  that  he  was  appointed 
soon  after  to  be  agent  also  for  Massachusetts,  New  Jersey,  and  Georgia. 

The  policy  of  the  British  ministers  was  counteracted  by  the  efforts  of 
their  parliamentary  opponents,  who,  in  letters  which  they  exhibited  from  the 
royal  governors  and  other  officers  of  the  crown  in  America,  found  materi- 
als for  a  description  very  different  from  Franklin's  of  the  actual  state  of 
affairs  in  the  colonies.  These  functionaries,  who  had  encouraged  the  au- 
thors of  the  Stamp  Act  to  beheve  that  it  would  be  easily  carried  into  execu- 


408  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

tion,  and  who  had  themselves  personally  sustained  numerous  indignities  in  the 
course  of  the  opposition  it  eventually  provoked,  were  prompted,  both  by 
concern  for  the  reputation  of  their  counsels  and  by  vindictive  feelings,  to 
impute  the  opposition  to  the  intrigues  of  a  few  factious  men,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  give  the  most  irritating  picture  of  the  excesses  with  which  it  was 
attended.  From  these  representations  the  friends  of  the  Stamp  Act  de- 
duced the  conclusion,  that  America  had  openly  defied  the  power  and  au- 
tliority  of  Britain,  and  was  in  a  state  of  actual  rebellion.  And  has  it  come 
to  this  (ihey  asked),  that  Britain  must  yield  to  the  commands  and  menaces 
of  America  ;'  and  that  parliament  must  recede  from  a  prerogative  which 
it  has  solemnly  asserted,  in  accommodation  to  the  will  of  a  handful  of 
British  subjects,  who,  so  far  from  deserving  favor  or  indulgence,  merit  the 
severest  chastisement  for  the  undutiful  insolence  they  have  displayed  ?  This 
appeal  was  but  too  well  calculated  to  interest  the  passions  of  the  English, 
—  a  people  remarkably  distinguished  by  their  haughty  fear  of  seeming  to 
yield  to  intimidation,  and  (like  most  great  nations)  much  more  susceptible 
of  a  vigilant  jealousy  than  of  a  liberal  estimate  of  their  dignity  and  honor. 
So  strong  was  its  effect  both  in  parliament  and  on  the  nation  at  large,  that 
Franklin,  who  anxiously  watched  the  progress  of  the  discussion,  assured  his 
friends  in  America  that  in  all  probabihty  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  would 
not  be  obtained.  The  embarrassment  of  the  ministers  was  unexpectedly 
increased  by  the  openness  and  impetuous  determination  with  which  Pitt, 
who  had  now  regained  his  health,  and  who  neither  communicated  nor  acted 
in  concert  with  them,  undertook  the  defence  of  the  boldest  and  most  ob- 
jectionable proceedings  of  the  Americans.  Inflamed  wuth  resentment  and 
disdain  by  a  speech  of  Grenville,  who  declared  that  this  people  were  en- 
couraged to  persist  in  a  mad,  ungrateful,  and  rebellious  career  by  reliance 
on  the  countenance  of  some  British  statesmen,  —  Pitt  warmly  replied,  that 
such  an  imputation  should  never  discourage  him.  "  We  are  told  that 
America  is  obstinate,"  he  proceeded,  "  that  America  is  almost  in  open 
rebellion.  Sir,  /  rejoice  that  America  has  resisted.  Three  millions  of 
people,  so  dead  to  all  the  feelings  of  liberty  as  voluntarily  to  submit  to 
be  slaves,  would  hav6  been  fit  instruments  to  make  slaves  of  all  the  rest."^ 
Deprecating  any  attempt  to  execute  the  Stamp  Act,  he  declared,  "  I  know 
the  valor  of  your  troops  and  the  skill  of  your  officers  ;  but  in  such  a  cause 
your  success  would  be  hazardous.  America,  if  she  fell,  would  fall  like  the 
strong  man  ;  she  would  embrace  the  pillars  of  the  state,  and  pull  down  the 
constitution  with  her.  The  Americans  have  been  wronged  ;  they  have  been 
driven  to  madness  by  injustice.  Will  you  punish  them  for  the  madness  you 
have  occasioned  ?  No  ;  let  this  country  be  the  first  to  resume  its  prudence 
and  temper."  He  concluded  by  declaring  his  opinion,  ''  that  the  Stamp 
Act  be  repealed  absolutely,  totally,  and  immediately  ;  and  that  the  reason 
of  the  repeal  be  assigned,  that  it  was  founded  on  an  erroneous  principle." 

*  Shakspeare  has  anticipated  this  strain  of  sentiment  in  the  following  lines :  — 

"  O  Dieu  vivant!  shall  a  few  sprays  of  us, 
Our  scions  put  in  wild  and  savage  stock, 
Spirt  up  so  suddenly  into  the  clouds, 
And  overlook  their  grafters."  —  Henry  the  Fifth. 
"  We  did  not  send  them  forth  to  be  scorned  by  them,  but  to  have  the  governance  of  them, 
and  to  be  honored  by  them  as  is  becoming,"  was  the  remark  of  the  Corinthians  on  the  protes- 
tation of  their  colonists  of  Corcyra,  "  that  colonists  are  not  sent  out  to  be  the  slaves  of  them  that 
stay,  but  to  be  their  equals."    Thucydides. 

*  Charles  Fox  expressed  a  similar  sentiment,  when  he  declared  in  the  House  of  Commons 
(hat  "  the  resistance  of  the  Americans  to  the  oppression  of  the  mother  country  has  undoubt- 
tt])y  preserved  the  liberties  of  mankind." 


CHAP.  1]  DECLARATORY  ACT.  4Q9 

But  the  language  of  Pitt  on  this  occasion  was  much  more  palatable  to 
the  Americans  than  to  the  English,  to  whom  he  vainly  recommended  that 
rare  triumph  of  wisdom,  so  hard  a  science  to  mankind,  well-timed  retreat. 
His  auditors  prized  much  more  highly  the  imaginary  dignity  that  was  wounded 
by  suggestions  of  the  spirit  and  resolution  of  the  people  with  whom  they 
were  contending,  than  the  real  dignity  of  generous  forbearance  in  a  mischiev- 
ous and  impolitic  quarrel.  To  facilitate  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  by 
satisfying  or  soothing  the  irritated  pride  which  was  roused  against  such  con- 
cession, the  ministers  first  introduced  a  bill  *'for  the  better  securing  the 
dependency  of  his  Majesty's  dominions  in  America  upon  the  crown  and 
parliament  of  Great  Britain."  This  bill,  which  was  carried  without  a 
division  in  either  house,  obtained  the  name  of  the  Declaratory  Act,^  It 
proclaimed  that  some  of  the  American  colonies  had  unlawfully  pretended 
that  the  right  to  tax  them  resided  exclusively  in  their  own  domestic  assem- 
blies, and  that  riotous  and  seditious  outrages  had  been  committed  by  mobs 
deluded  by  this  opinion  ;  and  enacted  declaratively,  that  the  king  and  par- 
liament had  right  to  make  laws  "  to  hind  the  colonies  and  people  of  America^ 
subjects  of  the  crown  of  Great  Britain^  in  all  cases  whatsoever.''^  A  bill  for 
repealing  the  Stamp  Act  was  then  proposed  to  the  House  of  Commons. 
Its  preamble  varied  widely  from  the  suggestion  of  Pitt,  and  expressed  mere- 
ly that  "  the  continuance  of  the  said  act  would  be  attended  with  many  in- 
conveniences, and  may  be  productive  of  consequences  greatly  detrimental  to 
the  commercial  interests  of  these  kingdoms."  The  memorial  of  the  Amer- 
ican convention  was  tendered  in  support  of  this  measure  ;  but  the  house  re- 
fused to  hearken  to  the  application  of  an  assembly  unknown  to  the  laws  and 
constitution.  Very  few  petitions  from  America  were  presented  ;  and  those 
only  which  w^ere  couched  in  a  submissive  or  moderate  strain.  But  nu- 
merous petitions  were  exhibited  from  English  merchants  and  manufacturers  ; 
and  so  many  facts  and  circumstances  were  cited  and  established,  as  to  render 
the  preamble  of  the  bill  perfectly  incontrovertible.  Yet  with  all  this,  and 
notwithstanding  the  precaution  that  was  employed  to  render  the  preamble 
inoffensive  to  English  pride  and  consonant  w4th  English  commercial  ambi- 
tion, the  bill  was  violently  opposed  by  the  members  of  the  former  cabinet, 
and  by  their  friends  and  various  other  persons  in  both  houses,  who  insisted 
that  to  recede  at  the  present  juncture  from  actual  taxation,  and  remain  con- 
tented with  a  declaratory  assertion  of  this  authority,  was  virtually  to  surren- 
der the  prerogative  of  Britain  to  the  force  and  opposition  of  America,  to 
encourage  faction  by  success  and  impunity,  and  to  insure  resistance  against 
the  first  attempt  to  give  a  practical  application  to  the  Declaratory  Act. 
The  opposers  of  the  repeal,  indeed,  wandered  far  beyond  this  topic,  and, 
with  an  eagerness  to  promote  discussion  that  contrasted  remarkably  with 
their  desire  only  a  year  before  to  evade  or  abridge  it,  revived  in  every 
stage  of  the  proceedings  the  question  of  the  right  of  parliament  to  tax  Amer- 
ica. With  a  plausible  show  of  constitutional  principle,  they  maintained, 
that,  if  the  colonies,  in  their  advanced  state  of  opulence  and  power,  should 
be  permitted  to  contribute  to  the  national  expenditure  by  making  free  grants 
to  the  crown,  as  they  had  hitherto  customarily  done  upon  requisition,  the 
crown  might  be  rendered  independent  of  parliament  for  pecuniary  supplies. 

'  6  Geo.  III.,  Cap.  12.  With  similar  policy,  the  British  cabinet  of  which  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington  was  premier  prefaced  its  tardy  and  extorted  concessions  to  the  Catholics  of  Ireland  by 
an  act  of  insolent  rigor  which  robbed  the  concessions  of  almost  all  their  grace.  So  unfruitful 
hitherto  have  been  the  lessons  of  history. 

VOL.   II.  52  II 


410  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

Of  the  friends  of  the  repeal  bill,  some  contented  themselves  with  arguing 
in  support  of  the  undeniable  truths  expressed  in  its  preamble ;  others,  em- 
bracing the  invitation  to  discuss  the  general  question  of  parliamentary  prerog- 
ative, insisted  either  that  this  prerogative  was  sufficiently  guarded  by  the 
Declaratory  Act,  or  that  America  was  already  taxed  in  a  pecuhar  manner, 
and  in  the  only  manner  adapted  to  her  peculiar  situation,  by  the  commercial 
restrictions.  This  last  view  was  supported  in  substance,  though  profess- 
edly controverted  with  much  nicety  of  discrimination,  by  Pitt  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  by  Pratt,  chief  justice  of  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas 
(whom  the  new  ministry  had  invested  with  the  title  of  Lord  Camden),  in 
the  House  of  Lords.  "  You  have  no  right,"  said  Pitt,  "  to  tax  America. 
Nevertheless,  I  assert  the  authority  of  this  kingdom  to  be  sovereign  and 
supreme  in  every  circumstance  of  government  and  legislation  whatsoever. 
Taxation  is  no  part  of  the  governing  or  legislative  power  ;  the  taxes  are  a 
voluntary  gift  and  grant  of  the  commons  alone.  The  concurrence  of  the 
peers  and  of  the  crown  is  necessary  only  as  a  form  of  law.  This  house 
represents  the  commons  of  Great  Britain.  Here  we  give  and  grant  what 
is  our  own  ;  but  it  is  unjust  and  absurd  to  suppose  that  we  can  give  and 
grant  the  property  of  the  commons  of  America.  This  constitutional  right 
has  ever  been  exercised  by  the  commons  of  America  themselves,  repre- 
sented in  their  own  provincial  assemblies  ;  and  without  it,  they  would  have 
been  slaves.  At  the  same  time,  let  the  sovereign  authority  of  legislative 
and  commercial  control,  always  possessed  by  this  country,  be  asserted  in  as 
strong  terms  as  can  be  devised  ;  and  if  it  w^ere  denied,  /  would  not  suffer 
even  a  nail  for  a  horse-shoe  to  be  manufactured  in  America.  But  the 
Americans  do  not  deny  it.  We  may,  and  they  are  willing  that  we  shall, 
bind  their  trade,  confine  their-  manufactures,  and  exercise  every  power  ex- 
cept that  of  taking  money  out  of  their  pockets  without  their  consent.  There 
I  draw  the  line  ;  there  are  the  bounds,  Quos  ultra  citraque  nequit  consistere 
rectum.''^  Nothing  can  be  a  stronger  proof  of  the  blinding  influence  of  the 
political  passions,  than  that  the  man  who  expressed  such  sentiments  should 
have  been  hailed  by  the  Americans  as  the  liberal  patron  of  their  interests 
and  generous  defender  of  their  Hberty.  "  My  position  is  this,"  said  Lord 
Camden  ;  "  and  I  repeat  it,  and  will  maintain  it  to  my  last  hour  ;  taxation 
and  representation  are  inseparable.  This  position  is  founded  on  the  laws  of 
nature.  It  is  more  ;  it  is  itself  an  eternal  law  of  nature.  For  whatever  is 
a  man's  own  is  absolutely  his  own.  No  one  has  a  right  to  take  it  from  him 
without  his  consent.  Whoever  attempts  to  do  it  commits  an  injury  ; 
whoever  does  it  commits  a  robbery." 

After  debates  more  violent  and  protracted  than  had  occurred  since  the 
British  Revolution,  the  repeal  bill  passed  the  House  of  Commons  at  three 
o'clock  of  the  morning  [February  22],  by  the  votes  of  two  hundred  and 
seventy-five  against  one  hundred  and  sixty-seven  members.  Amidst  general 
acclamations,  it  was  soon  after  carried  to  the  House  of  Lords  by  Conway,  the 
mover,  accompanied  by  more  than  two  hundred  members,  —  a  larger  con- 
course than  was  ever  remembered  to  have  accompanied  the  progress  of  any 
former  bill.  In  the  upper  house,  the  feebler  arguments  of  its  opponents 
were  reinforced  by  superior  influence  ;  and  Lords  Strange  and  Bute  scrupled 
not  to  declare  that  the  private  sentiments  of  the  king  were  adverse  to  it. 
Nothing  could  be  more  unconstitutional  than  the  promulgation  of  such  in- 
telligence, whether  it  were  true  or  false.     The  ministers  ascertained  by  in- 


CHAP.  I]  REPEAL  OF  THE  STAMP  ACT.  J^f 

quiry  that  it  was  true  ;  ^  but  were  neither  deterred  from  prosecuting  the 
measure  which  they  had  carried  so  far,  nor  prevented  from  conducting  it 
to  a  successful  issue.  Notwithstanding  much  opposition  and  two  protests, 
the  bill  was  carried  through  the  House  of  Lords  ;  and  finally,  receiving  the 
royal  assent,  was  passed  into  a  law.^  [March  19.]  The  bare  prospect  of 
this  change  was  hailed  with  the  liveliest  joy  in  London,  where  the  church- 
bells  were  rung  and  the  houses  illuminated  as  soon  as  the  progress  of  the 
bill  through  the  House  of  Commons  was  made  known.  Similar  demon- 
strations of  public  joy  and  gratulation  attended  the  final  completion  of  the 
measure. 

In  America,  where  the  people  had  been  taught  to  regard  the  repeal  as  a 
hopeless  proposition,  the  intelligence  of  its  pohtical  consummation  and  ac- 
tual prevalence  produced  a  transport  of  mingled  triumph,  surprise,  and 
gratitude.  Loud  and  general  was  the  exhibition  of  exulting  sentiment  ; 
but  in  the  loudness  of  the  clamor  the  distinctness  of  its  accents  was  lost. 
In  the  provincial  assemblies,  it  was  impossible  that  even  those  members 
who  sympathized  not  in  the  general  flow  of  enthusiastic  sentiment  could 
decently  refuse  to  unite  in  the  expressions  of  it  suggested  by  their  col- 
leagues ;  and  among  the  people  at  large,  many  who  had  more  or  less  de- 
liberately contemplated  a  perilous  and  sanguinary  conflict  were  unfeignedly 
rejoiced  to  behold  this  terrible  extremity  averted  or  retarded.  Amidst  the 
first  emotions  of  surprise  and  pleasure,  the  alarming  terms  of  the  Declara- 
tory Act  were  little  heeded.  The  assembly  of  Massachusetts  presented  an 
address  of  grateful  thanks  to  the  king,  in  which  they  declared  their  appre- 
hension that  the  Americans  had  been  greatly  misrepresented  to  his  Majesty, 
and  injuriously  reproached  with  aversion  to  the  constitutional  supremacy  of 
the  British  legislature.  Thanks  were  also  voted  to  the  royal  ministers,  and 
to  Lord  Camden,  Pitt,  Colonel  Barre,  and  other  individuals  who  had 
promoted  the  repeal  or  defended  the  Americans.  Similar  demonstrations 
occurred  in  New  Hampshire.  The  assembly  of  Virginia  voted  that  a  statue 
of  the  king  should  be  erected  in  this  province  ;  and  in  a  general  meeting 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Philadelphia,  it  was  unanimously  resolved,  "that,  to 
demonstrate  our  zeal  to  Great  Britain,  and  our  gratitude  for  the  repeal  of  the 
Stamp  Act,  each  of  us  will,  on  the  4th  of  June  next,  being  the  birthday 
of  our  gracious  sovereign,  dress  ourselves  in  a  new  suit  of  the  manufactures 
of  England,  and  give  what  homespun  clothes  we  have  to  the  poor." 
Professions  of  joy,  gratitude,  and  attachment  to  Britain,  equally  loud  and' 
warm,  and  perhaps  as  sincere  and  deliberate,  resounded  through  all  the 
other  American  communities.  And  yet,  even  amidst  the  first  warm  gush 
of  hope  and  exultation,  was  heard  the  warning  voice  of  some  enhghtened  or 
stubborn  patriots,  whose  moody,  discontented  souls  were  strangers  to  the 
general  joy,  and  who  accounted  the  triumph  of  their  countrymen  immoder- 
ate, disproportioned,  and  premature.  Christopher  Gadsden,  of  South  Car- 
olina, in  particular,  who  had  been  a  delegate  from  this  province  to  the  late 
convention,  and  was  afterwards  distinguished  as  a  civil  and  military  leader 

'  All  the  peculiar  favorites  of  the  king  were  strongly  opposed  to  every  concession,  substan- 
tial or  apparent,  to  America.  The  lords  of  the  bed-chamber,  it  was  reported,  and  most  of  the 
bishops,  urged  that  America  should  be  rather  desolated  by  fire  and  sword  than  pacified  by  con- 
cession. The  Duke  of  Cumberland,  the  kings  uncle,  so  famous  for  his  military  ravages  in 
Scotland  after  the  battle  of  Culloden,  supported  the  same  inhuman  policy  prior  to  his  own 
death,  which  occurred  on  the  31st  of  October,  1765.  In  the  House  of  Commons,  all  the  Scot- 
tish members  except  two  voted  against  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act. 

2  6  Geo.  HI,  Cap   11.  ^ 


412  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

in  the  revolutionary  struggle,  hesitated  not  to  assure  his  friends  that  the  pub- 
lic hopes  were  fallacious  ;  that  a  permanent  restoration  of  cordial  friendship 
with  Britain  was  impossible  ;  and  that  it  was  madness  on  the  part  of  Amer- 
ica to  remit  her  vigilance,  or  relax  her  preparation  for  a  contest  which  must 
inevitably  ensue.  His  views  and  sentiments  were  approved  by  those  to 
whom  they  were  communicated  ;  and  a  secret  association  was  formed  to 
watch  every  suitable  opportunity  of  acting  in  conformity  with  them.  May- 
hew,  the  Boston  preacher,  who  has  already  attracted  our  notice,  delivered 
a  sermon  in  reference  to  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  much  more  fraught 
with  republican  sentiment  than  with  incitements  to  loyal  or  pacific  considera- 
tion. ''  Having  been  initiated  in  youth,"  said  this  political  and  polemical 
divine,  "  in  the  doctrines  of  civil  liberty,  as  they  were  taught  by  such  men 
as  Plato,  Demosthenes,  Cicero,  and  other  renowned  persons  among  the 
ancients,  and  such  as  Sidney,  Milton,  Locke,  and  Hoadley,  among  the 
modern,  —  I  liked  them  ;  they  seemed  rational.  And  having  learned  from 
the  Holy  Scriptures  that  wise,  brave,  and  virtuous  men  were  always  friends 
to  liberty,  that  God  gave  the  Israelites  a  king  in  his  anger  because  they 
had  not  sense  and  virtue  enough  to  like  a  free  commonwealth,  and  that  lib- 
erty always  flourishes  where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  imparted,  —  this 
made  me  conclude  that  freedom  was  a  great  blessing. "^ 

Thus  ended  the  first  act  of  that  grand  historic  drama,  the  American 
Revolution.  That  it  was  the  first  makes  no  slight  addition  to  its  impor- 
tance. It  was  on  this  account  the  more  fitted  to  convey  a  lesson  which 
Britain  might  have  seasonably  and  advantageously  appropriated  ;  as  it  showed 
thus  early  with  what  determined  spirit  the  Americans  cherished  the  princi- 
ples of  liberty  in  unison  with  their  still  remaining  attachment  to  the  parent 
state  and  her  authority  and  institutions.  The  folly  she  committed  in  to- 
tally neglecting  the  lesson  may  be  palliated,  perhaps,  by  the  consideration 
of  those  efforts  which  were  made  both  by  friends  and  by  enemies  of  the 
Americans  to  disguise  its  real  character,  and  of  the  fluctuating  state  of 
the  British  cabinet  at  this  period,  which  was  very  unfavorable  to  deliberate 
and  consistent  policy. 


CHAPTER    II 


Sentiments  of  the  Americans.  —  Leading  Politicians  in  America.  —  Randolph — Jefferson  — 
Adams  —  Hancock  —  Rutledge,  and  others.  —  Renewed  Collision  between  British  Preroga- 
tive and  American  Liberty.  —  New  York  resists  the  Act  for  quartering  Troops.  —  Acts  of 
Parliament  taxing  Tea  and  other  Commodities  in  America  —  and  suspending  the  Legis- 
lature of  New  York.  —  Policy  of  France.  —  Progress  of  American  Discontent.  —  Circular 
Letter  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Governor  Bernard's  Misrepresentations.  —  Royal 
Censure  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Riot  at  Boston.  —  Firmness  —  and  Dissolution 
•of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly.  —  Convention  in  Massachusetts.  —  Occupation  of  Boston 
by  British  Troops.  —  Violence  of  the  British  Parliament.  —  Resolutions  of  the  Virginian 
Assembly  —  and  Concurrence  of  the  other  Provinces.  —  Remonstrance  against  British 
Troops  in  Massachusetts.  —  Miscellaneous  Transactions  —  Dr.  Witherspoon  —  Dartmouth 
College  —  Methodism  in  America  —  Origin  of  Kentucky  —  Daniel  Boon. 

The  controversy  with  regard  to  the  Stamp  Act  concluded,  as  some  pre- 
vious disputes  between   Britain  and  America  had  done,  by  an  adjustment 

^  Jinnual  Register  far  17^  and  for  1766.    Franklin's  Jtfewiot>5.    Belknap.    Gordon.    Bark's 
Virginia.     Ramsay.     Bradford.     Eliot.     Rogers. 


CHAP.  II.]  REPEAL  OF  THE  STAMP  ACT.  413 

ill  calculated  to  afford  lasting  satisfaction  to  either  country,  and  leaving  each 
in  possession  of  pretensions  denied  by  the  other.  It  differed,  indeed,  from 
preceding  disputes  in  this  important  circumstance,  which  was  calculated  to 
enhance  the  mischief  of  its  imperfect  adjustment,  —  that,  instead  of  having 
been  waged  merely  between  a  particular  British  cabinet  or  Board  of  Trade 
and  a  single  American  province,  it  had  occupied  the  attention  and  aroused 
the  interest  of  the  great  body  of  the  people  both  in  Britain  and  America. 
If  Britain  repealed  the  Stamp  Act,  it  was  not  till  after  America  had  dis- 
obeyed it ;  and  if  she  proclaimed  by  the  Declaratory  Act  her  pretension  to 
the  prerogative  of  taxing  America,  this  was  no  more  than  the  Stamp  Act 
had  already  assumed  and  tne  resistance  of  America  had  practically  refuted. 
Many  persons  in  America  considered  the  Declaratory  Act  as  a  mere  empty 
homage  to  British  pride,  intended  not  to  afford  a  handle  for  renewing  the 
dispute,  but  to  disguise  the  mortification  of  defeat  ;  and  some  proclaimed 
this  conviction  with  a  contemptuous  openness  that  savored  more  of  hardi- 
hood than  of  prudence  and  moderation.  A  wise  and  generous  restraint 
of  insolent  triumph,  though  naturally  improbable,  was  yet  reasonably  due  to 
the  balked  lust  of  power  and  the  wounded  pride  of  the  parent  state.  The 
parliament  authoritatively  condemned  the  independent  sentiments  expressed 
by  the  Americans,  and  the  actual  violence  with  which  these  sentiments  were 
supported ;  but  the  Americans  were  sensible  that  their  language  and  con- 
duct had  been  substantially  successful,  and  had  rendered  the  Stamp  Act 
inefficacious  long  before  its  formal  repeal.  Britain  finally  desisted  from  en- 
forcing this  act,  for  reasons,  real  or  pretended,  of  mercantile  convenience  ; 
but  America  had  first  resisted  and  prevented  its  enforcement,  on  totally 
different  grounds.  Some  persons  might  be  interested  to  maintain,  and  some 
might  be  willing  to  believe,  that  no  actual  resistance  had  been  offered  to  the 
power  of  Britain,  except  by  the  transient  rage  of  the  poorest  and  most  igno- 
rant inhabitants  of  America  ;  but  no  pretext  or  protestation  could  disguise 
the  grand  fact,  that  a  British  statute  was  deliberately  disobeyed  and  ren- 
dered inoperative  in  the  scene  of  its  application  ;  and  that,  during  the  whole 
period  of  the  subsistence  of  the  Stamp  Act,  not  a  sheet  of  stamped  paper 
was  employed  in  America. 

The  benefit  conferred  by  the  repeal  of  this  statute  was  rather  the 
deliverance  from  an  impending  and  dangerous  civil  war,  than  the  removal 
of  an  actual  burden.  And  hence,  as  well  as  for  other  reasons,  the  grat- 
itude produced  in  America  by  the  repeal  was  much  more  lively  than  lasting. 
Pitt's  remarkable  words,  ''  I  rejoice  that  America  has  resisted,"  produced 
a  far  deeper  and  more  permanent  impression,^  which  coincided  with  the 
reflection  speedily  arising,  that  Britain  by  the  Declaratory  Act  reserved  to 
herself  a  pretext  for  renewing  the  quarrel  at  the  first  convenient  opportuni- 
ty, and  affixed  an  opprobrious  stigma  on  the  exertions  to  which  America 
was  so  greatly  beholden,  and  to  which,  in  all  probability,  she  must  again, 

'  Yet  the  effect  of  this  impression  on  the  Americans  was  very  much  overvalued  in  England, 
where  even  the  author  of  the  celebrated  Letters  of  Junius  did  not  scruple  to  designate  Pitt 
and  Camden  as  the  authors  of  American  resistance.  "  Their  declaration,"  says  the  first  of 
these  letters,  which  appeared  in  January,  1769,  "  gave  spirit  and  argument  to  the  colonies  ;  and 
while,  perhaps,  they  meant' no  more  than  the  ruin  of  a  minister,  they  in  effect  divided  one 
half  of  the  empire  from  the  other."  Junius  ascribes  Pitt's  vehement  opposition  to  the  Stamp 
Act  to  a  desire  of  driving  Grenville  from  office.  IBut  Grenville  had  ceased  to  be  minister 
before  Pitt's  opposition  was  exerted.  Facts  and  dates  may  be  less  entertaining,  but  they  are 
more  instructive,  than  the  most  ingenious  theories.  Resistance  was  practised  in  America  be- 
fore it  was  defended  in  England. 


II 


# 


414  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  tBOOK  XL 

at  no  distant  period,  be  indebted  for  a  similar  deliverance.  Besides,  al- 
though the  grievance  of  the  commercial  restrictions  had  been  latterly,  for 
politic  reasons,  but  little  insisted  on  by  the  Americans,  the  discontent  oc- 
casioned by  the  aggravated  pressure  of  these  restrictions  was  deep  and 
widely  spread,  and  had  greatly  increased  the  acrimony  with  which  the 
dispute  respecting  the  Stamp  Act  was  conducted.  Much  irritation  that  had 
been  engendered  by  the  commercial  restrictions  was  vented  in  abuse  of  the 
Stamp  Act  ;  and  this  measure,  consequently,  in  addition  to  its  own  intrin- 
sic importance,  acquired  an  adventitious  interest,  Which,  in  the  eyes  of  con- 
siderate persons,  did  not  long  survive  its  repeal.  As  the  excitement  pro- 
duced by  the  sudden  and  unexpected  cessation  of  peril  subsided,  the  con- 
sideration arose,  that  the  repeal  of  an  act,  which  the  Americans  by  their 
own  spirit  had  previously  rendered  inoperative,  was  beneficial  only  to  the 
resident  population  of  Britain,  by  tending  to  restore  the  interrupted  im- 
portation into  America  of  British  manufactures.  All  of  pleasurable  retro- 
spect that  was  left  for  the  Americans  was  the  exulting  consciousness  of  the 
spirit  they  had  exerted,  and  which,  if  a  British  parliament  condemned,  at 
least  Pitt  and  Camden  warmly  applauded  ;  and  this  spirit,  minghng  with  the 
discontent  that  was  nourished  by  the  commercial  restrictions,  gave  to  the 
general  current  of  sentiment  and  opinion  throughout  America  a  bias  very 
far  from  propitious  to  the   authority  of  Great  Britain. 

The  intelligence  of  the  Declaratory  Act  and  the  Act  of  Repeal  was 
followed  by  a  circular  letter  from  Secretary  Conway  to  the  American  gov- 
ernors [.Tune,  1766],  in  which  "the  lenity  and  tenderness,  the  moderation 
and  forbearance,  of  the  parliament  towards  the  colonies  "  were  celebrated 
in  strains  which  touched  no  responsive  chord  in  the  bosoms  of  the  Ameri- 
cans, who  were  farther  required  to  show  "  their  respectful  gratitude  and 
cheerful  obedience  in  return  for  such  a  signal  display  of  indulgence  and  af- 
fection." This  letter  also  transmitted  a  directory  resolution  of  the  British 
parliament,  adjudging  "  that  those  persons  who  had  suffered  any  injury  or 
damage,  in  consequence  of  their  assisting  to  execute  the  late  act,  shall  be 
compensated  by  the  colonies  in  which  such  injuries  were  sustained."  In 
conformity  with  this  resolution,  Hutchinson  and  his  fellow -sufferers,  whose 
solicitations  to  the  British  government  had  procured  it,  claimed  compensa- 
tion for  their  losses  from  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts ;  and  the  governor, 
in  a  speech  of  the  most  dictatorial  and  unconclhating  tone,  recommended 
an  immediate  grant  of  public  money  for  this  purpose.  It  seemed  as  if 
Bernard,  in  the  fervor  of  his  zeal  for  British  dignity,  sought  to  repudiate 
every  semblance  of  approach  to  courtesy  or  condescension  towards  the  col- 
onists, both  by  the  insolent  terms  in  which  he  alluded  to  the  modification 
of  British  policy,  and  by  the  invidious  topics  which  he  mixed  with  the  de- 
mands for  compensation.  With  censure  equally  haughty  and  unconstitution- 
al, he  chid  the  assembly  for  not  having  included  a  single  officer  of  the  crown 
in  their  recent  election  of  provincial  counsellors,  —  a  reprimand  which  they 
instantly  replied  to  in  terms  of  mingled  resentment  and  disdain.  The  jus- 
tice of  the  demand  of  compensation  preferred  by  Hutchinson  and  the  other 
sufferers  from  the  riots  was  unquestionable  ;  for  every  community  is  bound 
to  protect  its  members  from  lawless  violence,  and  to  indemnify  them  for  the 
injuries  which  they  may  sustain  from  the  inefficiency  of  its  police  to  afford 
such  protection.  But  the  assembly.  Inspired  with  anger  and  scorn  by  the 
officious  insolence  and  folly  of  the  governor,  indulged  on  the  present  occa- 


CHAP.   II.]     COMPENSATION  TO  SUFFERERS  BY  THE  RIOTS.  4^5 

sion  the  same  temper  that  had  recently  prevailed  in  the  British  nation  and 
parliament,  and  regarded  with  disgust  an  act  of  justice  prescribed  to  them 
in  a  tone  which  seemed  to  encroach  upon  their  dignity.  To  manifest  their 
independence  and  gratify  the  people,  they  first  refused  any  grant  at  all  ; 
though  they  declared,  doubtless  with  httle  sincerity,  their  purpose  to  discov- 
er the  rioters  and  cause  them  to  make  amends  for  the  damage  they  had 
done  ;  and  afterwards,  when  the  governor  addressed  to  them  a  renewed  and 
more  peremptory  requisition,  they  postponed  the  consideration  of  it,  till  they 
had  consulted  their  constituents.  Fmally,  having  gratified  their  pride  at 
some  expense  of  justice,  they  performed,  as  a  sacrifice  to  generosity,  the 
act  which  from  %e  first  they  must  have  known  to  be  unavoidable,  and 
granted  a  liberal  compensation  by  a  bill,  which,  however,  was  passed  only 
by  a  small  majority,  and  in  which  farther  homage  was  rendered  to  popular 
feeling  by  a  clause  assuring  complete  indemnity  and  obhvion  to  all  persons 
who  had  been  concerned  in  the  riots.  The  temper  by  which  they  were 
actuated  w^as  significantly  disclosed  by  a  resolution  which  they  passed,  ^'that 
it  was  the  indispensable  duty  of  the  sufferers  to  have  applied  first  to  the 
government  here,  instead  of  to  the  government  at  home.'^^  Though  the  bill 
was  affirmed  by  the  governor,  its  terms,  and  especially  the  provision  of  in- 
demnity to  the  rioters,  gave  much  offence  to  the  British  court.  It  was  sub- 
sequently annulled  by  the  king  ;  but  the  annulment  obtained  little  notice,  and 
produced  no  effect.  Hutchinson  was  so  far  from  making  any  open  objec- 
tion to  accept  the  sum  awarded  to  him,  as  a  generous  gift,  instead  of  a  just 
retribution,  that,  after  the  bill  was  passed,  he  desired  leave  to  express  his 
grateful  thanks  for  it  to  the  assembly.  The  parliamentary  injunction  of  com- 
pensation to  the  sufferers  from  the  riots  was  rendered  still  farther  unpopular 
by  mean  and  rapacious  attempts  of  individuals  to  take  unjust  advantage  of 
it.  Messerve,  in  particular,  who  had  resigned  the  office  of  distributer  of 
stamps  in  New  Hampshire,  finding  the  approbation  of  his  fellow-citizens  a 
reward  too  unsubstantial  for  his  appetite,  claimed  from  the  assembly  of 
this  province  a  pecuniary  compensation  for  his  losses.  But  the  assembly, 
having  ascertained  that  he  had  lost  nothing  but  his  office,  disallowed  his 
claim  ;  and  he  forthwith  became  a  partisan  of  the  British  court,  which  re- 
warded him  with  an  appointment  in  England.^ 

Among  other  important  consequences  which  resulted  from  the  Stamp 
Act  quarrel  and  the  dangerous  extremity  to  which  it  was  pushed,  were, 
that  it  paved  the  way  to  a  permanent  union  of  the  public  councils  and 
policy  of  all  the  American  States  ;  and,  in  every  one  of  them,  discovered 
to  the  people  the  men  who  were  best  fitted  to  be  their  leaders,  and  on  whose 
genius,  courage,  and  patriotism  they  might  most  safely  rely.  When  a  fed- 
eral league  between  the  provinces  was  proposed  in  the  year  1754,  the  origi- 
nation of  this  project  with  the  British  government  was  sufficient  to  inspire 
the  Americans  with  a  suspicious  aversion  to  it,  w^hich  combined  with  and 
was  aided  by  the  jealousies  and  dissensions  that  prevailed  among  them- 
selves. But  during  the  late  quarrel,  their  mutual  jealousies  had  been 
swallowed  up  in  the  sense  of  common  interest  and  danger  ;  and  they  saw 
that  purposes  of  union  were  promoted  by  all  the  most  considerate,  as  well 
as  the  most  animated,  asserters  of  American  liberty,  and  thwarted  only  by 
the  partisans  of  British  prerogative.  The  quarrel  was  pushed  so  far,  and 
America  had  so  daringly  rebelled,  that,  for  some  time,  a  revolutionary  war 


Belknap.     Bradford.     HutcUinsoo.     Gordon.     Pitkin.    Annual  Register  for  1766. 


416     .  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

was  contemplated  by  many,  and  the  most  violent  and  vindictive  infliction  of 
British  force  expected  by  all.  This  was  a  time  that  tried  men's  souls,  and 
called  forth  those  master  spirits  which  in  ordinary  seasons  have  no  percepti- 
ble existence,  because  no  peculiar  and  appropriate  sphere  of  action.  Hith- 
erto the  great  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  of  America  had  confined  the  exertion 
of  their  active  and  reflective  powers  to  the  cultivation  of  their  territorial 
resources  and  the  improvement  of  their  domestic  accommodations  ;  they 
had,  indeed,  often  jealously  watched  and  sometimes  boldly  questioned  par- 
ticular restraints  imposed  on  them  by  the  parent  state  ;  but,  in  the  main, 
they  submitted  or  deemed  that  they  submitted  peaceably  to  Jjer  guidance  and 
authority  ;  and  so  far  their  minds  were  accommodated  to  a  state  of  national 
pupilage.  But  now,  all  at  once,  was  the  restraint  of  British  authority  sus- 
pended ;  all  the  American  communities  were  for  the  first  time  united  in  one 
common  purpose  and  course  of  action  which  arrayed  them  in  open  defiance 
of  the  parent  state  ;  and  hopes  the  most  elevated  and  ambitious,  dangers  at 
once  awful  and  animating,  and  projects  vast,  unbounded,  and  interesting, 
combined  to  inflame  the  ardor,  to  rouse  and  collect  the  fortitude,  and  to 
nourish  and  elicit  the  genius  and  capacity  of  the  American  people.  Re- 
publican governments  and  democratical  interests,  especially  in  the  beginning 
of  a  revolutionary  controversy  with  opposite  principles,  have  a  wonderful 
influence  in  uniting  ambition  with  virtue,  and  in  stimulating  and  diffusing 
the  energy  of  their  partisans.  A  rich  and  powerful  spring  of  oratory,  at 
once  the  fruit  and  the  instrument  of  political  agitation  and  republican  senti- 
ment, now  broke  forth  in  America.  Eloquence  was  warmed  by  bravery, 
and  bravery  exalted  by  eloquence.  The  orators,  formed  by  the  occasion, 
turned  the  occasion  to  their  account.  Their  glowing  language  awakened  in 
the  bosoms  of  their  countrymen  feehngs  long  and  deeply  cherished,  and  which 
rushed  into  light  and  life,  from  the  obscurity  and  silence  to  which  they  had 
been  hitherto  condemned,  with  the  vigor  of  maturity  and  the  vivacity  of 
fresh  existence. 

The  most  remarkable  of  the  political  leaders  and  orators  who  sprung 
up  at  this  period  were  natives  of  Virginia,  Massachusetts,  and  South  Caro- 
lina. In  Virginia,  there  were  particularly  distinguished,  after  Patrick  Henry, 
whom  we  have  already  repeatedly  noticed,  and  who  hejd  the  first  place 
as  a  popular  champion  and  favorite,  Edmund  Pendleton,  a  graceful  and  per- 
suasive speaker,  a  subtle  and  dexterous  politician,  energetic  and  indefatiga- 
ble in  the  conduct  of  business  ;  Richard  Bland,  celebrated  for  the  extent 
and  accuracy  of  his  knowledge,  unrivalled  among  his  contemporaries  as  a 
logician,  and  who  published  this  year  an  Inquiry  into  the  Rights  of  the  Brit- 
ish Colonies^  in  which  the  recent  claims  of  America  were  defended  with 
much  cogency  of  reasoning ;  George  Wythe,  not  more  admired  for  the 
strength  of  his  capacity  and  the  elegance  of  his  wit,  than  respected  for  the 
simplicity  and  integrity  of  his  character  ;  Peyton  Randolph,  whose  high  re- 
pule  and  influence  with  his  countrymen,  unaided  by  the  captivation  of  elo- 
quence, was  founded  on  qualities  more  honorable  both  to  him  and  to  them, 
the  solid  powers  of  his  understanding  and  the  sterling  virtues  of  his  heart  ; 
and  Richard  Henry  Lee,  one  of  the  most  accomphshed  scholars  and  orators 
in  America,  and  who  was  commonly  styled  the  Virginian  Cicero.  Wash- 
ington, who,  since  the  reduction  of  Fort  Duquesne  in  1758,  had  withdrawn 
from  military  life,  and  never  quitted  his  domestic  scene  but  to  discharge  the 
duties  of  a  member  of  the  Virginian  assembly,  now  calmly  but  firmly  as- 


CHAP.  II.]  AMERICAN  POPULAR  LEADERS.  417 

poused  the  cause  of  his  native  country  in  opposition  to  the  pretensions  of 
the  British  government ;  nor  was  there  an  individual  more  respected  in 
Virginia,  or  more  generally  known  and  esteemed  by  all  America,  than 
himself;  but,  devoid  of  oratorical  powers,  tranquil,  sedate,  prudent,  digni- 
fied, and  reserved,  he  was  little  qualified  by  genius  or  habit  to  make  a  bril- 
liant figure  as  a  provincial  politician,  and  waited  the  development  of  a 
grander  scene  of  counsel  and  action,  more  adapted  to  the  illustration  of  his 
majestic  wisdom  and  superior  sense.  Various  other  individuals,  who  have 
gained  renown  as  defenders  of  the  liberty  and  founders  of  the  independence 
of  America,  began,  shortly  after  this  period,  to  be  distinguished  in  the  list 
of  Virginian  politicians  ;  of  whom  the  most  remarkable  was  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son,^ preeminent  as  a  statesman,  scholar,  and  philosopher  ;  a  forcible,  per- 
spicuous, and  elegant  writer  ;  an  intrepid  and  enterprising  patriot ;  and  an 
ardent  and  inflexible  asserter  of  republican  sentiments  and  the  principles  of 
purest  democracy.  None  of  his  contemporaries  exceeded  him  in  politeness 
and  benignity  of  manner  ;  and  few  approached  him  in  earnestness  of  temper 
and  firmness  of  purpose.  This  rare  combination  of  moral  qualities  en- 
hanced the  efficacy  of  his  talent  and  genius,  and  greatly  contributed  to  the 
ascendant  he  obtained  over  the  minds  of  his  countrymen.  From  the  very 
dawn  of  the  controversy  between  Britain  and  America,  Jefferson,  and  his 
friend  and  patron,  Wythe,  outstripped  the  pohtical  views  of  most  of  the  con- 
temporary American  patriots,  and  embraced  the  doctrine  which  ascribed  in- 
deed to  the  crown  some  prerogative,  but  denied  to  the  parliament  any  de- 
gree or  species  of  legitimate  control  over  America.  Arthur,  the  brother  of 
Richard  Henry  Lee,  and  afterwards  ambassador  from  America  to  France, 
was  at  this  time  pursuing  the  study  of  the  law  in  London,  but  more  actively 
engaged,  as  a  gratuitous  coadjutor  of  Dr.  Franklin,  in  watching  the  measures 
of  the  British  government  ;  and  rendered  important  service  to  his  country- 
men by  transmitting  early  intelligence  of  the  ministerial  plans  and  purposes. 
In  Massachusetts,  at  the  present  epoch,  the  most  distinguished  popular 
leaders  and  champions  of  the  cause  of  America  were  James  Otis,  who  has 
already  engaged  our  observation  ;  Samuel  Adams,  John  Hancock,  Thom- 
as Gushing,  and  James  Bowdoin,  merchants  ;  Samuel  Cooper,  a  clergy- 
man ;  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  and  Robert  Treat  Paine,  lawyers  ;  and  John 
Winthrop,  Professor  of  Mathematics  in  Harvard  College.  Samuel  Adams 
was  one  of  the  most  perfect  models  of  disinterested  patriotism,  and  of  re- 
pubHcan  genius  and  character  in  all  its  severity  and  simplicity,  that  any  age 
or  country  has  ever  produced.  At  Harvard  College,  in  the  year  1743,  he 
made  an  early  display  of  those  political  sentiments  which  he  cherished 
through  Hfe,  by  maintaining,  in  the  thesis  which  gained  him  his  literary  de- 
gree, that  "  it  is  lawful  to  resist  the  supreme  magistrate,  if  the  common- 
wealth cannot  otherwise  be  preserved."  A  sincere  and  devout  Puritan  in 
religion,  grave  in  his  manners,  austerely  pure  in  his  morals,  simple,  frugal, 
and  unambitious  in  his  tastes,  habits,  and  desires  ;  zealously  and  incorrupti- 
bly  devoted  to  the  defence  of  American  liberty,  and  the  improvement  of 
American  character  ;  endowed  with  a  strong,  manly  understanding,  an  unre- 
laxing  earnestness  and  inflexible  firmness  of  will  and  purpose,  a  capacity  of 
patient  and  intense  application  which  no  labor  could  exhaust,  and  a  calm 
and  determined  courage  which  no  danger  could  daunt  and  no  disaster  de- 
press, —  he  rendered  his  virtues  more  efficacious  by  the  instrumentality  of 
>  In  early  youth  he  caused  to  be  engraved  the  motto,  Ab  to  llbertas^  a  quo  spiritus. 
VOL.    II.  53 


418  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

great  powers  of  reasoning  and  eloquence,  and  altogether  supported  a  part 
and  exhibited  a  character  of  which  every  description,  even  the  most  frigid 
that  has  been  preserved,  wears  the  air  of  panegyric.  He  defended  the  lib- 
erty of  his  countrymen  against  the  tyranny  of  England,  and  their  religious 
principles  against  the  impious  sophistry  of  Paine.  His  moral  sentiments 
ever  mingled  with  his  political  views  and  opinions  ;  and  his  constant  aim  was 
rather  to  deserve  the  esteem  of  mankind  by  honesty  and  virtue,  than  to  ob- 
tain it  by  supple  compliance  and  flattery.  Poor  without  desiring  to  be  rich, 
he  subsequently  filled  the  highest  offices  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts  with- 
out making  the  slightest  augmentation  to  his  fortune  ;  and  after  an  active, 
useful,  and  illustrious  life,  in  which  all  the  interests  of  the  individual  were 
merged  in  regard  and  care  for  the  community,  he  died  without  obtaining  or 
desiring  any  other  reward  than  the  consciousness  of  virtue  and  integrity,  the 
contemplation  of  his  country's  happiness,  and  the  respect  and  veneration  of 
his  fellow-citizens.  It  has  been  censoriously  remarked  of  him  by  the  severer 
critics  of  his  history,  —  and  the  censure  is  the  more  interesting  from  the 
rarity  of  its  apphcation  to  the  statesmen  of  modern  times,  —  that  his  charac- 
ter was  superior  to  his  genius,  and  that  his  mind  was  much  more  elevated 
and  firm  than  liberal  and  expansive.  In  all  his  sentiments,  religious  and 
political,  no  doubt,  there  appeared  some  tincture  of  those  peculiar  princi- 
ples and  qualities  which  formed  the  original  and  distinctive  character  of  the 
people  of  New  England  ;  and  he  was  much  more  impressed  with  the  worth 
and  piety,  than  sensible  of  or  superior  to  the  narrow,  punctilious  bigotry 
and  stubborn  self-will  of  his  provincial  ancestors. 

Hancock  differed  widely  from  Adams  in  manners,  character,  and  condi- 
tion. He  was  possessed  of  an  ample  fortune,  and  maintained  a  splendid 
i^uipage  ;  yet  he  ruled  the  wealth  which  commonly  rules  its  possessors  ;  for, 
while  he  indulged  a  gay  disposition  in  elegant  and  expensive  pleasures,  he 
manifested  a  generous  liberality  in  the  most  munificent  contributions  to  every 
charitable  and  patriotic  purpose  ;  insomuch  that  bis  fellow-citizens  declared 
of  bira,  that  he  plainly  preferred  their  favor  to  great  riches,  and  embarked 
hi?  fortune  in  the  cause  of  his  country.  Courteous  and  graceful  in  his  ad- 
dress, eager  ^nd  enthusiastic  in  his  disposition,  endowed  with  a  prompt  and 
lively  eloquence,  which  was  supported  by  considerable  abilities,  though  not 
united  with  brilliant  genius  or  commanding  capacity,  he  embraced  the  popu- 
lar cause  with  the  most  unbridled  ardor  ;  and  leaving  to  more  philosophical 
patriots  the  guardianship  of  public  virtue  and  the  control  of  popular  Hcense, 
he  devoted  himself  exclusively  to  the  promotion  of  whatever  objects  tended 
immediately  to  gratify  the  wishes  of  the  majority  of  the  people.  He  contin- 
ued to  hope  for  a  reconciliation  with  Britain  much  longer  than  Adams,  who, 
after  the  promulgation  of  the  Stamp  Act,  neither  expected  nor  desired  such 
an  issue  ;  but  when,  in  consequence  of  the  final  rupture  between  the  two 
countries,  and  the  overthrow  of  regal  dominion  in  America,  a  republican  con- 
stitution was  to  be  composed,  — Adams  showed  himself  the  more  desirous 
to  secure  an  energetic  government,  in  which  the  magistrates,  though  appoint- 
ed by  the  choice  of  the  people,  should  be  invested  with  force  enough  to  with- 
stand unreasonable  or  unrighteous  movements  of  popular  passion  and  ca- 
price,—  while  Hancock  preferably  advocated  an  unbounded  scope  to  dem^ 
ocratical  principle,  or  rather  license,  in  a  government  pliable  to  every  gust 
of  popular  will.  Adams  was  termed  the  Cato^  and  Hancock  the  Lucullus^ 
of  New  England.     Among  the  first  generations  of  the  inhabitants  of  this 


CHAP.  II.]  AAfERICAN  POPULAR  LEADERS.  419 

country,  the  severer  virtue  of  Adams,  in  competition  with  the  gayer  character 
of  Hancock,  would  have  carried  almost  all  the  suffrages  of  their  fellow- 
citizens  ;  and  even  at  no  distant  date  retrospective  from  the  present  era,  the 
manners  of  Hancock  would  have  been  rather  tolerated  and  pardoned,  than 
generally  approved.  But  a  change,  gradually  arising  in  the  taste  and  opinion 
of  the  public,  had  latterly  been  so  widely  developed,  that  Hancock  was  now 
by  far  the  most  popular  character  in  Massachusetts.  He  was,  indeed,  the 
idol  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  and  openly  preferred  to  Adams  by 
all  but  a  small  minority  of  the  community,  consisting  of  stanch  Puritans  and 
stem  republicans.^ 

Gushing  was  less  distinguished  by  energy  or  talent  than  by  his  descent 
from  a  family  renowned  in  New  England  for  ardent  piety  and  hberal  politics. 
He  possessed  respectable,  though  by  no  means  splendid  or  even  eminent 
abilities  ;  and,  being  long  the  speaker  of  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts,  ob- 
tained in  England',  from  the  number  of  bold,  ingenious,  and  able  compo- 
sitions to  which  his  name  was  officially  subscribed,  a  reputation  very  dis- 
proportioned  in  importance  to  that  which  he  possessed  in  America, — 
where  his  countrymen  generally  regarded  him  rather  as  an  honest  and  well 
meaning,  than  an  able,  or  even  ardent,  friend  of  American  liberty.  But 
nothing  is  more  common  than  to  charge  revolutionary  leaders  with  producing 
the  storm  which  in  fact  they  conduct  only  as  long  as  they  consent  to  be  car- 
ried forward  by  its  impulse.  Bowdoin,  one  of  the  wealthiest  persons  in 
Massachusetts,  was  also  a  man  of  great  information  and  ability,  regulated  by 
strong  good  sense  ;  liberal,  honorable,  and  upright  ;  a  prudent  and  moderate, 
but  firm  and  consistent  patriot.  Cooper,  pious,  eloquent,  and  accomplished, 
was  first  prompted  to  unite  the  character  of  a  politician  with  the  office  of  a 
minister  of  the  gospel  by  the  tidings  of  the  Stamp  Act,  which  suggested 
to  him,  he  declared,  that  tyranny  was  opposed  not  more  to  civil  than  to 
religious  liberty.  From  that  period,  he  took  an  active  part  in  behalf  of  the 
liberties  of  his  country,  both  as  a  contributor  of  political  essays  to  the  peri- 
odical publications  of  Boston,  and  as  a  correspondent  of  Dr.  Franklin. 
He  was  eminent  as  a  scholar,  and  ardent  as  a  patron  and  coadjutor  of  every 
institution  for  the  advancement  of  learning,  liberty,  piety,  or  virtue  ;  and, 
doubtless,  his  previous  character  as  a  divine  contributed  to  promote  the  effi* 
cacy  of  his  exertions  as  a  politician.  Quincy,  a  distinguished  lawyer  and 
orator,  the  descendant  of  one  of  those  English  barons  who  extorted  from  King" 
John  the  signature  of  Magna  Charta^  showed  that  the  spirit  displayed  by 
his  ancestor  at  Runnymede  was  transmitted  to  him,  unimpaired  by  the 
eclipse  of  family  grandeur  and  the  lapse  of  five  centuries.  He  was  the' 
protomartyr  of  American  liberty,  in  defence  of  which,  both  with  his  tongue 
and  pen,  he  exerted  an  energy  so  disproportioned  to  his  bodily  strength,  as 
to  occasion  his  death  a  short  time  previous  to  the  declaration  of  American 
independence.2  Robert  Treat  Paine,  one  of  the  most  eminent  lawyers  in 
Massachusetts,  held  a  high  place  in  the  public  estimation  for  intelligence, 
firmness,  and  zeal.  Ever  prompt,  active,  and  decided  as  a  champion  of 
American  liberty,,  he  was  universally  admired  for  the  brilliancy  of  his  wit, 

*  On  the  day  when  Hancock  was  first  elected  a  member  of  the  provincial  legislature  of 
Massachusetts,  Samuel  Adams,  walking  in  the  streets  of  Boston  with  John  Adams,  pointed  to 
Hancock's  dwelling  and  said,  "  This  town  has  done  a  wise  thing  to-day.  They  have  made 
that  young  mans  fortune  their  own."  Tudors  Life  of  Otis.  Quincy,  in  his  History  of  Har- 
card  Unirersity^  has  too  clearly  proved  that  Hancock  preferred  the  fame  of  generosity  to  the 
'lignity  of  kisdce,  and  was  readier  to  tnake  oresents  than  to  p&v  debtee 
^  He  died  a6th  April,  1775.  *^  *^^ 


420  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI 

and  respected  even  by  his  political  opponents  for  his  pure  and  inflexible  up- 
rightness. Winthrop,  who  inherited  one  of  the  most  venerable  names  in 
New  England,  revived  its  ancient  honor  and  still  farther  embellished  it  by 
the  highest  attainments  in  science  and  .literature,  by  a  character  adorned 
with  religion  and  virtue,  and  by  a  firm  and  courageous  devotion  to  the  liberty 
of  his  country.  It  was  in  the  present  year  that  the  assembly  of  Massachu- 
setts, whether  with  a  view  of  enhancing  or  of  gratifying  the  popular  interest  in 
its  proceedings,  adopted  a  resolution,  which  was  instantly  carried  into  effect, 
that  its  debates  should  be  open  to  the  public,  and  that  a  gallery  should  be 
erected  for  the  accommodation  of  the  audience.  The  orators  of  the  pop-, 
ular  party  derived  new  courage  and  animation  from  the  looks  of  their  listen- 
ing countrymen,  who,  in  turn,  were  inspired  with  the  generous  ardor  which 
their  presence  promoted.  Eloquence,  like  music,  is  often  more  powerful 
than  reason  and  honor  in  imparting  the  height  of  noblest  temper  to  human 
courage  and  resolution. 

In  South  Carolina,  among  many  bold  and  able  champions  of  their  coun- 
try's rights,  the  most  notable  were  John  Rutledge,  a  man  endowed  with  ex- 
traordinary powers  of  mind,  —  prompt,  penetrating,  energetic,  and  decisive  ; 
and,  in  oratory,  the  rival,  or,  as  some  accounted,  the  superior,  of  Patrick 
Henry;  —  Christopher  Gadsden,  a  frank,  fearless,  intrepid,  upright,^  and  de- 
termined repubhcan  ;  —  Henry  Laurens,  a  zealous  patriot  and  enlightened 
politician,  afterwards  highly  distinguished  by  the  dignity  which  he  achieved, 
and  the  talent  and  fortitude  which  he  exerted,  in  the  service  of  America  ; 
—  Edward  Rutledge,  the  brother  of  John,  and  whose  eloquence  was  as 
graceful  and  insinuating  as  his  brother's  was  impetuous  and  commanding  ;  — 
and  David  Ramsay,  a  learned  and  ingenious  man,  sincerely  religious,  austere- 
ly moral,  and  warmly  patriotic,  a  forcible  speaker,  and  an  elegant  writer. 
At  an  early  stage  of  the  controversy  with  Britain,  Ramsay  was  an  advocate 
for  the  immediate  assertion  of  American  independence ;  and  after  bravely 
and  ably  contributing  to  the  attainment  of  this  object,  he  related  the  strug- 
gle by  which  it  was  won,  in  one  of  the  best  and  most  impartial  histories  that 
have  been  composed  of  the  Revolutionary  War.^ 

A  few  months  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  there  occurred  a  change  in 
the  composition  of  the  British  cabinet,  which  excited  much  surprise  and  regret 
among  the  liberal  politicians  of  England,  and  some  inquietude  in  America. 
[July  30,  1766.]  The  Marquis  of  Rockingham  and  several  of  his  Whig  col- 
leagues were  dismissed  from  their  employments,  and  succeeded  by  the  Duke 
of  Grafton,  a  Tory,  who  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  administration, — 
Charles  Townshend,  one  of  the  promoters  of  the  Stamp  Act,  who  was  ap- 
pointed chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  — Lord  Shelburne,  who  as  secretary 
of  state  occupied  the  department  to  which  the  management  of  American  af- 
fairs peculiarly  belonged,  —  Lord  Camden,  who  was  appointed  lord  chancel- 
lor, —  and  Pitt,  now  created  Earl  of  Chatham,  who  accepted  the  office  of 
lord  privy  seal.  The  tw^o  latter  appointments  greatly  displeased  the  Whigs 
and  popular  party  in  England,  who  beheld  with  disgust  such  men  as  Cam- 
den and  Pitt  (or,  as  he  must  now  be  called.  Lord  Chatham)  contribute  to 

*  When  the  Revolutionary  War  broke  out,  Boone,  the  royal  governor  of  South  Carolina, 
observed,  —  "  God  knows  how^  this  unhappy  contest  will  end,  or  what  the  popular  leaders  of 
South  Carolina  can  be  aiming  at ;  —  but  Gadsden  I  know  to  be  an  honest  man,  —  he  means 
well." 

*  Wirt,  §  2.  Campbell's  Virginia^  Appendix.  Eliot.  Rogers.  Bradford.  Gordon. 
Holmes.  Jefferson's  J^otes^  Q,uery  23.  Garden's  Anecdotes  of  the  American  Revolution. 
JeflTerBon's  Memoirs  and  Correspondence. 


CilAP.  II.]  RESENTMENT  AGAINST  ABETTORS  OF  THE  STAMP  ACT.    421 

strengthen  a  ministry  raised  on  the  downfall  of  Rockingham  and  his  patriot 
friends.  They  were  calculated,  however,  to  give  pleasure  to  the  Ameri- 
cans, and  to  balance  the  apprehensions  excited  by  the  elevation  of  Town- 
shend  ;  and  their  tranquillizing  influence  in  this  quarter  was  aided  by  letters 
from  the  provincial  agents  at  London  [September,  1766],  who  reported 
that  Lord  Shelburne  expressed  to  them  a  sincere  regard  for  America,  and 
desired  them  to  assure  their  constituents  that  they  had  nothing  to  fear  from 
the  present  administration.  Whatever  hopes  might  have  been  derived  from 
these  circumstances  were  completely  disappointed.  Lord  Chatham,  during 
almost  the  whole  period  of  his  continuance  in  office,^  was  disabled  by  ill 
health  from  attending  to  business  ;  he  had  little  or  no  influence  with  his 
colleagues,  who  were  moreover  at  variance  with  one  another  ;  and  he  reaped 
nothing  more  from  his  second  elevation  to  ministerial  dignity,  than  the  dis- 
credit of  forming  part  of  an  administration  which  acted  in  direct  opposition 
to  the  policy  he  had  advocated,  and  resumed  the  very  measures  he  had 
most  strongly  condemned.^ 

Though  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed,  the  Americans  still  continued  to 
manifest  resentment  against  its  promoters  and  abettors.  Every  dignity 
and  advantage  that  popular  favor  or  suffrage  could  bestow  was  conferred  on 
those  who  had  signalized  themselves  by  the  zeal  or  ability  of  their  opposition 
to  it ;  and  the  reproach,  even  when  unfounded,  of  being  one  of  its  parti- 
sans, was  enough  to  blast  any  man's  character  and  obstruct  the  success  of 
any  measure  he  proposed.  Amiiversary  processions  and  other  ceremonies, 
commemorative  of  the  Stamp  Act,  were  instituted  ;  but  all  had  triumphant 
reference  to  periods  and  particulars  of  American  resistance,  without  the 
slightest  symptom  of  thankful  allusion  to  British  repeal.  Fitch,  the  govern- 
or of  Connecticut,  had  shown  a  disposition  to  comply  with  the  Stamp  Act  ; 
for  which,  at  the  annual  election  of  their  magistrates,  his  fellow-citizens  now 
punished  him  by  deprivation  of  the  office  to  which  he  would  otherwise  have 
been  reappointed.  Pitkin  was  in  the  present  year  elected  governor,  and 
Trumbull  lieutenant-governor,  of  this  province,  by  the  votes  of  all  the  inhab- 
itants except  the  adherents  of  the  church  of  England,  who  unanimously 
supported  Fitch,  and  thereby  rendered  both  themselves  and  their  favorite 
ecclesiastical  institution  highly  obnoxious  to  the  popular  party  in  America. 
About  ten  years  after,  Pitkin  was  succeeded  in  office  by  his  present  deputy, 
Trumbull,  descended  from  the  earliest  colonists  of  New  England,  a  man  uni- 
versally revered  for  his  piety,  wisdom,  uprightness,  and  patriotism,  and  who, 
with  distinguished  prudence,  firmness,  and  ability,  occupied  the  helm  of  pub- 
lic affairs  in  his  native  province  during  all  the  agitations  and  convulsions  that 
ensued  from  that  critical  period  till  the  year  1783,  when  age  and  infirmity 
at  length  compelled  him  to  decline  any  longer  to  administer  the  government 
of  Connecticut.^ 

The  renewal  of  disputes  between  Britain  and  America  was  occasioned 

>  He  continued  to  hold  the  privy  seal  till  October,  1768. 

2  Annual  Register  for  1766.     Hutchinson.     Franklin's  Correspondence. 

'  Gordon.  Eliot,  ('hastellux,  the  French  traveller,  thus  describes  Governor  Trumbull  in 
the  seventieth  year  of  his  age  :  —  "  He  is  governor  par  excellence  ;  for  he  has  been  so  fifteen 
years  without  intermission  ;  and  equally  possessing  the  public  esteem  during  the  subsistence 
and  after  the  overthrow  of  the  British  authority.  His  whole  life  is  devoted  to  business,  which 
he  passionately  loves,  whether  important  or  not ;  or  rather,  in  his  eyes,  there  is  none  of  the 
latter  description.  He  has  all  the  simplicity  in  his  dress,  all  the  importance,  and  even  all  the 
pedantry,  becoming  the  great  magistrate  of  a  small  republic.  He  brought  to  my  mmd  the 
burgomasters  of  Holland,  the  Heinsiuses  and  the  Barneveldts." 


422  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

partly  by  the  operation  of  a  measure  devised  by  the  same  cabinet  from 
which  the  Stamp  Act  had  emanated,  and  partly  by  new  measures  embraced 
by  the  present  administration.  Nearly  at  the  s?ime  time,  there  occurred  in 
both  countries  (so  ripe  were  both  for  quarrel)  transactions  calculated  to 
bring  again  the  prerogative  of  the  parent  state  into  coUision  with  the  rights 
which  her  colonies  possessed  or  pretended.  The  first  symptoms  of  re- 
newed controversy  arose  from  the  act  of  parliament  which  we  have  re- 
marked, in  1764,  respecting  the  quarters  and  accommodations  to  be  sup- 
plied to  British  troops  stationed  in  America.  In  the  close  of  the  present 
year,  several  companies  of  royal  artillery  arrived  in  the  harbour  of  Bos- 
ton ;  and  it  was  rumored  that  more  were  soon  to  follow.  The  provincial 
assembly  being  at  this  time  adjourned,  the  governor  by  his  own  authority 
directed  that  provision  should  be  made  for  the  accommodation  of  the  troops 
at  the  expense  of  the  province  ;  an  assumption  of  power,  which  the  as- 
sembly was  no  sooner  convoked  than  it  called  him  to  account  for.  [January, 
1767.]  He  answered  by  pleading  the  necessity  of  the  case,  and  referring 
to  the  act  of  parliament,  whose  requirement  he  had  carried  into  effect  at  a 
time  when  the  assembly,  from  the  suspension  of  its  functions,  was  incapable 
of  demonstrating  the  necessary  obedience.  But  this  answer  was  by  no 
means  satisfactory  to  the  assembly,  who  perceived  that  the  enforcement  of 
such  a  parliamentary  requisition,  without  their  concurrence,  was  an  exer- 
tion of  the  very  alithority  against  which  they  had  contended  in  their  resist- 
ance to  the  Stamp  Act.  They  warmly  protested,  that  with  them  alone, 
and  not  with  the  executive  magistrate,  resided  the  power  of  raising  and  ap- 
propriating supplies  for  public  service  ;  and  that,  on  any  other  supposition, 
the  governor  might  load  the  province  with  an  intolerable  expense,  which 
the  assembly  must  afterwards  provide  the  means  of  defraying,  even  though 
they  should  utterly  disapprove  its  object  and  purpose.  The  general  dis- 
content was  increased  by  the  prevalence  of  a  report  that  more  troops 
were  speedily  to  arrive  ;  and  the  assembly  demanded  of  Bernard  if  these 
tidings  were  authentic.  He  answered,  that  he  had  received  no  official  in- 
telligence that  warranted  the  pubhc  alarm  ;  but  it  was  suspected  at  the  time, 
and  ascertained  not  long  after,  that  he  himself  had  urgently  solicited  a  nu- 
merous reinforcement  of  troops  from  the  British  ministry,  and  had  obtained 
private  information  that  his  desire  would  be  complied  with.  In  the  course 
of  the  summer,  a  small  addition  was  made  to  the  troops  which  had  previ- 
ously arrived  ;  and  on  this  occasion,  Bernard  applied  directly  to  the  assem- 
bly to  make  provision  for  their  support  in  the  Castle,  where  they  were 
quartered.  The  assembly  referred  this  application  to  a  committee  ;  and 
finally,  after  several  days'  deliberation,  resolved  ''  that  such  provision  be 
made  for  the  troops,  while  they  remain  here,  as  has  been  heretofore  usually 
made  for  his  Majesty's  regular  troops  when  occasionally  in  the  province." 

But  it  was  at  New  York  that  the  operation  of  the  act  for  quartering 
troops  produced  the  most  important  consequences,  and,  indeed,  provoked 
a  direct  impugnation  of  the  authority  of  parliament.  The  assembly  of  this 
province  had  yielded  a  ready  obedience  to  the  parliamentary  resolutions  for 
mdemnifying  the  sufferers  by  the  riots,  and  passed  a  bill  for  this  purpose  in 
the  preceding  year,  without  any  of  the  scruples  or  delays  by  which  Massa- 
chusetts thought  proper  to  vindicate  her  dignity.  But  when  they  were  now 
required  by  the  new  governor.  Sir  Henry  Moore,  to  make  provision  for 
executing  the  act  of  parliament  respecting  the  quartering  of  British  troops, 


CHAP.  II.]  ACT  IMPOSING  DUTIES  ON  TEA,  ETC.  4^3 

they  firmly  refused  to  comply  ;  signifying,  in  a  responsive  address,  "  that, 
according  to  the  construction  put  upon  the  act  of  parliament  here,  it  is  re- 
quired that  all  the  forces  which  shall  at  any  time  enter  this  colony  shall  be 
quartered  during  the  whole  year  in  a  very  unusual  and  expensive  manner  ; 
that,  by  marching  several  regiments  into  the  colony,  this  expense  would  be 
rendered  insupportably  heavy  ;  and  that  we  cannot,  therefore,  consistently 
with  our  duty  to  our  constituents,  put  it  in  the  power  of  any  person  (what- 
ever confidence  we  may  have  in  his  prudence  and  integrity)  to  lay  such  a 
burden  on  them."  ^  Thus  again  was  the  asserted  prerogative  of  the  parent 
state  deliberately  denied,  and  an  act  of  parliament  openly  repudiated  and 
disobeyed  by  an  American  province  and  its  domestic  government.  Various 
new  manufactories,  at  the  same  time  (one,  in  particular,  for  the  production 
of  brass  wire,  and  another  for  enamelling  trinkets  in  the  style  practised  at 
Birmingham  and  Sheffield),  sprung  up  at  New  York. 

Meanwhile,  the  project  of  taxing  America  by  act  of  parliament  was  re- 
sumed by  the  British  cabinet  and  definitively  embraced,  notwithstanding  the 
adverse  opinions  of  Chatham,  Camden,  and  Conway,  who  continued  to 
strengthen  by  their  adherence  an  administration  which  they  were  totally 
unable  to  guide  by  their  counsels.  A  great  change  or  reaction  was  already 
apparent  in  the  opinion  and  temper  of  the  parliament,  —  where  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act  was  now  as  generally  regretted  as  the  act  itself  had  been 
condemned  only  a  year  before.  Ambition  and  pride  again  prevailed  over 
the  just  and  reasonable  policy  to  whose  control  they  had  yielded  a  tempo- 
rary submission  ;  and,  like  the  infatuated  Egyptian  monarch  and  his  servants, 
the  rulers  of  Britain  repented  the  deliverance  that  had  been  conceded  to  a 
dependent  people.^  All  the  courtiers  protested  that  the  king  was  in  a  hu- 
miliated state,  and  urged  Townshend,  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  to 
remember  the  language  he  formerly  held,  and  to  retrieve  the  dignity  of  the 
crown  by  some  financial  measure  that  would  give  a  practical  effect  to  the 
Declaratory  Act.^  In  conformity  with  these  views  and  sentiments,  a  bill 
was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons  by  Townshend,  imposing  duties 
on  all  glass,  lead,  painters'  colors,  tea,  and  paper,  imported  into  the  x\mer- 
ican  provinces.  [May,  1767.]  The  preamble  of  the  bill  declared,  that 
"  it  is  expedient  that  a  revenue  should  be  raised  in  his  Majesty's  domin- 
ions in  America,  for  making  a  more  certain  and  adequate  provision  for 
defraying  the  charge  of  the  administration  of  justice  and  the  support  of 
civil  government  in  those  provinces,  where  it  shall  be  found  necessary  ;  and 
towards  farther  defraying  the  expenses  of  defending,  protecting,  and  securing 
the  said  dominions.  By  one  clause  in  the  bill,  the  king  was  empowered  to 
establish,  by  sign  manual,  a  general  civil  list^  in  every  province  of  North 
America,  to  an  indefinite  extent,  with  salaries,  pensions,  and  appointments 
to  an  unlimited  amount  ;  and  it  was  provided,  that,  after  liquidation  of  the 
contents  of  the  civil  list,  the  residue  of  the  revenue  to  be  derived  from 
America  should  abide  the  disposal  of  the  British  parliament.  This  bill  met 
with  hardly  the  shadow  of  opposition  in  parliament,  where  perhaps  some 
members  chose  to  regard  it  as  a  commercial  regulation,  and  others  more 

*  Bradford.     Hutchinson.     Gordon. 

»  "  And  they  said,  Why  have  we  done  this,  that  we  have  let  Israel  go  from  serving  us.?  " 
Fxod.  xiv.  5. 

3  "  America,"  says  a  vrarm  partisan  of  the  British  government,  "  was  at  this  time  in  such  a 
state,  that  it  would  have  been  good  policy  to  abstain  from  farther  taies  of  any  kind."  Hutch- 
inson.   Every  new  dispute  was  readily  inoculated  with  the  venow  of  the  ancient  quarrel. 


424  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI 

or  less  willingly  acknowledged  that  any  discussion  of  its  principle  was  pre- 
cluded by  the  terms  of  the  Declaratory  Act.  Richard  Jackson,  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  opposed  the  clause  authorizing  a  civil  list.  Its 
object,  he  said,  was  to  render  all  the  public  officers  and  magistrates  in  Amer- 
ica independent  of  the  people  ;  and  although  he  admitted  that  the  judges 
ought  to  be  independent  both  of  the  people  and  the  crown,  yet  he  insisted 
that  the  dependence  of  the  governors  upon  the  provincial  assemblies  was 
just  and  expedient,  as  affording  the  only  safeguard  which  the  colonists  pos- 
sessed against  the  perversion  or  abuse  of  the  executive  power.  The  royal 
governors  sent  to  America,  he  observed,  were  often  needy,  unprincipled  men, 
and  always  dependent  for  the  duration  of  their  functions  on  the  pleasure  of 
the  crown  ;  and  great  mischief  and  injustice  would  arise  from  rendering 
them  totally  independent  of  the  people.  Only  one  other  member  of  the 
house  supported  Jackson  in  this  objection  ;  and  without  farther  discussion  or 
obstruction,  the  bill  was  passed  into  a  law.^  Edmund  Burke  has  asserted, 
and  it  seems  no  wise  improbable,  that  Townshend  expected  that  this  act 
would  be  rendered  palatable  to  the  Americans,  or  at  least  far  less  unpal- 
atable than  the  Stamp  Act,  by  the  considerations,  that  the  revenue  it  as- 
signed was  derived  from  external  or  port  duties,  to  which  they  had  been 
represented  as  willing  to  submit,  and  that  those  duties  were  by  no  means 
heavy,  and,  excepting  the  tax  upon  tea,  were  not  imposed  on  any  of  the 
grand  articles  of  commerce.  We  shall  find,  indeed,  that  a  very  different 
impression  from  what  Townshend  anticipated  was  actually  produced  by  the 
first  of  these  considerations  ;  but  before  it  had  time  to  operate  at  all,  any 
advantage  which  might  have  been  gained  from  it,  or  from  the  other  exten- 
uating suggestions,  was  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  contemporary  pro- 
ceedings of  the  parliament  with  regard  to  America,  which  unhappily  com- 
bined to  inflame  the  discontent,  great  or  small,  which  the  measure  we  have 
remarked  was  of  itself  calculated  to  awaken.  For,  to  insure  the  payment 
of  the  new  taxes,  as  well  as  to  promote  a  stricter  execution  of  all  the  trade 
laws,  an  act  was  passed,  immediately  after,  for  establishing  at  Boston  a 
board  of  commissioners  of  the  customs  for  America,  —  an  estabhshment, 
which,  even  independently  of  the  new  imposts  with  which  it  was  associated, 
would  have  been  regarded  with  aversion  by  the  colonists. 

And  while  these  measures  were  in  progress  through  the  houses  of  parlia- 
ment, another  and  still  more  offensive  exertion  of  British  authority  was 
elicited  by  the  tidings  that  arrived  of  the  refusal  of  the  New  York  assembly 
to  make  provision  for  the  accommodation  of  British  troops  within  their 
provincial  territory.  The  wrathful  impatience  provoked  by  this  intelli- 
gence was  industriously  fomented  by  Grenville  and  his  adherents,  who  de- 
claimed in  passionate  and  yet  plausible  strains  on  the  progress  of  disobe- 
dience in  America,  where  the  people  were  now  encouraged,  by  their  recent 
triumph  over  the  Stamp  Act,  to  resist  another  parliamentary  measure,  against 
which  they  had  not  even  observed  the  ceremony  of  petitioning.  To  pacify 
the  clamor  raised  on  this  occasion,  the  ministers  introduced  into  parliament 
an  act,'-^  which  was  instantly  passed,  and  which  prohibited  the  assembly  of 
New  York  from  exercising  any  of  the  functions  of  legislation  till  they  com- 
plied with  the  prior  statute  for  providing  quarters  and  accommodations  to 
his  Majesty's  troops.  [July.]  No  measure  could  have  been  devised  more 
calculated  to  spread  alarm  throughout  America,  and  rekindle  the  flames  of 
»  Stat.  7~Geo.  III.,  Cap.  46.  «  Stat.  7  Geo.  III.,  Cap.  59.        ~^* 


0»AP.  II  ]        ACT  SUSPENDING  THE  NEW  YORK  ASSEMBLY.  425 

the  Stamp.  Act  controversy.  It  was  a  blow  which  rendered  their  domestic 
legislation  —  the  privilege  most  deeply  cherished  by  the  colonists,  and  for 
Vfhich  they  had  recently  contended  with  so  much  warmth,  resolution,  and 
unanimity  —  insecure  and  precarious  ;  at  once  depriving  New  York  of  this 
advantage^  and  proclaiming,  by  inevitable  inference,  that  every  colonial  as- 
sembly in  America  depended  for  its  existence  on  the  satisfaction  which  its 
Qonduct  might  afford  to  tlie  royal  ministers  and  the  British  parliament,  and 
\ras  liable  to  be  suspended  or  abolished  by  an  exertion  of  parhamentary 
p,Qwer.  And  thus,  by  a  series  of  measures,  which,  occurring  at  the  same 
time,  seemed;  but  kindred  branches  of  one  scheme  of  policy,  and  mutually 
promoted  the  offensive  impressions  they  were  severally  fitted  to  produce, 
4id  Britain  at  once  revive  and  extend  every  cause  of  quarrel,  jealousy, 
^)d  irritation,  that  had  arisen  between  herself  and  her  American  colonies. 
3y  the  act  which  we  h^ve  l^st  remarked^  she  assumed  and  exemphfied  the 
fMiwer  of  depriving  thenar  of  that  institution  behind  which  they  had  shielded 
themselves  from  the  interference  of  parliament  with  their  internal  taxation. 
Py  the  establishment  of  a  board  of  customs  in  America,  she  announced  a 
^nore  rigid;  execution  of  the  trade  laws.  By  the  new  duties  which  she  im- 
po.sed  under  the  guise  of  external  taxes,  she  tempted  the  colonists  to  ques- 
tion, as,  indeed,  many  of  them  had  already  done,  the  competency  of  sub- 
jecting them  even  to  external  taxation  by  parliament ;  and  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  tlie  civil  list,  she  authoritatively  determined  in  her  own  favor  a 
point,  which,  after  many  disputes  with  the  colonists,  she  had  formerly  aban- 
doned to  them,i  and  deprived  them  of  the  control  they  had  so  long  exer- 
cised over  their  provincial  governors  and  magistrates. 

It  is  strange  that  the  British  government  should  have  so  blindly  disre- 
garded or  so  inadequately  appreciated  the  great  and  increasing  danger  of  the 
predicament  in  which  its  colonial  dominion  was  involved  by  these  public 
and  protracted  disputes  with  the  Americans.  Every  other  nation  in  the 
world  was  tempted  to  desire  the  downfall  of  the  British  ascendency  in 
America,  as  involving  the  destruction  of  that  system  of  monopoly  by  which 
Britain  reserved,  or  at  least  attempted  to  reserve,  the  whole  of  the  Ameri- 
can trade  to  herself.  So  far,  the  interests  of  America  manifestly  cojiverged 
with  those  of  many  powerful  states  in  opposition  to  British  authority;  and  if 
the  Americans  were  provoked  to  vindicate  those  interests  by  force  of  arms, 
it  might  easily  be  conjectured  that  they  would  not  be  left  to  wage  the  conflict 
unassisted  by  nations  which  had  so  deep  a  stake  in  its  issue.  The  prin- 
ciples of  good  faith  and  honor  might,  indeed,  operate  more  or  less  forcibly 
to  deter  other  sovereign  states,  in  amity  or  at  peace  with  the  British  mon- 
arch, from  seducing  or  encouraging  his  subjects  to  revolt ;  but  the  emergent 
probability  of  such  revolt,  with  the  near  prospect  of  its  collateral  advantages, 
was  but  too  likely  to  overpower  those  self-denying  considerations.  All  the 
late  measures  which  had  been  employed  for  a  stricter  enforcement  of  the 
trade  laws  operated  to  the  prejudice  not  merely  of  America,  but  of  every 
nation  that  was  restrained  from  trading  with  her  ;  drew  the  bands  of  com- 
mon interest  between  them  and  her  closer  than  before  ;  and  increased  the 
earnest  expectation  and  attention  with  which  they  regarded  her  conduct,  and 
watched  the  progress  of  the  disputes  between  her  and  her  parent  state. 
France,  besides  partaking  the  general  interest  of  commercial  nations  in  op- 
position  to  the  British  colonial  empire  and  monopoly,  was  additionally  in- 
»  See  ante.  Book  VXII.,  Chap.  H. 

VOL.    II.  64  JJ  * 


426  HISTORY   OF   NORTH    AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

cited  to  desire  the  revolt  of  America,  as  an  event  that  would  avenge  or 
countervail  the  loss  of  Canada,  and  divest  Britain  of  that  powerful  branch 
of  her  naval  force  which  America  was  likely  to  supply,  and  which  in 
any  future  war  that  might  arise  would  render  the  insular  colonies  of  the 
French  an  easy  conquest. i  As  France  was  induced  by  stronger  motives 
than  any  other  European  nation  to  desire  the  separation  of  America  from 
Britain,  so  was  she  less  deterred  by  honorable  scruples  from  attempting  to 
promote  it.  On  the  very  day  on  which  the  Duke  de  Choiseul  (an  implaca- 
ble enemy  of  the  British  empire)  signed,  as  the  minister  of  France,  the 
preliminaries  of  the  late  treaty  of  peace  concerted  at  Fontainebleau,  he  en- 
tered into  a  secret  convention  with  Spain,  by  which  it  was  agreed  that  the 
war  should  be  renewed  against  England  at  the  expiry  of  eight  years,  —  a 
time  which  was  thought  sufficient  to  repair  the  exhausted  strength  of  the 
two  Bourbon  monarchies  ;  and  this  perfidious  design  he  continued  secretly 
but  steadily  to  cherish  and  promote,  till  its  completion  was  intercepted  by 
the  dechne  and  fall  of  his  own  ministerial  credit.^ 

Hardly  a  month  after  the  last  acts  of  parliament  which  we  have  remarked 
had  been  passed,  the  French  ambassador  at  London  addressed  himself  to 
Dr.  Franklin  in  a  style  that  discovered  to  this  acute  politician  the  wish  of 
the  French  court  to  inflame  the  quarrel  between  Britain  and  America. 
[August,  1767.]  But  Franklin,  though  sincerely  attached  to  the  interests 
of  his  countrymen,  still  cherished  the  hope  that  the  quarrel  might  be  ac- 
commodated, and  the  grandeur  of  the  British  empire  maintained  in  con- 
sistence with  the  preservation  of  American  liberty.  His  son  was  at  this 
time  the  royal  governor  of  New  Jersey  ;  he  himself  was  the  postmaster- 
general  of  America  ;  and  so  favorably  was  he  regarded  at  the  British  court, 
that  it  was  proposed,  not  long  after,  as  he  himself  has  related,  to  appoint 
him  under-secretary  of  state  for  American  affairs.  It  was  also  reported  to 
him,  and  received  with  the  credit  willingly  given  to  so  flattering  a  commu- 
nication, that  the  king  expressed  a  high  esteem  for  his  character.  At  the 
present  period,  and  for  some  time  after,  he  entertained  a  very  favorable  opin- 
ion of  George  the  Third,  whom^  in  letters  to  his  friends  in  America,  he 
described  as  "the  best  king  that  any  nation  was  ever  blessed  with";  nor 
had  he  yet  survived  the  hostile  feelings  and  views  which  he  once  cherished 
against  France.  His  sentiments  underwent  at  a  later  epoch  a  very  great 
change  ;  but  as  yet,  though  at  bottom  the  determined  friend  of  America, 
he  entertained  as  much  respect  and  affection  for  Britain  and  her  institutions 
and  authority,  as  could  consist  with  that  preponderating  attachment.  Con- 
vinced that  every  degree  of  liberty  which  he  deemed  essential  to  human 
welfare  and  happiness  must  finally  be  secured  to  America,  whether  separated 
from  or  connected  with  the  main  trunk  of  the  British  empire,  he  was  de- 
sirous to  restrain  his  countrymen  from  precipitating  their  dispute  with  the 
parent  state  to  an  extremity  ;  and  blamed  their  violence  in  his  letters  to 
America,  while  he  endeavoured  to  palHate  or  disguise  it  in  his  representa- 
tions to  the  statesmen  and  authorities  of  England.  On  the  present  occa- 
sion, though  awake  to  the  drift  of  the  French  ambassador,  he  seems  neither 

'  That  great  political  writer,  Gentz,  in  his  treatise  on  the  finances  of  Britain,  remarks  the  pas- 
sionate prejudice  by  which  French  statesmen  have  been  misled  into  the  most  erroneous  esti- 
mate of  the  value  of  the  American  colonies  to  the  British  empire.  Even  now  (says  he,  writing 
in  1799)  French  politicians  seem  incapable  of  perceiving  the  manifest  truth,  that  the  loss  of 
the  colonies  has  prodisriously  augmented  the  wealth  and  strength  of  Britain. 

^  The  subsequent  affair  of  Falkland  Islands  was  a  fragment  of  this  design. 


CHAP.   II.]  FRENCH   EMISSARIES.  — DE   KALB.  427 

to  have  utterly  extinguished  the  hopes  nor  to  have  encouraged  a  full  disclos- 
ure of  the  views  of  this  minister,  who  was  probably  content  to  hint  the  sen- 
timents of  his  court  in  a  manner  intelligible  to  Franklin's  sagacity,  without 
startling  his  honor  as  an  officer  of  the  British  crown  ;  and  though  interested 
in  the  policy  of  France,  both  as  an  officer  of  the  crown  and  a  partisan  of 
America,  Franklin  desired  equally  to  conceal  from  the  British  government 
and  from  his  countrymen  the  impression  which  he  received  on  this  sub- 
ject ;  and  communicated  it  only  to  his  son,  under  a  strict  injunction  of  se- 
crecy.^ 

Nor  was  this  the  only,  or  even  the  most  notable,  attempt  of  the  French 
court  to  animate  the  spirit  and  resistance  of  the  Americans,  and  promote 
a  total  breach  between  them  and  the  British  nation.  Both  prior  and  subse- 
quent to  the  present  period,  various  emissaries  employed  by  the  court 
of  France  travelled  in  disguise  through  the  American  States,  examining  in 
what  points  the  British  dominion  was  most  vulnerable,  and  seizing  every 
opportunity  to  fan  the  flame  of  discontent,  and  insinuate  that  revolt  would 
be  facilitated  by  foreign  assistance.  The  most  distinguished  of  these  emis- 
saries was  a  German  baron,  named  De  Kalb,  a  brave  and  enterprising 
officer,  who  had  long  served  in  the  French  army,  and  afterwards  held  a 
commission  from  the  revolutionary  government  of  America.  He  was  a 
devoted  partisan  and  indefatigable  agent  of  France,  and  retained  this  function 
even  while  employed  as  an  officer  in  the  American  army  ;  maintaining,  like 
some  other  French  officers  similarly  circumstanced,  a  close  correspondence 
in  cipher  with  the  cabinet  of  Versailles,  both  before  and  after  the  open  es- 
pousal of  the  American  cause  by  the  French  government.  Though  active, 
subtle,  and  adroit  as  an  intriguer,  De  Kalb  appears  to  have  been  but  a 
superficial  observer.  He  often  complained  of  his  want  of  success  in  stim- 
ulating the  Americans  to  revolt  ;  and  expressed  his  astonishment  at  the 
blundering  folly  with  which  the  English  government  effaced  the  ardent  and 
deep-rooted  attachment  which  still  (he  was  persuaded)  linked  the  colonists 
to  their  parent  state.  It  seems,  indeed,  highly  probable  that  his  sugges- 
tions at  first  (and  he  was  employed  from  a  very  early  period)  neither 
were  nor  could  be  so  acceptable  as  he  desired  to  the  Americans,  whose 
jealousy  of  the  British  government  not  only  was  mixed  with  a  great  deal 
of  affection  for  the  British  people,  but  could  not  readily  coalesce  with 
prospects  of  the  aid  and  friendship  of  nations  which,  as  the  enemies  of 
Britain,  they  had  often  regarded  through  the  unfavorable  medium  of  hostile 
relations  u^th  themselves. 

The  idea,  particularly,  of  French  aid  and  favor  was  more  likely  at  first 
to  chill  the  ardor  than  to  warm  the  courage  of  the  Americans  in  a  dispute 
with  Britain  ;  for  the  French  had  been  their  enemies  since  the  foundation 
of  the  colonial  settlements  ;  and  the  most  interesting  portions  of  their  his- 
tory and  recollections  consisted  of  dangers  and  sufferings  entailed  by  the 
hostilities  of  France,  or  of  triumph  and  advantage  associated  with  the  suc- 
cess of  Britain  over  her  rival.  Though  the  honor  and  candor  of  De  Kalb 
are  far  from  unexceptionable,  no  good  reason  has  been  shown  for  taxing 

>  After  relating  the  extraordinary  civilities  and  caresses  of  the  French  ambassador,  and  his 
inquisitiveness  about  the  affairs  of  America,  Franklin  remarks,  —  "I  fancy  that  intriguing 
nation  would  like  very  well  to  meddle  on  occasion,  and  blow  up  the  coals  between  Britain 
and  her  colonies;  but  I  hope  we  shall  give  them  no  opportunity.  Yet  he  adds  that  he  is 
setting  off  on  a  visit  to  Pans,  furnished  with  letters  of  introduction  from  the  French  ambas- 
sador. 


4^  tItSTORY  or  I^ORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

him  (in  the  representatrons  to  which  we  have  adverted)  with  want  of  sin* 
cerity,  and  still  less  for  imputing  to  him  gross  and  wilful  falsehood.  But 
he  seems,  in  the  account  of  his  missions,  and  in  his  estimate  of  the  senti- 
ments and  dispositions  of  the  Americans,  to  have  been  blinded  by  an  en- 
thusiastic devotion  to  the  interests  of  France,  and  an  exclusive  predilection 
for  French  character,  temperament,  and  manners.^  The  employment  of 
De  Kalb,  and  of  other  agetlts  of  France  in  America,  is  an  indisputable 
fact ;  the  success  of  'their  exertions  is  a  point  controverted  and  controverti- 
ble. A  recent  European  historian  of  the  American  Revolution  has  been 
betrayed  into  exaggeration  in  describing  the  intrigues  of  France  as  the  main 
cause  of  that  catastrojihe  ;  and  some  American  writers  have  been  transported 
by  patriotic  zeal  and  indignation  into  an  opposite  error,  and  too  hastily 
denied  that  *^he  intrigues  of  Frarice  exerted  any  influence  at  all  on  the  senti- 
ments of  their  countrymen.^  It  Would  require  more  than  mortal  discern- 
merit  to  ascertain  'how  far  either  of  these  disputants  is  wrong  or  both  of 
them  ate  right.  It  is  certaiti,  that,  at  an  early  period  of  the  Revolutionary 
'VV'ar,  and  before  France  had  ventured  openly  to  support  America,  several 
bf  the  agents  df  the  French  ministers  obtained  commands  in  the  American 
army  ;  and  that,  even  before  this  army  was  formed,  some  of  the  leaders 
of  the  ;pdpular  party  in  America  confidently  relied  on  the  assistance  of 
^I'ance,  Holland,  and  Spain,  in  case  of  a  final  rupture  with  Britain.^ 

^lie  act  df  parliament  which  imposed  duties  on  tea  and  other  articles 
imported  into  America  excited  as  much  concern  and  anxiety,  and  experi- 
eticed  an  opposition  as  determined,  though  not  as  violent,  as  the  Stamp 
Act  had  done.  Instead  of  the  aversion  with  which  the  colonists  regarded 
the  recent  act  being  diminished  by  the  consideration  that  the  duties  which 
it  imposed  wel*e.  Strictly  speaking,  external  taxes,  the  imposition  of  these 
duties,  and  the  sanction  which  they  received  from  an  extension  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  extei'nal  taxation,  tended  to  destroy  all  the  respect  or  acquiescence 

'  "  There  is,"  saysDe  Kalb,  in  one  of  his  letters,  "a  hundred  times  more  enthusiasm  for 
the  American  RcTolutioh  in  any  one  of  our  coffee-houses  of  Paris  than  in  all  the  thirteen 
provinces  of  America  united."  La  Fayette,  who  was  more  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
Americans  than  De  Kalb,  formed  a  juster  estimate  of  the  calm,  yet  firm  and  determined,  pur- 
pose of  liberty  which  they  cherished.  That  great  and  good  man  assured  me,  that,  very  shortly 
after  his  first  arrival  in  America,  he  clearly  perceived  that  the  Americans,  even  though 
wholly  unassisted  in  the  struggle  with  Britain,  would  never  lay  down  their  arms  till  they 
achieved  their  independence,  and  that  this  impression  was  confirmed  by  all  his  subsequent  ex- 

f»6rience.  That  most  penetrating  and  intelligent  of  observers,  Talleyrand,  in  his  Mimoire  svr 
fis  Relations  Comint.rciates  des  Etats  IMis  avec  VJinghterre.,  declares  it  impossible  that  the 
French  should  ever  transcend,  or  even  equal,  the  British  in  the  friendship  and  regard  of  the 
Americans. 

2 'Garden,  in  particular,  has  passed  a  severe  censure  on  Botta  for  exaggerating  the  influence 
of  the  French  intrigues.  But,  in  order  to  support  his  own  equally  inadmissible  assertion,  that 
these  intrigues  were  totally  inefiicacious,  he  appeals  only  to  De  Kalb,  whom  he  had  previously 
denounced  as  a  perfidious  calumniator  of  America. 

La  Fayette  informed  me  that  De  Kalb  was  employed  by  the  French  minister,  Choiseul,  who 
•rewarded  his  services,  but  kept  aloof  from  direct  intercourse  with  him,  and  retained  the  power 
of  disavowing  his  agency;  and  that  both  De  Kalb  and  other  agents  of  France  indulged 
themselves  in  mUch  exaggeration,  dnd  far  outstepped  the  limits  of  their  instructions,  in  the 
representations  and  overtures  which  they  addressed  to  the  Americans.  The  conduct  of  the 
French  court,  in  isolation  to  the  quarrel  between  Britain  and  her  colonies,  was  exceedingly 
fluctuating,  and  its  purposes  long  unfixed. 

David  ilume  whs  at  this  period  one  of  the  secretaries  of  the  British  embassy  at  Paris  ;  but, 
'with  all  his  sagacity  and  penetration,  he  neither  discovered  nor  seems  even  to  have  suspected 
the  insidious  and  vindictive  policy  of  the  French  government. 

^  Annual  Reerister  for  1767  and  for  1775.  Hutchinson.  Bradford.  Gordon.  Franklin's 
Memmrs.  Botta's  History  of  the  War  of  the  Independence  of  America.  Stedman's  History  of  the 
American  War.    Garden.     Wirt.     Ferrand's  History  of  the  three  Partitions  of  Poland. 


CHAP.  li:j  NON-IiMPORTATlON  AGHEEMENT  RENEWED.  429 

which  this  prerogative  had  ever  obtained  in  America.  That  there  was 
no  solid  distinction  between  internal  and  external  taxation  had  been  main- 
tained by  Otis,  in  America,  and  by  Grenville,  in  the  British  parhament ; 
it  was  a  deduction  that  manifestly  followed  from  the  reasonings  of  Pitt  and 
Camden  ;  and  \^s  a  tenet  embraced  and  avowed  by  many  other  politicians, 
both  among  the  friends  of  America  and  the  partisans  of  Britain.  It  was 
now  supported  in  an  able  and  spirited  treatise  entitled  Letters  of  a  Penn- 
sylvaninn  !Parmcr,  — the  production  of  John  Dickinson,  a  citizen  of  Penn- 
sylvania, which  obtained  a  prodigious  circulation  and  high  popularity  in 
America,  and  gained  its  author  the  thanks  of  the  assembly  of  Massa- 
chusetts. He  warned  his  countrymen  not  to  be  deluded  by  the  moderate 
rate  of  the  new  duties,  —  a  circumstance  which  he  characterized  as  artfully 
intended  to;prepare  their  necks  for  tlie  reception  of  a  collar  whose  increas- 
ing weight  would  gradually  bow  them  to  the  ground  ;  and  he  encouraged 
them  to  hope  that  a  deliverance  from  this  evil  would  be  obtained  by  a  re- 
sumption of  the  same  general  and  animated  opposition  which  had  procured 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act. 

These  Letters^  gave  so  strong  an  impulse  to  the  spirit  of  discontent  and 
resistance  in  America,  that  they  would  probably  have  incited  the  people 
to  some  violent  and  tumultuary  proceedings,  if  the  public  attention  had  n©t 
been  previously  directed  to  a  system  of  opposition  at  once  more  effectual, 
prudent,  and  magnanimous.  Some  of  the  leading  politicians  in  Massachu- 
setts, having  suggested  that  the  last  of  the  defensive  measures  employed 
against  the  Stamp  Act,  the  non-importation  agreement,  had  been  more  effi- 
cient than  all  the  others,  and  was  peculiarly  applicable  to  the  present  emer- 
gency, the  notion  was  eagerly  embraced  ;  and,  at  a  general  meeting  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Boston  [October  28,  1767],  resolutions  were  proposed  and 
adopted  to  discontinue  the  importation  of  commodities  from  England,  and 
especially  of  all  those  on  which  the  new  duties  were  laid,  until  not  only 
the  act  imposing  them,  but  all  the  late  revenue  acts,  likewise,  should  be  re- 
pealed ;  —  and,  as  a  subsidiary  measure,  to  promote  by  every  possible  effort 
the  growth  of  domestic  manufactures  and  the  practice  of  industry  and  econ- 
omy. These  resolutions  were  propagated  throughout  America,  and  from 
the  first  zealously  executed  in  New  England,  where  a  considerable  change 
of  manners  now  began  to  appear.  Of  late  years  a  taste  for  gay  and  ex- 
pensive pleasures  had  been  gaining  ground  among  the  descendants  of  the 
Puritans,  especially  in  Massachusetts  ;  and  several  attempts  were  made, 
though  ineffectually,  to  procure  a  repeal  of  the  law  which  prohibited  theat- 
rical entertainments.  But  now  a  general  simplicity  of  dress  and  living  was 
diligently  cultivated  ;  and  even  the  taste  for  expensive  funerals,  which  the 
law  had  vainly  attempted  to  restrain,  was  sacrificed  to  the  practice  of  habits 
which  were  justly  accounted   the  firmest  as  well  as  the  most  respectable 

'  They  were  attributed,  in  England,  to  Dr.  Franklin,  whom,  in  fact,  they  were  the  means 
of  converting  from  the  opinion  which  he  had  recently  expressed  of  the  legitimacy  of  external 
taxes  imposed  by  the  parliament  on  America.  In  a  letter  written  in  the  spring  of  the  following 
year,  aft^r  alluding  to  Dickinson's  work,  he  says, —  "^he  more  I  have  thought  and  read  on 
the  subject,  the  more  I  find  myself  confirmed  in  opinion  that  no  middle  doctrine  can  be  well 
maintamed  ;  I  mean  not  clearly  with  intelligible  arguments.  Something  might  be  made 
of  either  of  the  extremes;  that  parliament  has  power  to  make  aJl  laws  for  us,  or  that  it 
has  power  to  make  no  layrs  for  us  ;  and  I  think  the  arguments  for  the  latter  more  numerous 
and  weighty  than  those  for  the  former." — "I  know  not,"  he  adds,  "what  the  Boston  people 
mean  by  the  subordination  they  acknowledge  in  their  assembly  to  parliament,  whil^  ♦Key  de- 
ny its  p'oweT  to  make  laws  for  them," — ^nd  doubtless  the  Boston  peopte  attached  to  this  plbraso 
as  httle  of  definite  import  as  he  was  able  to  discern- in  it. 


430  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

bulwarks  of  American  freedom.  But  it  is  easier  to  induce  mankind  in  gen- 
eral to  pursue  liberty  with  passionate  zeal,  than  to  merit  and  secure  it  by- 
patient  fortitude  and  virtue. 

In  other  parts  of  America,  some  disinclination  was  shown  at  first  to  imi- 
tate the  austere  example  of  New  England ;  and  the  merchants  of  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  in  particular,  more  impressed  with  the  inconvenience 
they  had  endured  than  with  the  advantage  they  had  gained  from  the  former 
non-importation  agreement,  declined,  for  a  while,  to  repeat  the  experiment. 
They  remembered  (said  their  sturdier  countrymen)  and  longed  for  the  flesh- 
pots  of  Egypt.  Nothing  could  be  more  discouraging  to  the  New  Engend- 
ers ;  for  the  efficacy  of  the  measure  depended  on  its  general  adoption.  Yet 
they  persisted  with  a  firm  and  stubborn  determination,  which  even  those  who 
refused  to  imitate  could  not  forbear  to  praise  ;  and  it  was  generally  declared 
in  the  provinces,  that,  "if  America  be  saved  from  the  impending  danger, 
New  England  will  be  her  acknowledged  guardian."  By  degrees,  however, 
the  example  of  this  people  obtained  imitation  as  well  as  applause.  The 
political  clubs,  which  began  to  resume  their  functions  and  activity,  em- 
ployed every  art  of  persuasion  and  even  intimidation  to  induce  their 
countrymen  to  embrace  the  non-importation  agreement,  which,  by  their  aid 
ayd  other  auxiliary  circumstances,  obtained  a  general,  though  not  till  two 
years  after  the  present  period  a  universal,  prevalence  in  America.^  In 
several  of  the  provinces,  meanwhile,  and  especially  in  New  England,  there 
was  published  in  pamphlets  and  newspapers  a  great  variety  of  political  es- 
says, inquiries,  strictures,  and  arguments,  many  of  which  impugned  and 
vilified  the  sovereign  authority  of  the  parent  state  with  a  boldness  of 
freedom  unknown  before.  America,  it  was  said,  had  now  passed  her  na- 
tional minority  ;  and  with  the  age  came  the  right  and  the  capacity  of  inde- 
pendence. It  was  maintained  that  freemen  were  not  to  be  governed,  any 
more  than  taxed,  but  by  their  own  consent,  signified  by  their  own  representa- 
tives ;  and  that  the  British  parliament  was  no  more  entitled  to  derive  present 
authority  from  the  past  exercise  or  abuse  of  power  over  America,  than  a 
private  trustee  or  guardian  was  entitled  to  retain  his  government  of  a  ward 
advanced  to  manhood,  on  the  plea  of  having  ruled  him  in  his  nonage  and 
pillaged  his  estate.^  The  longer  the  controversy  between  Britain  and 
her  colonies  endured,  the  larger  became  the  view^s,  the  stouter  the  im- 
portunity, and  the  more  violent  the  language  of  American  writers  and  poli- 
ticians. The  more  narrowly  the  foundations  of  sovereign  authority  were 
explored,  the  more  fatally  were  the  pillars  of  British  domination  shaken  and 
undermined.^ 

Although  the  act  of  parliament  suspending  the  functions  of  the  assembly 
of  New  York  excited  much  alarm  and  indignation  among  the  x\merican  peo- 
ple, and  was  stigmatized  in  all  their  newspapers  as  a  measure  fraught  with 
general  danger,  yet  the  several  provincial  governments  were  so  completely 

*  Yet,  between  1764  and  1767,  the  annual  exports  from  Britain  to  America  are  said  to  have 
sustained  a  diminution  of  £  1,500,000  sterling.  Political  Register  for  1767.  Many  Americans 
were  disheartened  in  consequence  of  having  prospectively  overrated  the  effects  of  their  hostile 
commercial  policy.  "  Events  proved,"  says  Ramsay,  "  that  young  nations,  like  young  people, 
are  prone  to  overrate  their  own  importance." 

2  Jlvnual  Register  for  1768.     Franklin's  Memoirs  and  Carrespondence.     Bradford.     Gordon. 

^  "  The  whole  science  of  politics,  in  its  most  extended  signification,  was  freely  debated  in  pub- 
lic and  private  assemblages,  and  discussed  through  the  medium  of  the  press.  There  were 
here  few  of  those  prejudices  which  elsewhere  are  engrafted  by  habit  upon  the  intellect,  and 
which  assume  the  aspect  of  established  principles.  Many  a  received  dogma  was  swept  away 
Hrith  contempt."    General  Cass's  Discourse. 


CHAP.  II.]  CIRCULAR  LETTER  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.  43 ^ 

disconnected  by  any  legal  or  formal  tie,  that  censure,  complaint,  or  even 
public  notice  of  that  measure  by  any  of  the  other  States  or  their  representa- 
tive assemblies  seemed  an  irregular  and  incompetent  proceeding.  The  as- 
sembly of  Virginia,  nevertheless,  was  not  deterred  by  this  consideration 
from  passing  a  resolution  in  which  it  denounced,  as  grievous  encroach- 
ments upon  American  liberty,  not  only  the  act  which  was  confined  to  New 
York,  but  the  previous  and  more  general  statute,  for  disobedience  to  which 
New  York  was  punished.  If  the  parliament,  it  was  warmly  declared,  can 
lawfully  compel  the  colonies  to  furnish  a  single  article  of  accommodation  to 
the  troops  sent  from  England,  it  may  by  parity  of  reason  oblige  them  to 
furnish  clothes,  arms,  and  every  necessary,  even  including  the  pay  of  the 
officers  and  soldiers  ;  a  doctrine  totally  incompatible  with  the  existence  of 
liberty  or  the  security  of  property  in  America. 

Massachusetts,  which  had  suggested  the  convention  of  1765,  again  took 
the  lead  in  proposing  by  united  counsels  to  surmount  or  diminish  the 
grand  impediment  by  which  the  interests  of  American  liberty  were  obstruct- 
ed. The  assembly  of  this  province  now  addressed  to  all  the  sister  colonies 
a  circular  letter  [February  11,  1768],  signifying  that  they  had  seriously 
considered  the  great  evils  to  which  the  inhabitants  of  America  were  subjected 
from  the  operation  of  several  acts  of  parliament  imposing  taxes  upon  them, 
and  requesting  the  other  colonies  to  unite  in  suitable  measures  to  obtain 
redress.  The  letter  concluded  with  warm  expressions  of  loyalty  to  the 
king,  and  "  of  firm  confidence  that  the  united  and  dutiful  supplications  of  his 
distressed  American  subjects  will  meet  with  his  royal  and  favorable  accept- 
ance." The  assembly  were  deterred  from  proposing  a  repetition  of  the 
national  convention  which  had  taken  place  three  years  before  by  the  in- 
telligence they  had  received  of  the  jealousy  and  alarm  with  which  that 
measure  was  regarded  by  the  British  government ;  and,  on  the  present  oc- 
casion, they  were  contented  with  proposing  mutual  correspondence  between 
the  colonies,  and  uniformity  of  language  in  their  addresses  to  the  crown. 
Along  with  their  circular  letter  they  despatched  copies  of  a  petition  to  the 
king,  a  representation  to  the  royal  ministers,  and  a  letter  of  instructions  to 
their  provincial  agent  at  London,  which  they  had  composed  and  transmitted 
to  England.  In  these  compositions,  they  declared  that  the  parliament  doubt- 
less possessed  supreme  legislative  power  over  the  whole  empire,  but  that,  as 
it  derived  its  authority  from  the  political  system  or  constitution  of  the  state, 
it  could  not  overleap  the  bounds  of  constitutional  principles  without  de- 
stroying its  own  foundation  ;  that,  in  conformity  with  the  principles  of  the 
British  constitution,  the  American  colonists  enjoyed  the  right  of  being  taxed 
by  their  own  representatives  alone,  and  had  hitherto  exercised  it  by  the  in- 
strumentality of  their  subordinate  legislatures  ;  that  they  were  therefore  enti- 
tled (exclusive  of  any  consideration  of  charter  franchises),  with  a  decent 
firmness  becoming  the  character  of  freemen  and  subjects,  to  assert  their 
natural  and  constitutional  right  ;  and  that  it  was  their  humble  opinion  that 
this  right  was  violated  by  the  acts  of  parliament  imposing  taxes  upon  them 
for  the  express  purpose  of  raising  a  revenue  ;  that  the  American  judges 
were  not,  like  the  judges  of  England,  independent  of  the  crown  ;  and 
that  freedom  and  justice  were  not  secured  to  a  people  deprived  of  all  con 
trol  over  governors  and  judges  holding  their  commissions  by  the  tenure  of 
royal  will  and  pleasure  ;  that  the  creation  of  a  civil  list  with  an  indefinite 
number  of  public  officers,  who?e  salaries  were  to  be  fixed  and  allotted  by 


432  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [900K  XI. 

the  king  and  paid  by  the  colonists,  and  the  statute  requiring  the  colonists 
to  furnish  provisions  to  the  British  troops,  were  burdensome  and  oppressive  ; 
that  they  had  reason  to  believe  that  the  enemies  of  the  colonists  had  rep- 
resented them  to  the  king  as  factious,  disloyal,  and  aiming  at  independence  ; 
but  that  this  assembly  could  assure  his  Majesty,  w^ith  regard  to  the  people 
of  Massachusetts,  and  as  they  also  beheved  of* all  his  American  territories, 
that  the  charge  was  unjust.  The  circular  letter,  and  other  relative  compo- 
sitions of  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  produced  a  strong  sensation  through- 
out America.  Notwithstanding  all  the  caution  and  moderation  with  which 
this  measure  was  conducted,  its  great  importance  was  clearly  perceived. 
The  assembly  of  New  Hampshire,  while  they  expressed  approbation  of 
the  conduct  of  Massachusetts,  timidly  declined  to  imitate  it,  under  pre- 
tence that  their  session  was  near  its  close,  and  that  such  a  period  was 
unsuitable  to  the  transaction  of  important  business  ;  a  behaviour  for  which 
they  received  the  commendations  of  the  king  in  the  following  year.  But 
most  of  the  other  provincial  assemblies  acceded  zealously  and  promptly  to 
the  overture  of  Massachusetts,  and  adopted  petitions  and  representations 
of  the  same  tenor  with  those  of  which  copies  were  transmitted  to  them. 
The  Vkginian  assembly  warmly  applauded  the  generous  concern  manifested 
by  Massachusetts  for  American  liberty. 

Important  and  formidable  to  British  authority  as  this  measure  undoubt- 
edly was,  it  seems  not  more,  nay,  rather  less,  properly  obnoxious  to  the 
censure  of  the  British  government  than  the  proposition  of  a  general  con- 
vention in  1765,  upon  which  no  pubhc  censure  had  been  passed.  But 
the  conduct  of  Massachusetts  was  now  to  be  judged  by  a  ministerial  con- 
clave much  less  liberal  and  indulgent  than  that  which  existed  at  the  former 
epoch.  The  British  cabinet,  in  the  close  of  the  last  year,  underwent  a 
considerable  change,  of  which  every  particular  was  unpropitious  to  a  gener- 
ous or  conciliating  policy  towards  America.  Townshend,  the  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer,  dying,  was  succeeded  by  Lord  North,  a  man  devoted  to 
royal  prerogative.  The  management  of  American  affairs  was  withdrawn 
from  Lord  Shelburne,  and  committed  to  Lord  Hillsborough,  a  determined 
partisan  of  the  highest  pretensions  and  largest  authority  of  the  parent  state 
over  her  colonies.  Conway  had  resigned  ;  other  changes  of  similar  char^ 
acter  and  import  had  taken  place  ;  and  though  Lord  Chatham  continued  to 
hold  office  till  the  autumn  of  the  present  year,  he  was  rendered  quite  in- 
significant in  tlie  cabinet  by  ill  health  and  the  disregard  of  his  colleagues, 
Bernard,  besides,  who  was  the  object  of  general  dislike  in  Massachusetts, 
and  engaged  in  continual  altercations  with  the  assembly,  where  he  was  as 
eager  to  extend  the  special  prerogative  of  the  governor  as  to  support  the 
general  prerogative  of  the  parent  state,  sought  to  revenge  himself  upon  his 
antagonists  by  exciting  prepossessions  in  the  British  cabinet  against  the 
whole  provincial  population.  For  this  purpose,  he  industriously  collected 
and  transmitted  all  the  most  violent  publications  that  had  recently  appeared 
at  Boston  ;  assuring  the  ministry  that  these  compositions  faithfully  repre- 
sented the  sentiments  by  which  the  whole  province  was  actuated,  and  that 
he  daily  expected  a  rebellion.  He  afterwards  endeavoured  to  correct  this 
hasty  expression,  and  rushed  into  the  opposite  extreme  of  declaring  that  he 
bad  completely  misunderstood  the  sentiments  of  the  people,  which  were,  he 
said,  almost  universally  opposed  to  the  pubhcations  which  he  had  been  led 
10  believe  congenial  to  them.     He  even  extolled  with  elaborate  commenda- 


CHAP.  II.]    RIGOROUS  ENFORCEMEXT  OF  THE  TRADE  LAWS.  433 

tion  the  prudence,  moderation,  and  conciliating  temper  of  the  assembly, 
in  communications  to  the  ministry  dated  only  a  lew  days  before  the  petition 
to  the  king,  the  representation  to  the  ministers,  and  the  circular  letter  to 
the  other  colonies  were  despatched.  Provoked  and  astonished  by  this 
occurrence,  and  eager  to  justify  himself,  he  conveyed  a  false  and  irritating 
account  of  the  whole  transaction  to  Britain,  which  unfortunately  found  too 
much  credit  with  the  royal  cabinet. 

The  tenor  of  his  misrepresentations  appears  from  a  despatch  which  Lord 
Hillsborough  instantly  addressed  to  him  [April  22,  1768],  reprobating  the 
vote  in  favor  of  the  circular  letter  as  ''  unfair,  contrary  to  the  real  sense 
of  the  assembly,  and  procured  by  surprise  "  ;  and  instructing  him  to  require 
the  assembly  to  rescind  the  surreptitious  resolve  which  had  given  birth  to 
the  circular  letter,  and  to  declare  their  disapprobation  of  that  rash  and 
hasty  transaction.  In  case  of  their  refusal  to  comply  with  this  requisition, 
h«  was  directed  to  dissolve  the  assembly  and  transmit  to  England  an  account 
of  its  behaviour.  Circular  letters  were  at  the  same  time  addressed  by 
Lord  Hillsborough  to  the  governors  of  all  the  American  provinces,  inclos- 
ing copies  of  the  obnoxious  composition  of  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  and 
signifying,  that,  "  As  his  Majesty  considers  this  measure  to  be  of  the  most 
dangerous  and  factious  tendency,  calculated  to  inflame  the  minds  of  his  good 
subjects  in  the  colonies,  and  promote  an  unwarrantable  combination,  and 
to  exhibit  an  open  opposition  to  and  denial  of  the  authority  of  parliament, 
and  to  subvert  the  true  principles  of  the  constitution,  it  is  his  Majesty's 
pleasure  that  you  should,  immediately  upon  the  receipt  hereof,  exert  your 
utmost  influence  to  defeat  this  flagitious  attempt  to  disturb  the  public  peace, 
by  prevailing  upon  the  assembly  of  your  province  to  take  no  notice  of  it,  — 
which  will  be  treating  it  with  the  contempt  it  deserves."  Such  an  amazing 
effusion  of  spleen,  insolence,  and  folly,  perhaps,  never  before  disgraced 
the  councils  of  a  civilized  community.  It  excited  general  disgust  in  Amer- 
ica, and  served  only  to  induce  the  other  provinces  to  afford  new  symptoms 
of  their  willingness  to  make  common  cause  with  Massachusetts.  Greatly 
lowered,  indeed,  'was  the  language  of  England,  both  in  dignity  of  sentiment 
and  majesty  of  tone,  since  Hillsborough  succeeded  Pitt  as  the  interpreter 
of  her  will  to  America. 

Additional  cause  of  offence  and  quarrel  arose  in  America  from  the  op- 
eration of  the  act  by  which  a  board  of  customs  was  established  at  Boston. 
Paxton,  one  of  the  commissioners,  had  long  been  an  object  of  general  dis- 
like to  the  peo}3le  of  Massachusetts,  on  account  of  the  zeal  with  which  he 
seconded  all  the  pretensions  of  British  prerogative  ;  and  only  his  absence 
from  the  province  during  the  Stamp  Act  riots  had  saved  him  from  a  share 
of  the  popular  vengeance  on  that  occasion.  He  and  his  colleagues  now  en- 
forced the  trade  laws  with  a  rigor  hitherto  unknown,  and  which  contributed 
not  a  little  to  increase  the  prevailing  inquietude  and  irritation.  At  New  York 
there  was  printed  and  circulated  a  manifesto  or  proclamation,  assuring  the 
inhabitants  that  commissioners  of  customs  would  soon  be  established  there 
ab  well  as  at  Boston,  and  summoning  every  friend  of  liberty  to  hold  himself 
in  readiness  to  receive  them  with  the  same  treatment  which  had  been  be- 
stowed upon  "a  set  of  miscreants  under  the  name  of  stamp-masters,  in  the 
year  1765."  All  the  efforts  of  the  governor  to  discover  the  authors  of  this 
inflammatory  publication  proved  ineffectual.  In  this  province  the  spirit  of 
liberty  was  no  way  depressed,  nor  was  even  the  conduct  of  public  business 

VOL.    II.  55  KK 


434  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

obstructed,  by  the  act  of  parliament  restraining  the  assembly  from  the  exer- 
cise of  legislative  functions.  With  a  plausible  show  of  obedience  to  the 
letter  of  the  statute,  the  assembly  forbore  to  enact  formal  laws  ;  but  when- 
ever money  was  needed  for  public  purposes,  they  passed  resolutions,  to 
which  the  people  lent  a  prompt  and  cheerful  obedience  ;  and  thus  the  act, 
though  sufficient  to  exasperate,  proved  quite  impotent  to  punish. 

It  had  been  the  practice  in  every  quarter  of  British  America  for  the 
officers  of  the  customs  to  allow  merchants  and  shipmasters  to  enter  in  the 
custom-house  books  only  a  part  of  their  imported  cargoes,  and  to  land  the 
remainder  duty-free.  To  this  practice,  which  became  so  inveterate  that 
the  colonists  regarded  the  advantage  accruing  from  it  as  a  right  rather  than 
an  indulgence,  the  commissioners  now  resolved  to  put  a  stop.  A  sloop 
called  the  Liberty,  belonging  to  Hancock,  having  arrived  at  Boston  laden 
with  wine  from  Madeira  [June  10,  1768],  the  captain,  as  usual,  proposed 
to  the  tidewaiter  who  came  to  inspect  the  cargo,  that  part  of  it  should 
be  landed  duty-free  ;  but,  meeting  a  refusal,  laid  violent  hands  upon  him, 
and,  with  the  assistance  of  the  crew,  locked  him  up  in  the  cabin  till  the  whole 
cargo  was  carried  ashore.  The  next  morning  he  entered  a  few  pipes  of 
the  wine  at  the  custom-house,  as  having  formed  all  his  lading  ;  but  the 
commissioners  of  the  customs,  insisting  that  the  entry  was  deceptive, 
caused  the  sloop  to  be  arrested.  To  secure  the  capture,  it  was  proposed 
that  the  vessel  should  be  removed  from  the  wharf  and  towed  under  the 
guns  of  the  Romney  man-of-war  ;  and,  by  the  assistance  of  the  Romney's 
boats,  this  was  accordingly  performed,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  a  great 
assemblage  of  people,  who,  finding  their  remonstrances  disregarded,  as- 
saulted the  custom-house  officers  with  a  violence  that  had  nearly  proved 
fatal  to  their  lives.  [June  12.]  On  the  following  day,  the  populace,  again 
assembling  before  the  houses  of  the  collector,  comptroller,  and  inspector- 
general  of  the  customs,  broke  their  windows,  and  then,  seizing  the  collect- 
or's boat,  dragged  it  through  the  town  and  burned  it  on  the  common.  Their 
violence,  whether  satiated  or  not,  was  checked  at  this  point  by  the  flight  of 
the  commissioners  and  other  officers  of  the  customs,  who,  learning  that 
renewed  assemblages  of  the  people  were  expected,  and  believing  or  affecting 
to  believe  that  farther  outrages  were  meditated  against  themselves,  hastily 
left  the  place,  and  took  refuge,  first  on  board  the  ship  of  war,  and  afterwards 
in  Castle  William.  [June  13.]  The  city,  meanwhile,  resounded  with  com- 
plaints of  the  insult  that  was  ofl^ered  to  the  inhabitants  in  removing  the 
sloop  from  the  wharf,  and  thus  proclaiming  apprehensions  of  a  rescue.  These 
complaints  were  sanctioned  by  the  assembly,  who  declared  that  the  crimi- 
nality of  the  rioters  was  extenuated  by  the  irritating  and  unprecedented 
circumstance  of  the  seizure  ;  but  added,  nevertheless,  that,  as  the  rioters 
deserved  severe  punishment,  they  must  beseech  the  governor  to  direct  that 
they  should  be  prosecuted,  and  to  proclaim  a  reward  for  their  discovery. 
The  rioters,  however,  had  nothing  to  fear  ;  nor  was  any  one  of  them  ever 
molested.  A  suit  for  penalties  was  afterwards  instituted  against  Hancock 
in  the  Court  of  Admiralty  ;  but  the  officers  of  the  crown,  finding  it  beyond 
their  power  to  adduce  sufficient  evidence  of  facts,  which,  though  every 
body  knew,  nobody  would  attest,  abandoned  the  prosecution  and  restored 
the  vessel.  The  conduct  of  the  officers  in  taxing  the  people,  by  implica- 
tion, with  the  purpose  of  rescue  was  generally  condemned.  It  was,  indeed, 
remarked  by  the  few  who  ventured  to  defend  it,  that  a  rescue  had  actually 


CHAP.  IL]  MASSACHUSETTS  REFUSES  TO  RESCIND  HER  CIRCULAR.        435 

taken  place  eighteen  months  before.  But  to  this  the  advocates  of  the  people 
replied,  that  the  popular  temper  had  undergone  a  change  since  then,  —  as 
was  verified  by  the  fact  that  no  subsequent  rescue  had  been  attempted  ; 
—  a  fact  the  more  certain,  though  the  less  significant,  as  in  reality  no 
seizure  in  the  interim  had  been  made.  Unluckily,  about  a  month  after  the 
arrest  of  Hancock's  vessel,  a  schooner,  which  was  seized  with  a  smuggled 
cargo  of  molasses,  and  left  at  the  wharf  under  the  care  of  the  custom-house 
officers,  was  boarded  during  the  night  by  a  numerous  body  of  men,  who 
easily  overpowered  and  confined  the  officers,  and  carried  the  cargo  on  shore. 
The  inhabitants  in  general  were  greatly  scandalized  to  find  their  recent 
declarations  so  completely  falsified  ;  and  the  selectmen  of  Boston,  sending 
for  the  master  of  the  schooner,  ordered  him  to  surrender  the  molasses  di- 
rectly under  pain  of  the  displeasure  of  the  town.  He  obeyed  this  injunction 
without  a  moment's  hesitation. 

In  the  midst  of  the  ferment  produced  by  the  seizure  of  Hancock's  vessel, 
Bernard  acquainted  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  with  the  communication 
which  he  had  received  from  Lord  Hillsborough.  [June  21.]  The  patriotic 
spirit  of  this  body  was  additionally  roused  and  invigorated,  instead  of  being 
depressed,  by  the  intelligence  ;  and  it  was  farther  sustained  by  the  arrival 
of  friendly  and  approving  letters  from  the  assemblies  of  Virginia,  Connecti- 
cut, New  Jersey,  and  Georgia.^  They  easily  repelled  the  charges  levelled 
against  the  conduct  of  the  former  assembly,  and  by  a  great  majority  of 
voices  refused  to  rescind  its  proceedings.  "  When  Lord  Hillsborough 
knows  that  we  will  not  rescind  our  acts,"  said  Otis,  in  a  speech  which  was 
highly  extolled  by  the  popular  party,  and  denounced  as  a  treasonable  effu- 
sion by  the  partisans  of  Britain,  ''  he  should  apply  to  parliament  to  rescind 
theirs.  Let  Britain  rescind  her  measures^  or  her  authority  is  lost  for  ever.''''  ^ 
Several  members,  who  had  in  the  former  session  opposed  the  resolution  for 
the  circular  letter,  now  voted  against  rescinding  it,  protesting  that  they 
would  not  submit  even  to  royal  dictation  in  the  discharge  of  their  legislative 
functions.  The  assembly  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Hillsborough, 
recapitulating  the  several  votes  and  resolutions  which  had  passed  in  the 
former  session  relative  to  the  circular  letter,  —  showing  that  this  matter 
was  transacted  in  the  meridian  of  the  session,  in  full  convocation,  and  in 
conformity  with  the  sentiments  of  a  large  majority  of  the  members,  —  and 
defending,  in  terms  forcible  and  manly,  yet  decent  and  respectful,  the  trans- 
action which  was  said  to  have  given  so  much  offence  to  the  king.  To 
the  governor  they  finally  voted  an, address,  of  which  the  tenor  was  so  firm 
and  spirited  that  it  merits  more  particular  commemoration.  [June  30.]  "  It 
is  to  us  incomprehensible,"  they  declared,  "  that  we  should  be  required 
imder  peril  of  dissolution  to  rescind  the  resolve  of  a  former  house,  when  it 
is  evident  that  that  resolve  has  no  existence  but  as  a  mere  historical  fact. 
Your  Excellency  must  know  that  the  resolve  is,  to  speak  in  the  language 
of  the  common  law,  not  now  executory,  but  to  all  intents  and  purposes  ex- 
ecuted. If,  as  is  most  probable,  by  the  word  rescinding  is  intended  the 
passing  a  vote  in  direct  and  express  disapprobation  of  the  measure  taken 
by  the  former  house,  as  illegal,  inflammatory,  and  tending  to  promote  un- 
justifiable  combinations  against  his  Majesty's  peace,  crown,   and  dignity, 

'  The  assembly  of  tRis  province  was  dissolved  by  the  governor,  Sir  James  Wright,  on  ac- 
count of  its  letter  to  Massachusetts.     Annual  Register  for  1769. 

'  So  much  had  Otis's  courage  increased  since  the  year  1765,  when,  on  first  reading  the  Vir- 
ginian resolutions,  he  declared  them  a  treasonable  composition.  -.^  „v^,,,^,;^ivV;  ,/^,  r^vx^  ^^s^■^ 


4J5  msfoRY  or  north  America.  [book  xi. 

we  ttMSt  take  the  liberty  to  testify  and  pubKcly  to  declare  that  we  hold  it  to 
he  the  native,  inherent,  indefeasible  right  of  the  subjects,  jointly  or  several- 
ly, to  petition  the  king  for  the  redress  of  grievances,  provided  that  the  same 
be  done  in  a  decern,  dutiful,  loyal,  and  constitutional  vi^ay,  without  tumuh, 
disorder,  and  confusion.  If  the  votes  of  this  house  are  to  be  controlled  by 
the  direction  of  a  minister,  we  have  left  to  us  but  a  vain  semblance  of  liberty. 
We  have  now  only  to  inform  you  that  this  house  have  voted  not  to  rescind  ; 
and  that,  on  a  division  on  the  question,  there  were  ninety-two  nays,  and 
seventeen  yeas.'*  That  the  people  might  know  their  friends,  the  assembly 
ond'ered  at  the  same  time  that  the  names  of  the  voters  on  both  sides  of  the 
(Question  should  be  printed  and  puhlished.  The  list  of  the  majority  was 
circulated  with  'demonstrations  of  honor  and  applause  ;  the  list  of  the  mi- 
nority *  was  placarded  with  testimonies  of  contempt  and  derision.  On  the 
following  day  the  governor  dissolved  the  assembly.  [July  1.]  Partly  for 
this  acft  of  power,  which,  though  enjoined  to  him  by  a  royal  mandate,  was 
produced  by  his  own  misrepresentations,  and  partly  on  account  of  the  in- 
telligence which  was  received  fi'om  England  of  his  continual  solicitations 
thfat  a  military  fofree  s^hould  be  despatched  to  Massachusetts,  most  of  the 
towns  and  oorporations  in  this  province  united  in  declarations,  which  were 
published  in  the  newspapers,  denouncing  Bernard  as  a  traitor  and  enemy 
of  the  country.^ 

It  seemed  as  if  every  attempt  to  vindicate  the  newly  extended  prerogative 
bf  the  parent  state  was  fated  to  produce  only  a  responsive  and  more  suc- 
cessful effort  of  the  colonists  to  assume  an  attitude  more  and  more  nearly 
realizing  a  practical  independence  of  British  authority.  The  Stamp  Act, 
among  other  consequences,  produced,  in  the  convention  at  New  York,  the 
first  demonstration  <^  the  readiness  of  the  provinces  to  unite  in  opposition  to 
the  prerogative  of  Britain ;  the  act  of  parliament  which  professed  to  re- 
strain the  powers  and  functions  of  the  New  York  assembly  served  in  effect 
to  enlarge  them  ;  the  act  imposing  duties  on  tea  and  other  articles  elicited 
the  remarkable  proceedings  which  we  have  witnessed  in  Massachusetts  ; 
and  now  the  arbitrary  dissolution  of  the  Massachusetts  assembly,  by  the 
command  of  a  minister,  who  ignorantly  or  wilfully  misrepresented  its  trans- 
actions, produced  a  measure  still  bolder  and  more  decided.  Governor  Ber- 
nard having,  in  answer  to  several  applications,  declared  that  he  would  not 
without  his  Majesty's  command  again  assemble  the  representatives  of  the 
people  till  the  month  of  May  in  the  following  year,  when,  in  conformity 
with  the  provincial  charter,  a  new  assembly  must  necessarily  be  convoked, 
-^a  strong  desire  was  manifested  by  the  people  to  counteract  this  arbitrary 
suspension  of  democratical  authority  by  an  irregular  exertion  of  it.  In 
compliance  with  the  wishes  of  their  fellow-citizens,  the  selectmen  of  Boston 
proposed  to  all  the  corporations  and  parishes  in  Massachusetts  a  convention 
of  committees  of  their  members  to  deliberate  on  constitutional  measures  for 
obtaining  a  redress  of  their  grievances.  This  project  of  an  assembly  of 
popular  representatives,  convened  without  the  express  authority  of  law  and 
simply  by  virtue  of  the  inherent  rights  of  the  people,  was  countenanced  by 
the  w^ealthier  inhabitants  of  the  province,  who  were  sensible  alike  of  the 

•*  "Like  the  list  of  the  Straffordians  at  London,  in  the  preceding  century."     Hutchinson. 

*  Annual  Re.aister  fttr  1763.  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.  Bradford.  Gordon. 
Hutchinson.  Eliot.  Political  Re  jester  for  1768,  —  where  some  curious  extracts  from  the 
American  wewsparpers  are  prerserviCTi.  J9w  Appeal  to  the  World,  or  Vindication  of  the  Town  of 
Boston  from  the  Aspersions  of  Qovenior  Bernard.    7%b  Triie  Sentiments  of  America. 


CHA-P.  If;j  CONVENTION  IN  MASSACHITSETTS.  43^ 

dangers  of  chitlFing  or  stimulating  the  ardor  by  opposing  the  desires  of  their 
cpiintrynfien,  and  were  witling  to  court  their  sufirages  to  sit  in  the  convention, 
m  order  to  reta-in  in  their  awn  hands  the  management  of  this  new  and  untried 
political  organ.  To  what  extremity  the  present  temper  of  the  people  was 
capable  of  precipitating  them  was  strikingly  betokened  at  a  general  meeting 
of  ihe  citizens  of  Boston  in  the  beginning  of  September,  at  which  it  was 
resolved,  tbaft,  ,as  there  is  a  prevaiting  apprehension  in  the  minds  of  many 
of  a  war  with  France,  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  province  should  be  warned 
forthwith  to  provide  themselves  witi)  airms  and  ammunition,  in  order  to  be 
ready  to  repel  sudden  danger. ^ 

In  consequence  of  the  applications  of  the  selectmen,  a  convention  of 
committees,  chosen  by  ninety-six  towns  and  eight  districts  of  Massachusetts, 
assembled  at  Boston.  [September  22,  1768.]  Many  persons  regarded  this 
proceeding  wi^h  alarm  ;  and  some  considered  it  tantamount  to  an  act  of  high 
treason.  The  members  of  the  convention  were  sensible  of  the  arduous 
and  delicate  predicament  in  which  they  were  placed,  and  of  the  expe- 
diency of  strict  and  guarded  moderation  in  the  exercise  of  undefined 
functions  and  authority.  They  began  by  disclaiming  all  power  or  pretext 
of  legislation.  In  resolutions  which  they  framed  and  pubhshed,  and  in  a 
petition  which  tliey  presented  to  the  governor  for  the  convocation  of  an  as- 
senibly,  they  made  warm  professions  of  loyalty  to  the  king,  expressed  their 
aversion  to  standing  armies,  and  also  to  popular  tumults  and  disorders,  and 
their  readiness  to  assist  in  suppressing  riots  and  preserving  peace  ;  and 
strongly  recommended  patience  and  good  order  to  their  countrymen.  The 
governor  refused  to  receive  their  petition,  or  otherwise  recognize  them  as  a 
legitimate  assemblage  .;  adding,  that,  as  a  friend  of  the  province,  he  coun- 
selled them  to  desist  from  the  dangerous  and  criminal  course  in  which  they 
(Were  engaged.  The  convention,  having  prepared  and  transmitted  a  petition 
to  the  king,  expressed  in  the  most  temperate  and  respectful  language,  after 
a  short  session,  dissolved  itself.  The  British  ministers,  agreeing  with  Ber- 
nard in  regarding  the  convention  as  a  criminal  association,  refused  to  permit 
the  petition  from  it  to  be  presented  to  the  king,  who  was  thus  confined  to 
the  knowledge  merely  that  such  a  convention  had  been  held,  without  being 
■made  acquainted  with  its  actual  language  and   demeanour. 

Bernard,  Hutchinson,  the  commissioners  of  the  customs,  and  other  parti- 
■Bans  of  royal  prerogative,  had  for  some  time  urgently  solicited  from  the 
British  government  the  detachment  of  a  strong  military  force,  which  they 
represented  as  absolutely  necessary  to  the  vigor  and  even  the  existence  of 
legitimate  executive  power  in  Massachusetts.  [September  27,  1768.]  It 
was  supposed  or  pretended  by  some  of  the  leading  popular  politicians,  that 
the  flight  of  the  commissioners  of  the  customs  from  Boston  was  a  mere 
politic  device  to  reinforce  this  solicitation.  In  effect,  the  very  day  after 
the  Massachusetts  convention  was  dissolved  [September  28],  two  British 
regiments,  escorted  by  seven  armed  vessels,  arrived  at  Boston  from  Hali- 
fax. The  first  operation  of  the  fleet  was  to  assume  a  position  which  com- 
manded the  town  ;  and,  presently  after,  the  troops,  amounting  to  upwards 
of  seven  hundred  men,  under  cover  of  the  guns  of  the  ships,  landed  without 
opposition,  and  marched,  with  muskets  charged,  bayonets  fixed,  and  every 

•  Several  of  the  stanchest  patriots  in  America  expressed  much  disapprobation  of  the  irri- 
tating menace  implied  in  this  invitation  to  take  arms,  and  of  the  disingenuous  pretence  on 
which  it  was  founded. 


438  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

Other  symptom  of  martial  preparation,  into  the  common.  In  the  evening, 
the  selectmen  of  Boston  were  required  by  the  royal  functionaries  to  pro- 
vide quarters  in  the  town  for  the  two  regiments  ;  but  they  peremptorily  re- 
fused. A  temporary  shelter  in  Faneuil  Hall  was,  however,  permitted  to  one 
regiment  which  was  destitute  of  camp  equipage.  On  the  following  day, 
the  State-house,  by  order  of  the  governor,  was  opened  for  the  reception  of 
the  soldiers,  and  two  field-pieces,  along  with  the  main-guard,  were  stationed 
in  its  front.  Boston  presented  the  appearance  of  a  garrisoned  town.  An 
ostentatious  display  was  made  of  the  presence  and  alertness  of  a  mihtary 
force  ;  and  every  arrangement  in  the  distribution  of  this  force  seemed  to  be 
studiously  calculated  to  provoke  the  indignation  of  the  citizens,  whose  tem- 
per, never  remarkable  for  tolerance,  was  already  chafed  into  a  very  keen  sus- 
ceptibility of  provocation.  The  lower  apartments  of  the  State-house,  which 
had  been  used  by  the  merchants  as  an  exchange,  the  chamber  of  the  as- 
sembly, the  court-house,  Faneuil  Hall,  —  places  which  were  hitherto  the 
seats  and  organs  of  justice,  freedom,  and  commercial  convenience,  —  were 
now  converted  into  a  military  citadel.  Though  the  assembly  was  dissolved, 
the  council  continued  its  sittings  ;  and  it  was  not  without  disgust,  that,  in 
repairing  to  their  chamber,  the  counsellors  found  themselves  compelled  to 
pass  the  guards  placed  at  the  door  of  the  State-house.  The  common  was 
covered  with  tents  ;  soldiers  were  continually  marching  and  countermarching 
to  relieve  the  guards  ;  and  the  sentinels  challenged  the  inhabitants,  as  they 
passed  at  night  in  the  streets.  The  votaries  of  hberty  resented  this  vexa- 
tious obtrusion  of  military  power  ;  and  all  devout  persons  were  shocked 
to  see  the  solemnity  of  Sunday  profaned,  and  the  religious  exercises  of  the 
people  disturbed,  by  the  exhibition  of  military  parade  and  the  unholy  clangor 
of  drums  and  other  martial  music.  After  the  troops  had  obtained  quarters, 
the  council  were  required  to  provide  barracks  for  them  in  conformity  with 
the  act  of  parliament  ;  but  they  resolutely  declined  to  lend  any  assistance  to 
the  execution  of  that  obnoxious  statute.  General  Gage,  the  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  British  forces  in  America,  leaving  his  head-quarters  at  New 
York,  came  for  a  while  to  Boston  to  support  the  requisition  of  the  governor 
to  the  council  [October]  ;  but,  finding  his  urgency  fruitless,  he  contented 
himself  with  hiring  the  houses  of  individual  inhabitants  for  the  accommo- 
dation of  the  troops.  The  people  in  general  were  disgusted  and  offended, 
but  not  overawed,  by  the  presence  of  the  soldiers  ;  nor  were  their  senti- 
ments altered  by  the  large  additions  soon  after  [November  10]  made  to  the 
military  force  at  Boston,  which,  before  the  close  of  the  year,  amounted  to 
four  thousand  men.^ 

By  this  impolitic  demonstration  did  the  British  ministers  attempt  to  in- 
vigorate the  force  of  government  at  the  extremity  of  the  empire,  while  di- 
visions and  frequent  fluctuations  in  the  cabinet  weakened  its  influence  at 
home,  and  while  England  itself  was  a  scene  of  riot,  disorder,  and  violent 
opposition  to  established  authority.  Of  the  disorders  which  arose  at  this 
time  in  England  the  chief  ostensible  cause  was  the  persecution  waged  by 
the  ministers  against  the  celebrated  John  Wilkes,  a  profligate,  unprincipled 
man,  who,  in  a  season  of  public  ferment  and  agitation,  usurping  the  all- 
atoning  tide  of  a  patriot,  performed  this  part  with  such  spirit  and  ability  as 
to  render  him  the  idol  of  the  people,  and  to  provoke  the  government  to  vin- 
dictive measures  so  unworthy  and  illegal  as  still  farther  to  animate  the  gen- 
*  Bradford.     Gordon.    Hutchinson.     Holmes..    Annual  Register  for  1768. 


CHAP.  II.]  VIOLENT  PROCEEDINGS    OF  PARLIAMENT.  439 

eral  affection  for  Wilkes  and  the  corresponding  rage  against  his  adversaries. 
The  cry  of  "  Wilkes  and  liberty,"  with  which  all  England  now  resounded 
and  continued  for  some  years  after  to  resound,  was  reechoed  by  numerous 
voices  in  the  colonies  ;  ^  and  the  accounts  of  the  embarrassed  situation  of 
the  ministry  and  the  convulsions  in  the  parent  state,  transmitted  by  the 
colonial  agents  to  their  countrymen,  doubtless  tended  to  fortify  the  spirit  of 
American  resistance.^ 

All  the  rigorous  measures  of  the  ministry  with  regard  to  the  colonies  re- 
ceived the  sanction  of  the  parliament.  In  the  close  of  this  year,  the  House 
of  Lords  passed  a  censure  on  the  non-importation  agreements  lately  resumed 
in  New  England,  as  factious  and  menacing  combinations,  —  which  had  no 
other  effect  than  to  render  this  engine  of  resistance  more  popular  in  Ameri- 
ca. In  the  commencement  of  the  following  year  [1769]  the  same  aristo- 
cratical  branch  of  the  British  legislature  embraced  resolutions  condemning 
all  the  recent  proceedings  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  particularly 
declaring  the  election  of  deputies  to  a  popular  convention,  and  the  assem- 
bling of  that  convention,  daring  insults  offered  to  his  Majesty's  authority  and 
audacious  usurpations  of  the  powers  of  government,  for  which  it  was  requi- 
site that  the  principal  actors  should  be  brought  to  condign  and  exemplary 
punishment.  These  resolutions  were  communicated  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, whose  accession  to  them  was  demanded  by  the  Lords.  This  was  op- 
posed by  several  members,  and  among  others  by  Pownall,  who  had  formerly 
been  governor  of  Massachusetts,  by  Colonel  Barre,  and  by  Edmund  Burke, 
who  had  recently  commenced  in  public  life  a  career  on  which  his  large  ca- 
pacity and  fervid  genius  have  shed  a  briUiant  and  dazzhng  lustre.'  They 
warmly  censured  the  late  severities  employed  by  the  ministry  against  Massa- 
chusetts, and  declared  their  conviction  that  the  people  of  this  province  were 
unjustly  treated.  "  Away  with  these  partial,  resentful  trifles,"  said  Barre, 
addressing  himself  to  the  ministers,  "  calculated  to  irritate,  not  to  quell  or 
appease,  —  inadequate  to  their  purpose,  unworthy  of  us  !  Why  will  you 
endeavour  to  deceive  yourselves  and  us  ?  You  know  that  it  is  not  Mas- 
sachusetts only  that  disputes  your  right  ;  but  every  part  of  America.  From 
one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other,  they  tell  you  that  you  have  no  right 
to  tax  them.  My  sentiments  of  this  matter  you  well  know.  Consider  well 
what  you  are  doing.  Act  openly  and  honestly.  Tell  them  you  will  tax 
them  ;  and  that  they  must  submit.  Do  not  adopt  this  little,  insidious,  futile 
plan.      They  will  despise  you  for  it."     Pownall  declared,  that,  from  his 

*  Wilkes  rewarded  his  American  partisans,  and  embarrassed  liis  enemies  in  the  British  cab- 
inet, by  warmly  defending  and  applauding  the  conduct  of  the  Americans.  In  a  speech  to  the 
livery  of  London  at  Guildhall,  in  1776,  he  said  :  —  "  All  public  spirit  is  here  visibly  decaying, 
and  that  stern,  manly  virtue  of  our  fathers,  which  drove  from  this  land  of  freedom  the  last 
Stuart  tyrant,  is  held  in  contempt  by  their  abandoned  offspring.  A  dissolution  of  the  empire, 
ruin,  and  slavery  are  advancing  rapidly  upon  us,  and  we  are  ripe  for  destruction.  If  we  are 
saved,  it  will  be  almost  solely  by  the  courage  and  noble  spirit  of  our  American  brethren,  whom 
neither  the  luxuries  of  a  court,  nor  the  sordid  lust  of  avarice  in  a  rapacious  and  venal  metrop- 
olis, have  hitherto  corrupted."  Annual  Register  for  1776.  This  was  mere  factious  cant.  From 
Stephens's  Life  of  Horne  Tooke  it  appears  that  Wilkes  heartily  hated  and  despised  the  Ameri- 
cans, who,  in  these  sentiments,  received  the  only  compliment  that  such  a  man  was  competent 
to  bestow. 

»  Jinnual  Register  for  1768.  Hutchinson.  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.  See  Note 
XXX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

^  Of  Burke  it  has  been,  I  think,  justly  remarked  by  a  writer  in  the  Annual  Review^  thai, 
*  while  vague  rhapsodies  about  liberty  decorated  his  harangues,  his  object  was  to  introduce  hii 
party  to  power,  and,  by  equivocal  concessions  to  the  American  people,  and  flattering  patron- 
age of  the  American  chieflains,  to  purchase  a  pacific  reconciliation  capable  of  being  corrupted 
afresh  into  dependence." 


440  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

acquaiiitance  with  the  character,  sentiments,  and  resources  of  the  Ameri- 
cans, he  was  conFinced  that  they  could  not  be  coerced  into  submission  to 
oppressive  laws  ;  that,  although  tliey  were  a  sober,  patient,  and  loyal  people, 
especially  in  Massachusetts,  where  he  had  resided,  they  might  be  exasperated 
beyond  farther  endurance  ;  and  that  they  would  undoubtedly  contend  for 
their  rights  recognized  by  charter  and  inherited  by  them  as  British  subjects, 
till  either  they  recovered  them  or  were  annihilated  by  superior  force. 
*'  That  spirit,"  said  he,  "^  which  led  their  ancestors  to  break  off  from  every 
thing  which  is  near  and  dear  to  the  human  heart,  has  but  a  slight  and  trifling 
sacrifice  to  make  at  this  time  ;  they  have  not  to  quit  their  native  country,  but 
to  defend  it  ;  not  to  forsake  their  friends  and  relations,  but  to  unite  with  and 
stand  by  them  in  one  common  union."  The  House  of  Commons,  however, 
sanctioned  and  espoused  the  resolutions  of  the  Lords  ;  and  both  houses,  in 
a  joint  address  to  the  king,  expressed  their  perfect  satisfaction  with  the  meas- 
ures he  had  pursued  ;  tendered  the  strongest  assurances  of  effectual  support 
to  him  in  such  farther  measures  as  might  be  found  necessary  to  maintain 
a  due  execution  of  the  laws  in  Massachusetts  ;  and  besought  him  to  direct 
the  governor  to  take  the  most  effectual  methods  for  procuring  information 
of  all  treasonable  offences  committed  within  the  province  since  the  30th  of 
December,  1767,  and  to  transmit  the  names  of  the  offenders  to  one  of  the 
secretaries  of  state,  in  order  that  his  Majesty  might  issue  a  special  commis- 
sion for  bringing  them  to  trial  in  England,  in  conformity  with  the  provisions 
of  the  statute  of  the  thirty-fifth  of  Henry  the  Eighth.^  The  last  part  of  this 
address,  which  proposed  the  transportation  from  Massachusetts  of  persons 
whom  the  government  might  reckon  offenders,  to  be  tried  before  a  tribunal 
in  England,  gave  the  highest  offence  to  the  colonists  and  provoked  their 
severest  animadversions. 

When  the  intelligence  of  these  transactions  in  the  British  senate  arrived 
in  America,  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  had  not  yet  been  convoked. 
The  earliest  as  well  as  the  most  important  measures  to  which  they  gave  rise 
occurred  in  Virginia.  This  province  had  witnessed,  in  the  autumn  of  the 
previous  year,  the  arrival  of  the  last  popular  governor  whom  she  was  to 
receive  from  Britain,  Lord  Botetourt,  an  upright,  honorable,  benevolent, 
and  accomplished  man,  a  sincere  and  zealous  friend  of  rehgion  and  virtue, 
and  a  liberal  patron  of  science  and  literature  in  Virginia.  His  desire  to 
promote  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  people  whom  he  governed,  though 
not  wholly  inefficacious,  was  counteracted  by  his  principles  of  duty  to  the 
parent  state,  and  the  strain  and  tendency  of  that  course  of  policy  which 
for  some  time  past  she  had  pursued  ;  and  it  was  perhaps  happy  for  his 
fame  that  a  sudden  death  closed  his  administration,  after  an  endurance  of 
only  two  years. 2  Some  offence  was  given  by  the  pompous  parade  ^  with 
which  he  repaired  to  meet  and  open  the  first  assembly  convoked  since  his 
arrival  [May  8],  when  he  was  drawn  by  eight  milk-white  horses,  in  a  state- 
coach  presented  to  him  by  the  king  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  his  au- 
thority by  adding  splendor  to  his  dignity  ;  and  the  same  formalities  were  ob- 
served which  attend  the  opening  of  parliament  by  the  British  monarch. 
The  sterner  and  more  jealous  abettors  of  American  freedom  and  resist- 

'  We  have  witnessed  only  one  instance  of  the  application  of  this  statute  to  America,  in  the 
trial  of  Culpepper,  in  1680,  ante,  Book  IV.,  Chap.  I. 

*  He    di*^d  lit  Williamsburg,  in  October,  1770. 

'  A  good  deal  of  state  was  always  affected  by  the  royal  ^vernorsin  America,  and  especially 
in  Vii^inia,  where  the  governor's'mansion  at  the  provincial  metropolis  was  styled  the  valace. 
Tucker  s  Uff  cf  Jefferson. 


CHAP.  IL]         RESOLUTIONS  OF  THE  VIRGINIA  ASSEMBLY.  44] 

ance  were  displeased  with  this  pageantry,  which  they  perceived  was  designed 
to  captivate  the  senses  of  the  people  and  impress  them  with  reverence  and 
abasement.  The  governor's  speech  to  the  assembly,  however,  breathed 
such  unaffected  good-will  and  conciliation  as  to  dissipate  every  sentiment  of 
jealousy  against  himself,  and  elicited  in  reply  an  address  in  the  highest  de- 
gree respectful  and  complimentary.  But  the  members  of  the  assembly  had 
not  been  heedless  or  indifferent  spectators  of  the  progressive  measures  of  the 
parent  state,  to  the  consideration  of  which,  beginning  with  the  last  parlia- 
mentary taxes,  and  ending  with  the  recent  parliamentary  declarations,  they 
promptly  yet  deliberately  addressed  their  attention.  Their  consultations 
were  no  longer  embarrassed  by  division  of  sentiment,  —  all  shades  and  dis- 
tinctions of  opinion  being  absorbed  by  one  common  and  earnest  solicitude 
for  American  liberty  And  the  most  determined  purpose  of  opposition  to  Brit- 
ish encroachment.  In  this  spirit,  they  embraced  unanimously  a  series  of 
resolutions  [May  16,  1769],  which  they  directed  their  speaker  forthwith  to 
transmit  to  all  the  houses  of  assembly  in  America,  with  a  request  that  they 
would  unite  in  corresponding  measures.  It  was  declared  in  these  resolu- 
tions that  the  sole  right  of  imposing  taxes  on  the  inhabitants  of  this  colony 
is  now,  and  ever  has  been,  legally  and  constitutionally  vested  in  the  provin- 
cial assembly  ;  that  it  is  the  privilege  of  the  inhabitants  to  petition  their 
sovereign  for  redress  of  grievances,  and  that  it  is  lawful  to  procure  the  con- 
currence of  his  Majesty's  other  colonies  in  dutiful  addresses  praying  the 
royal  interposition  in  behalf  of  the  violated  rights  of  America  ;  that  all 
trials  for  treason  or  any  other  crime,  committed  or  alleged  to  have  been 
committed  in  this  colony,  ought  to  be  conducted  before  his  Majesty's  col- 
onial courts  ;  and  that  the  transportation  of  any  person,  suspected  or  accused 
of  any  crime  whatsoever  committed  in  the  colony,  for  trial  in  another  coun- 
try, is  derogatory  to  the  rights  of  British  subjects,  inasmuch  as  the  ac- 
cused is  thereby  deprived  of  the  inestimable  privilege  of  being  tried  by  a 
jury  of  his  vicinity,  as  well  as  of  the  power  of  producing  witnesses  at  his 
trial.  The  assembly  at  the  same  time  framed  an  address  to  the  king,  in  which, 
amidst  assurances  of  loyalty  to  his  crown  and  attachment  to  his  person, 
they  expressed  a  deep  conviction  that  the  complaints  of  all  his  American 
subjects  were  well  founded. 

Lord  Botetourt,  alarmed  by  the  intelligence  of  these  transactions,  suddenly 
presented  himself  on  the  following  day  [May  17]  to  the  assembly,  which 
he  thus  briefly  addressed:  —  ''Mr.  Speaker  and  Gentlemen,  I  have  heard 
of  your  resolutions,  and  augur  ill  of  their  effects.  You  have  made  It  my 
duty  to  dissolve  you  ;  and  you  are  dissolved  accordingly."  This,  hke  the 
other  vindictive  measures  which  we  have  previously  remarked,  served  only 
to  give  an  additional  shock  to  the  British  authority  which  it  was  designed 
to  support.  The  members  promptly  obeyed  the  governor's  mandate  ;  but 
instantly  reassembled  in  a  dwelHng-house,  where,  professing  to  assume  no 
other  capacity  than  that  of  an  association  of  private  citizens  and  freeholders, 
they  chose  their  late  speaker^  Peyton  Randolph,  to  be  their  moderator  ; 
and,  in  defiance  of  the  censorious  resolution  of  the  House  of  Lords,  unan- 
imously signed  an  agreement  to  import  no  more  goods  from  Britain,  and  or- 
dered copies  of  it  to  be  dispersed  for  accessory  signatures  throughout  the 
colony.  The  people  acceded  to  this  ordinance  with  an  eagerness  which 
perhaps  the  strongest  recommendation  of  its  authors,  convoked  as  an  as- 
sembly sanctioned  by  British  authority,  would  have  been  unable  to  produce. 

VOL.   II.  56 


442  HISTORY  OJ    NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

■■  The  influence  of  this  brave  and  generous  stand  in  defence  of  American 
liberty  was  extensively  propagated  through  the  other  provinces,  and  the 
conduct  of  Virginia  became  the  theme  of  general  praise  and  imitation.  In- 
spired by  this  example,  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina  refused  obedience 
to  the  act  for  providing  accommodations  to  British  troops,  and  passed  re- 
solves corresponding  to  those  of  Virginia.  This  assembly  also  voted  and 
remitted,  in  the  course  of  the  present  year,  the  sum  of  fifteen  hundred 
pounds  to  a  political  society  established  at  London  under  the  title  of 
Supporters  of  the  Bill  of  Rights,  which  was  understood  to  be  friendly  to  the 
interests  and  claims  of  America.^  The  assemblies  of  Maryland,  Dela- 
ware, and  Georgia  adopted  the  Virginian  resolutions.  The  same  policy 
was  espoused  by  the  assembly  of  North  Carohna,  which  was  straightway 
dissolved  by  Tryon,  the  governor  ;  whereupon  the  mefnbers,  with  additional 
conformity  to  the  example  of  Virginia,  reassembled  on  the  footing  of  a 
private  association,  and  unitedly  embraced  a  resolution  against  importing 
goods  from  Britain.  Before  the  close  of  the  year,  the  assembly  of  New 
York  also  passed  resolves  in  harmony  with  those  of  Virginia.  It  was  now 
that  the  non-importation  agreement,  revived  by  Massachusetts,  was  gen- 
erally adopted  throughout  America.  Inspectors  were  appointed  by  the  po- 
litical clubs  or  other  popular  associations  to  search  all  vessels  arriving  from 
England,  and  pubhsh  the  names  of  any  Americans  who  should  presume  to 
disregard  that  agreement  ;  and  all  the  power  of  the  British  government  was 
Insufficient  to  protect  individuals  thus  denounced  from  the  storm  of  popular 
hatred  and  indignation.  Animated  with  the  spirit  of  the  measure,  the  colo- 
nists even  extended  the  interruption  of  intercourse  which  it  defined  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  its  express  requisitions  ;  and  refrained  from  or  cur- 
tailed every  expenditure  from  which  the  people  or  the  government  of  Britain 
were  supposed  to  derive  advantage.  The  Americans  had  been  accustomed 
annually  to  purchase  at  least  an  eighth  part  of  the  whole  number  of  tickets 
in  the  British  lottery  ;  but  in  the  present  year  the  orders  from  all  the 
colonies  did  not  amount  to  one  hundred  tickets.  To  supply  the  articles 
formerly  imported,  various  manufactures  now  began  to  spring  up  in  America. 
In  the  following  year,  all  the  candidates  for  the  degree  of  bachelor  of  arts 
at  Harvard  College  presented  themselves  in  suits  of  black  cloth,  the  man- 
ufacture of  New  England.  The  authorities  of  this  college  afforded  a  proof 
at  the  same  time  of  the  prevalence  of  repubhcan  principles  in  the  province, 
by  abolishing  the  practice  that  had  hitherto  prevailed  of  arranging  the 
students  in  each  class  according  to  the  supposed  rank  of  the  families  to  which 
they  belonged,  and  ordaining  that  they  should  in  future  be  ranged  in  the 
alphabetical  order  of  their  names. ^ 

When  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  w^as  at  length  necessarily  convoked, 
in  conformity  with  the  directions  of  the  provincial  charter  [May  31,  1769], 

'  Some  time  after,  the  provincial  governor,  in  obedience  to  the  king's  commands,  signified 
to  the  assembly  the  high  displeasure  with  which  his  Majesty  had  learned  this  transaction.  The 
assembly,  resenting  or  contemning  the  governor's  communication,  were  gratified  and  embold- 
ened by  the  letter  of  acknowledgment  which  they  received  from  a  committee  of  the  Supporters 
of  the  Bill  of  Rights.  This  letter,  subscribed  by  Sergeant  Glynn  and  other  distinguished 
British  patriots,  .expressed  at  once  the  profoundest  contempt  and  the  liveliest  abhorrence  of 
the  policy  of  the  British  government,  and  warmly  declared  that  the  people  of  England  would 
never  be  accessory  to  the  manifest  design  of  enslaving  their  fellow-subjects  in  America,  jin- 
nual  Register  for  1770. 

2  Annual  Register  for  1769  and  for  1770.  Burk's  Virginia:  Campbell.  Bradford.  Gor- 
don. Ramsay.  Holmes.  Williamson.  QMincy's  History  of  Harvard  University.  Collections 
of  the  Georgia  Historical  Society. 


CHAP.  II.]    RESOLUTIONS  OF  THE   MASSACHUSETTS  ASSEMBLY.         443 

it  plainly  appeared  how  little  the  interests  of  British  prerogative  had  gained 
from  the  penal  dissolution  by  which  the  functions  of  that  body  were  so 
long  suspended.  In  the  frequent  town-meetings  convoked  by  mere  popular 
will  during  the  abeyance  of  the  assembly,  little  restraint  or  moderation  pre- 
vailed ;  the  increased  force  of  passionate  currents  in  more  numerous  con- 
gregations of  men  was  strikingly  illustrated  ;  and  the  spirit  of  liberty,  freely 
indulged,  had  largely  expanded.  Men  were  now  accustomed  to  hear  that  the 
rights  of  the  American  legislatures  superseded  all  claim  of  the  British  par- 
liament to  legislative  authority  over  America  ;  and  the  longer  this  doctrine 
was  uttered,  the  more  generally  acceptable  it  became.  In  one  of  those 
meetings,  an  objection  having  been  urged  against  a  particular  motion,  on 
the  ground  that  it  imphed  a  general  independence  of  parliament,  Samuel 
Adams  warmly  combated  the  objection  ip  a  speech,  which  he  concluded  by 
declaring,  that  *'  Independent  we  are,  and  independent  we  will  6e."  Fa- 
miliarized with  such  sentiments,  even  the  most  timorous  and  prudential  poli- 
ticians ceased  to  regard  them  with  alarm.  Such  was  the  state  of  the  public 
mind  in  Massachusetts,  when  the  representative  assembly  was  again  convoked. 
Their  first  transaction  w^as  the  appointment  of  a  committee,  who  signified  to 
the  governor,  that  an  armament  investing  Boston  by  sea  and  land,  and  a 
military  guard  with  cannon  mounted  at  the  door  of  the  State-house  where 
the  representatives  of  the  people  assembled,  were  inconsistent  with  the  dig- 
nity and  freedom  of  their  deliberations  ;  and  that  they  expected  that  his  Ex- 
cellency, as  the  king's  representative,  would  order  both  the  naval  and  the 
military  force  to  be  withdrawn  during  the  legislative  session.  The  governor 
answered  to  this  application,  that  he  possessed  no  authority  over  either  the 
ships  or  the  troops  of  the  king  ;  and  as  the  assembly,  with  reiterated  com- 
plaint,* firmly  declined  to  transact  business  while  surrounded  with  an  armed 
force,  he  adjourned  the  session  to  the  town  of  Cambridge.  [July  6.]  There 
he  transmitted  to  them  the  accounts  of  the  expense  already  incurred  in 
quartering  the  British  troops,  with  a  message  requiring  that  funds  should 
be  appropriated  to  its  liquidation,  and  a  provision  made  for  the  future  quar- 
tering of  the  forces  in  Boston  and  Castle  Island  according  to  act  of  parlia- 
ment. The  assembly,  on  the  following  day  [July  7] ,  without  returning  any 
direct  answer  to  this  message,  embraced  and  recorded  a  series  of  resolutions 
equalling  in  spirit  the  resolves  of  Virginia,  and  as  boldly  gainsaying  the  re- 
cent parliamentary  declarations.  Besides  reiterating  every  claim  and  com- 
plaint on  which  the  Virginian  assembly  had  insisted,  they  declared,  that  a 
general  discontent  on  account  of  the  revenue  acts,  the  expectation  of  the 
sudden  approach  of  military  power  to  enforce  these  acts,  and  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  assembly,  were  circumstances  which  justified  the  people  in  as- 
sembling by  a  convention  of  committees,  to  consult  for  the  promotion  of 
peace  and  good  order,  and  to  present  their  united  complaints  to  the  throne  ; 
that  the  convention  could  not  possibly  be  illegal,  as  its  members  disclaimed 
all  powers  of  government  ;  that  the  estabhshment  of  a  standing  army  in  the 
province  in  time  of  peace  was  an  invasion  of  the  undoubted  rights  of  its 

•  "  The  use  of  the  military  power  to  enforce  the  execution  of  the  laws,"  they  declared 
in  a  remonstrance  to  the  governor,  "  is,  in  our  opinion,  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  a  free 
constitution  and  the  very  theory  of  government,  —  that  the  body  of  the  people,  the  posse 
cnrrtitatus,  will  always  aid  the  magistrate  in  the  execution  of  such  laws  as  ought  to  be  executed. 
The  very  supposition  of  an  unwillingness  in  the  people  in  general  that  a  law  should  be  exe- 
cuted carries  with  it  the  strongest  presumption  that  it  is  an  unjust  law,  at  least  that  it  is  un« 
salutary.  If.  cannot  be  their  law ;  for,  by  the  nature  of  a  free  constitution,  the  people  must  con^ 
sent  to  laws  before  they  ccui  be  obliged  in  conscience  to  obey  them." 


444  HISTORY   OF  north   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

inhabitants  ;  that  a  standing  army  was  not  known  as  a  branch  of  the  British 
constitutional  government ;  that  sending  armed  troops  into  the  colony,  under 
pretence  of  assisting  the  civil  authority,  was  unprecedented,  illegal,  and  highly 
dangerous  to  the  liberties  of  the  people;  that  this  measure  was  occasioned  by 
the  counsels  and  misrepresentations  of  Governor  Bernard  to  the  British 
ministry  ;  and  that  the  arrangement,  in  conformity  with  which  the  troops 
were  distributed  in  Boston,  and  the  injunction  laid  on  the  assembly  to  make 
way  for  them  by  retiring  to  Cambridge,  were  deep  and  studied  affronts  to 
the  province,  and  insulting  indications  that  the  civil  power  was  overmastered 
by  military  force.  It  was  no  small  addition  to  the  general  discontent,  that 
Bernard,  in  proportion  as  he  became  odious  to  the  people,  seemed  to 
rise  in  favor  with  the  British  court,  from  which  he  now  received  the  title  of 
a  baronet.  Undismayed  and  perhaps  rather  incited  by  this  circumstance, 
the  assembly  unanimously  voted  a  petition  to  the  king  that  he  might  be  re- 
moved for  ever  from  the  government  of  the  province  ;  but  their  petition, 
whether  it  really  exerted  any  influence  or  not,  was  treated  with  the  sem- 
blance of  contemptuous  disregard.  Bernard,  having  again  [July  12]  urgent- 
ly required  the  assembly  to  inform  him  whether  they  would  or  would  not 
make  provision  for  the  troops,  and  receiving  for  answer  that  their  honor, 
their  interest,  and  their  duty  to  their  constituents  forbade  them  to  grant  any 
such  provision,  prorogued  them  till  the  commencement  of  the  following 
year,  when  he  appointed  them  to  meet  at  Boston.  This  was  the  last  act  of 
his  illiberal  and  unhappy  administration  of  the  government  of  Massachusetts  ; 
for  he  departed  shortly  after  to  England  [August,  1769],  where  the  ministers 
desired  a  personal  consultation  with  him  on  the  state  of  affairs  in  America  ; 
and  never  returned,  though  he  continued  for  two  years  longer  to  hold  the 
title  of  governor  of  Massachusetts.  His  official  functions  during  this  inter- 
val were  executed  by  Hutchinson,  the  heutenant-governor.^ 

Amidst  these  agitating  scenes  of  passion,  contention,  and  violence,  and 
the  thickening,  stormy  aspect  of  the  political  horizon  of  America,  there 
occurred  at  this  period  some  transactions,  memorable,  yet  of  milder  inter- 
est, and  illustrative  or  promotive  of  the  excellence  and  improvement  of 
American  character.  We  have  alluded  to  the  generous  efforts  of  Lord 
Botetourt,  by  which  knowledge  and  piety  were  promoted  in  Virginia.  A 
more  powerful  impulse  was  imparted  to  these  pursuits,  and  a  signal  advan- 
tage conferred  also  on  the  cause  of  civil  Hberty,  by  the  resort  to  America 
of  Dr.  John  Witherspoon,  one  of  the  greatest  divines  that  the  church  of 
Scotland  has  ever  produced,  —  pious,  pure,  upright,  sincere,  and  dauntless 
in  his  character  and  conduct,  —  endowed  with  a  vigorous  and  comprehen- 
sive mind,  —  an  accomphshed  scholar,  and  second  to  none  of  his  contem- 
poraries either  in  the  attainments  of  ethical  philosophy  or  in  the  felicities 
of  graceful  and  perspicuous  eloquence.  Harassed  by  long  persecution  from 
a  numerous  party  both  among  the  clergy  ^  and  the  laity  of  his  native  coun- 
try, against  whom  he  vainly  strove  to  restore  the  primitive  strictness  of 
ecclesiastical  discipline,  and  to  defend  the  popular  election  of  ministers  in 
opposition  to  the  pretensions  of  royal  and  aristocratical  patronage  in  the 

'  Bradford.  Gordon.  Hutchinson.  Eliot.  Pitkin.  Among  other  friends  of  America  by 
whom  Bernard  was  loaded  with  opprobrium  on  his  return  to  England,  old  General  Ogle- 
thorpe is  said  to  have  personally  expressed  to  him  the  utmost  disgust  and  abhorrence  at  his 
conduct.  Wirt.  When  he  was  asked  if  he  had  not  been  afraid  to  ride  or  walk  out  alone  in  a 
province  where  he  was  so  generally  detested,  he  answered,  "  No ;  they  are  not  a  l^loodthirsty 
people."  ■  •    ' 

2  Of  whom  the  principal  leader  was  Dr.  Robertson,  the  historian. 


CHAP.  II.J    RHODE  ISLAND  COLLEGE.— DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE.  445 

church  of  Scotland,  he  at  length  accepted  an  invitation  to  preside  over 
the  College  of  New  Jersey,  and  for  this  purpose  repaired  in  the  foregoing 
year  to  Princeton,  —  sacrificing  to  his  hopes  of  usefulness  in  this  sphere  a 
valuable  estate  which  one  of  his  relations  offered  to  settle  upon  him  if  he 
would  remain  in  Scotland.  He  produced  an  important  change  in  the  sys- 
tem of  education  both  of  the  New  Jersey  College  and  of  other  American 
seminaries  ;  extending  the  study  of  mathematical  science,  and  introducing 
into  the  course  of  instruction  in  natural  philosophy  many  improvements 
which  were  previously  but  little  known.  The  system  of  tuition  in  moral 
philosophy  he  placed  on  a  new  and  improved  basis  ;  and  he  is  cited  as  the 
first  teacher  in  America  of  the  substance  of  those  doctrines  of  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  human  mind  which  the  Scottish  metaphysician,  Dr.  Reid,  after- 
wards more  fully  developed.  Under  his  presidency,  more  attention  was  paid 
than  before  to  the  principles  of  taste  and  composition,  and  to  the  study  of 
elegant  literature.  Witherspoon  cordially  espoused  the  cause  of  America  in 
the  controversy  with  Britain  ;  defending  it  with  admirable  vigor  and  sim- 
plicity by  his  pen  ;  exalting  it  in  the  pulpit  by  associating  the  interests  of 
civil  and  religious  truth  and  freedom  ;  and  zealously  cooperating  in  its  ac- 
tive vindication  by  his  counsels  and  labors  in  the  revolutionary  senate.  He 
was  accompanied  from  Scotland  by  a  number  of  his  countrymen,  who  formed 
a  settlement  which  long  continued  honorably  to  reflect  the  piety  and  good 
morals,  the  industry,  simphcity,  and  moderation  of  its  founders.^ 

The  present  year  was  signalized  in  Rhode  Island  by  the  commence- 
ment of  a  course  of  collegiate  instruction  at  Warren,  in  the  county  of  Bristol. 
In  consequence  of  the  petition  of  a  number  of  respectable  inhabitants  of 
this  province,  the  fundamental  charter  of  the  college  was  granted  by  the 
provincial  assembly  in  1764.  By  this  charter  there  were  incorporated 
thirty-six  trustees,  of  whom  twenty-two  were  Baptists,  five  were  Quakers, 
five  Episcopalians,  and  four  Congregationalists  ;  and  it  was  provided  that  this 
proportion  should  be  perpetually  preserved  !  a  provision  which  will  be  de- 
rided or  applauded,  according  as  it  is  regarded  as  an  attempt  to  perpetuate 
existing  diversities,  or  to  defend  and  secure  the  liberty  of  religious  opin- 
ion. In  conformity  with  the  spirit  of  all  the  other  institutions  of  the  prov- 
ince, it  was  farther  decreed  by  the  collegiate  charter  that  all  the  members 
of  the,pollege  should  for  ever  enjoy  free,  absolute,  and  uninterrupted  liberty 
of  conscience  ;  and  that  Protestants  of  any  denomination  whatever  should  be 
eligible  to  all  the  official  appointments,  except  that  of  president  of  the  trus- 
tees, which  was  reserved  exclusively  for  an  individual  of  the  Baptist  persua- 
sion.    In  1770,  this  college  was  removed  to  Providence.^ 

Dartmouth  College,  in  New  Hampshire,  was  also  founded  in  the  present 
year.  It  derived  its  name  from  William,  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  one  of  its 
most  considerable  benefactors,  and  owed  its  existence  to  the  active  piety 
and  benevolence  of  Eleazer  Wheelock,  minister  of  the  parish  of  Lebanon, 
in  Connecticut.  At  Lebanon,  Wheelock  had  many  years  before  founded 
and  assisted  in  conducting  an  academy  devoted  especially  to  the  instruction 
of  missionaries  designed  to  spread  the  gospel  among  the  Indian  tribes.  Many 
of  the  children  of  the  Indians  themselves  received  education  at  this  school 
with   so  much  apparent  advantage,  that  sanguine  expectations  were  formed 

*  L/Jfi  of  IVltherspoon,  prefixed  to  his  fVorks.  MS.  account  of  him.  Miller's  Retrospect. 
Dwight's  Travels. 

^  Morse,  Art.  Rhode  Island.  »  i 

LL 


446  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

of  the  efficacy  of  their  assistance  in  persuading  their  countrymen  to  em- 
brace Christianity.  Some  of  them  displayed  considerable  genius,  and  ac- 
quired the  elements  of  hterature  and  science  with  as  much  facility  as  any  of 
their  white  companions  ;  but,  in  the  end,  almost  all  of  them  renounced  the 
advantages  they  had  gained,  and  returned  to  the  rudeness  and  freedom,  as 
they  esteemed  it,  of  savage  life.  One  of  them,  however,  Sampson  Occom, 
a  Mohican,  persisting  in  his  altered  manners,  advanced  so  far  in  learning,  and 
conducted  himself  with  so  much  propriety,  that  he  received  a  regular  ordi- 
nation to  ministerial  functions  from  the  presbytery  of  Suffolk  in  Long  Island. 
Shortly  after,  he  became  a  missionary,  and  preached  for  a  while  to  the 
Indians  ;  but  soon  quitting  a  sphere  where  his  change  of  manners  exposed 
him  to  contempt  and  aversion,  for  one  where  it  rendered  him  the  object 
of  interest  and  admiration,  he  began  to  preach  among  the  European  colo- 
nists to  crowded  and  astonished  audiences.  Few  persons  had  believed  that 
an  Indian  was  capable  of  preaching  with  inteUigence  and  propriety  ;  and 
multitudes  regarded  the  fact  with  as  much  rapture  as  if  it  had  been  a  mir- 
acle. Wheelock,  who  had  been  for  some  time  contemplating  an  enlargement 
of  the  plan  of  his  academy,  perceiving  the  impression  that  Occom  produced, 
was  struck  with  the  idea  of  sending  him  along  with  another  friend  of  his 
own,  of  European  extraction,  to  England,  in  order  to  solicit  benefactions  for 
a  college  to  be  erected  in  the  wilderness,  and  devoted  principally  to  the  ed- 
ucation of  Indian  youths.  This  well  devised  project  was  executed  in  the 
year  1766,  when  the  appearance  of  Occom  in  England  excited  a  hvely  sen- 
sation in  the  minds  of  people  of  all  ranks. ^  Here  was  demonstrative  proof 
that  attempts  to  convert  the  Indians  were  not  misapplied  ;  that  an  Indian 
could  even  maintain  a  life  so  blameless,  display  so  much  piety,  and  acquire 
so  much  knowledge,  as  to  be  judged  worthy  of  receiving  clerical  ordination ; 
and  that  (which,  indeed,  was  no  very  significant  circumstance)  he  could 
preach  in  such  a  manner  as  to  engage  the  attention  of  a  polite  English  audi- 
ence. All  diffidence  of  the  propriety  of  Indian  missions  was  now  dispelled, 
and  the  most  obstinate  disbelief  put  to  silence.  Occom,  indeed,  pos- 
sessed respectable,  but  not  superior  talents,  sincere  religious  impressions, 
and  an  eloquence,  of  which  the  efficacy  was  aided  by  the  peculiarity  of  his 
appearance  and  the  simplicity  of  his  manners.  The  deficiencies  in  his  dis- 
courses, to  which  persons  of  profound  and  enlightened  piety  might  have  ob- 
jected, were  more  than  atoned  in  their  eyes  by  consideration  of  his  savage 
extraction  ;  and  the  plainness  with  which  he  stated  the  most  humihating 
truths  of  the  gospel  was  stripped  of  much  of  its  offisnce  to  worldly  and 
aristocratic  hearers  by  a  manner  which  it  was  impossible  to  tax  with  vul- 
garity. In  such  circumstances,  benefactions  to  the  projected  college  were 
solicited  with  a  success  which  exceeded  the  most  sanguine  expectations  of 
Wheelock  and  his  friends.  The  king  declared  himself  a  patron  of  the  in- 
stitution ;  his  example  was  followed  by  many  persons  of  distinction  ;  and 
large  sums  of  money  in  aid  of  its  design  were  subscribed  in  England, 
Scotland,  and  America.  The  money  collected  in  England  was  placed  in 
the  hands  of  certain  trustees,  of  whom  the  Earl  of  Dartmouth,  president 
of  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  himself  a  considerable  subscriber,  was  at  the 
head  ;  and  the  funds  contributed  in  Scotland  were  committed  to  the  So- 
ciety for  promoting  Christian  Knowledge. 

*  "  14th  April,  1766.  Yesterday  a  North  American  Indian,  a  convert  to  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, preached  a  sermon  at  the  Rev.  Dr.  Chandler's  meeting,  in  the  Old  Jewry,  to  a  very 
numerous  and  polite  audience."     Chronicle  of  the  Annual  Register  for  1766. 


CHAP.  II.]      DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE.  — GEORGE  WHITEFIELD.  447 

As  an  improvement  on  the  original  plan,  it  was  determined  to  increase 
the  number  of  youths  of  European  extraction  to  be  educated  with  the  In- 
dians both  in  literary  and  in  agricultural  exercises  ;  that  the  Indians  might 
be  the  more  strongly  invited  to  these  employments  by  the  prevalence  of 
example,  and  weaned  from  the  prejudice  they  had  universally  imbibed,  that 
to  delve  the  earth  was  a  pursuit  beneath  the  dignity  of  man.  When,  in 
the  present  year,  the  design  of  withdrawing  the  college  from  Connecticut 
was  finally  announced,  various  offers  of  land  for  the  reception  of  the  trans- 
planted establishment  were  made  by  the  neighbouring  provinces.  Wheelock, 
with  the  approbation  of  the  trustees  in  England,  accepted  the  invitation  of 
New  Hampshire  ;  and  the  township  of  Hanover,  on  the  eastern  bank  of 
Connecticut  River,  was  finally  appropriated  as  the  most  convenient  site  of 
the  institution.  In  a  charter  of  incorporation  afterwards  granted  by  the 
governor  of  New  Hampshire,  Wheelock  was  declared  the  founder  and  pres- 
ident of  Dartmouth  College;  a  board  of  twelve  trustees  was  constituted 
with  perpetual  succession  ;  and  the  college  was  endowed  with  a  landed  es- 
tate of  forty-four  thousand  acres  in  extent.  The  establishment  proved 
advantageous  to  the  European  colonists  of  America  ;  but  its  primary  design 
of  educating  Indians  and  missionaries  to  the  Indians  was  completely  frus- 
trated and  abandoned  in  despair.^  The  number  of  Indian  students  and 
missionaries  progressively  decreased  ;  but  the  number  of  lay  students  of 
European  extraction  was  progressively  augmented.^  We  have  already  re- 
marked the  high  consideration  which  has  been  always  most  justly  attached 
to  the  instruction  and  the  instructors  of  youth  in  America,  and  especially  in 
the  States  of  New  England.  The  annals  of  these  provinces,  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  present  us  with  many  instances  of  men,  who,  after 
gaining  distinguished  eminence  in  the  civil  or  military  service  of  their  coun- 
try, devoted  a  large  proportion  of  their  fortunes  to  the  erection  of  seminaries 
of  education,  and  who  in  some  instances  assumed  a  personal  share  in  the 
labors  of  tuition.  The  instruction  of  mankind  is  doubtless  a  more  inter- 
esting task,  and  the  beneficial  influence  of  education  on  the  mass  of  the 
community  more  visible  and  decisive,  in  American  than  in  European  states. 
The  connection  between  moral  improvement  and  temporal  prosperity  is  pe- 
culiarly close  in  America,  where  the  field  of  exertion  is  boundless,  and 
the  competition  of  talent  is  free  ;  and  where  every  new  fountain  of  knowl- 
edge sees  the  benefit  of  its  streams  reflected  from  an  immediate  expanse  of 
public  prosperity  and  private  happiness. 

Dr.  Lionel  Chalmers,  a  native  of  Carapbelltown,  in  Scotland,  who  had 
emigrated  in  early  youth  to  America,  where  he  attained  very  high  repute  as 
a  physician,  began  about  this  time  to  distinguish  himself  by  a  series  of  useful 
and  excellent  disquisitions  on  the  soil,  climate,  and  diseases  of  South  Carolina.^ 

The  exertions  of  George  Whitefield,  the  Methodist,  in  America,  have 
already  engaged  our  attention.  In  this  country,  Whitefield  was  more  de- 
sirous to  awaken  a  general  concern  for  religion,  and  to  promote  exertions 
of  charity  and  benevolence  on  rehgious  principles,  than  to  found  a  distinct 
religious  sect  or   association.     Though  originally  the  pupil  of  Wesley,  he 

'  "  You  are  not  to  suppose  that  any  blame  is  on  that  account  to  be  attached  either  to  Dr. 
Wheelock,  or  to  any  others  intrusted  with  this  concern.  An  Indian  student  cannot  be  ob- 
tained, ordinarily,  without  extreme  difficulty.  What  is  at  least  as  unfortunate,  his  habits  are 
in  a  great  measure  fixed  before  he  can  be  brought  to  a  place  of  education,  and  more  resemble 
those  of  a  deer  or  a  fox  than  those  of  a  civilized  youth.  In  the  literal  sense,  he  must  be 
tamed  ;  and  to  tame  him  is  scarcely  possible."     Dwight. 

*  Belknap.    Holmes.    Dwight.  "  Ramsay. 


448  HISTORY  OF   NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

was,  shortly  after  his  first  visit  to  America,  completely  and  even  passion- 
ately estranged  from  the  peculiar  creed  and  the  friendship  of  his  spiritual 
preceptor.  But  farther  experience  of  the  world,  and  of  each  other's  char- 
acters and  views,  substantially  reunited  these  illustrious  men ;  and  though 
Whitefield  to  the  last  condemned  the  logical  unsoundness  of  part  of  Wes- 
ley's doctrine,  yet  he  regarded  him  with  the  warmest  love  and  veneration, 
and  in  his  last  illness  desired  that  Wesley  might  preach  his  funeral  sermon. 
Whitefield  died  in  New  England,  about  a  year  after  the  present  period. 
During  the  greater  part  of  his  career  in  America,  Wesley,  resigning  this 
sphere  of  exertion  to  him,  made  no  attempt  to  interfere  with  or  disturb  his 
labors.  But  in  the  present  year,  Wesley,  animated  by  the  success  he  had 
obtained  in  England,  and  accounting  farther  forbearance  unnecessary,  de- 
spatched for  the  first  time  two  of  the  preachers  of  his  peculiar  doctrines  and 
ordinances  to  America,  —  where  their  exertions,  aided  by  subsequent  coad- 
jutors, were  so  successful,  that,  within  twenty-four  years  after,  the  Wes- 
leyan  Methodists  in  America  amounted  in  number  to  more  than  sixty  thou- 
sand persons,  of  whom  about  sixteen  thousand  were  people  of  color. ^  Meth- 
odism, from  this  epoch,  spread  widely  in  America  ;  and  piety  and  virtue, 
gravity  and  industry,  moderation  and  contentment,  were  the  fruits  which 
invariably  attended  its  progress.  A  great  many  slaveholders  were  induced 
by  the  Methodist  preachers  to  give  liberty  to  their  negroes. 

A  transit  of  the  planet  Venus  across  the  sun's  disk,  occurring  this  year, 
was  surveyed  from  Harvard  College  by  Winthrop,  with  science  truly  so 
called,  because  blended  with  religion.  He  was  desirous  to  arrest  the  at- 
tention of  the  existing  generation  of  his  countrymen  by  the  consideration 
of  a  celestial  phenomenon  which  they  could  never  again  behold  ;  and  de- 
livered two  lectures  on  the  subject  in  the  college  chapel,  which,  at  the 
request  of  his  audience,  he  afterwards  published.^  This  excellent  and  ac- 
complished man  successfully  defended  the  employment  of  electrical  con- 
ductors against  the  opposition  of  some  ignorant  fanatics,  who  maintained, 
that,  as  thunder  and  lightning  are  tokens  and  instruments  of  divine  displeas- 
ure, it  must  be  impious  to  attempt  any  restraint  of  their  vindictive  efficacy.^ 

It  was  in  the  present  year,  also,  that  the  celebrated  Daniel  Boon,  of 
North  Carolina,  a  colonel  of  militia,  but  more  commonly  known  by  his  sub- 
sequent tide  of  General  in  the  service  of  America,  commenced  that  course 
of  adventurous  and  exploratory  labor  from  which  originated  the  plantation 
and  establishment  of  the  province  of  Kentucky.  This  territory  was  first 
visited  in  1767  by  John  Finlay,  an  inhabitant  of  North  Carolina,  and  some 
fellow-travellers,  who  circulated  the  most  flattering  accounts  of  it  in  Amer- 
ica. In  the  present  year,  it  was  visited  by  Boon,  who,  with  Finlay  and 
some  other  hunting  associates,  remained  two  years  in  the  country,  and  com- 
pletely explored  it.  In  the  following  year,  it  was  again  visited  and  sur- 
veyed by  James  Knox  and  forty  other  Virginian  hunters.  The  first  per- 
manent settlement  in  Kentucky  was  made  by  Boon  and  his  family,  ac- 
companied by  certain  of  their  Virginian  and  Carolinian  friends,  in  the  year 

*  Holmes. 

2  Eliot.  Winthrop  prefixed  this  motto  to  the  publication  of  his  lectures :  —  ^gite^  mortales ! 
et  oculos  in  spectaculum  vertite,  quod  hue  usque  spectaverunt  perpavxissimi :  spectaturi  iterum 
sunt  nulli. 

David  Rittenhouse  also  made  a  scientific  observation  of  the  same  celestial  phenomenon, 
and  at  one  stage  of  the  spectacle  is  reported  to  have  fainted  from  excess  of  delight  and  admira- 
tion.    Dr.  Rush. 

^  Q,uincy'8  History  of  Harvard  University. 


CftAP.  lU]  IMPOWCY  or  THE  BRITJftH  MEASURES.  4^. 

1773.  This  occupation  was  reckoned  an  iafriagement  of  the  rights  of  the: 
Cherokee  Indians,  whose  claim  to  the  territory  had  been  recently  recog- 
nized in  a  treaty  between  tliem  and  the  British  government  ;  but  it  was 
legitimated  about  two  years  afterwards,  by  an  extensive  purchase  of  the  land 
adjacent  to  Kentucky  River,  which  was  transacted  with  the  Cherokees  by 
Richard  Henderson,  of  Virginia.  The  colonization  of  the  new  territory 
was  gradually  extended  by  the  resort  of  emigrants  to  it  from  several  of  the 
American  States.  Of  all  the  early  settlers  the  most  renowned  was  Dan- 
iel Boon.  He  was  a  native  of  Virginia,  and  a  very  remarkable  specimen 
of  human  character  and  taste  ;  contemplative,  sagacious,  and  though  httle: 
conversant,  yet  not  wholly  untinctured,  with  letters  ;^  ardent  and  enterpris- 
ing, yet  enamoured  of  solitude  ;  and  no  less  distinguished  by  the  strength- 
^nd  vigor  of  his  frame,  and  the  courage  and  constancy  of  his  soul,  than  by 
the  tenderness  of  his  heart  and  the  mildness  of  his  manners.  He  first  re- 
oaoved  from  his  native  province  to  a  desert  part  of  North  Carolina  ;  and 
thence^  accompanied  by  a  sjuall  band  of  friends  who  partook  his  tastes  and 
depended  on  his  geioius,  he  performed  his  more  famous  migration  to  Ken- 
tucky. These  adventurers,  attached  to  hunting  and  solitude,  served  as  aa: 
advanced  guard  or  body  of  pioneers  to  a  race  of  more  stationary  colonists  i 
commencing  settlements  at  a  great  variety  of  spots,  which  they  successively 
abandoned  to  other  emigrants,  from  whose  approaches  and  vicinity  thejr 
invariably  receded.  Bravely  persisting  in  a  course  of  hfe  fraught  with  labor 
and  danger,  and  yet  attended  with  health,  strength,  and  happiness  unstained: 
by  guilt,^  they  laid  the  foundation  of  a  great  and  flourishing  State,  which, 
only  fifteen  years  after  its  colonization  began,  contained  a  population  of 
CDore  than  eighty  thousand  souls.^ 


CHAPTER    III 


Impolicy  of  the  British  Measures.  —  Affiray  betweea  the  Troops  and  the  Feopfe  of  Boston.  — 
Partial  Repeal  of  the  Tea-duty  Act  —  unsatisfactory  to  the  Americana.  —  Perplexity  of  the; 
British  Ministry.  —  Tucker's  Scheme.  —  Writers  on  the  American  Controversy.  —  Insur- 
rection of  the  Regulators  in  North  Carolina.  —  Resistance  in  Rhode  Island. —  Governor 
Hutchmson.  —  Proceedings  in  Massachusetts  —  and  in  Virginia.  —  Attempt  of  Massachu- 
setts to  abolish  the  Slave-trade  ^-  resisted  by  the  British  Government.  —  British  Attempt 
to  exact  the  Tea-duty  —  successfully  resisted  in  America  —  tumultuously  defeated  at  Bos- 
ton. —  Disclosure  of  Hutchinson's  Letters.  —  Dismissal  of  Franklin  from  the  British  Service. 
—  Taunting  Language  in  England.  —  The  Shakers.  —  European  Emigrations  to  America. 

/-Nothing  could  be  more  unwise  or  illiberal  than  the  plan,  if  plan  it  may 
be  called,  of  policy  pursued  by  the  British  government  in  the  controversy 
with  America.  It  was  varied  only  by  alternations  of  unjust  encroachment, 
haughty  menace,  and  concession  so  tardily  yielded  and  so  insolently  ex- 
pressed, as  to  be  always  inefficacious,  and  generally  affronting.     Where  it 

'  All  the  accounts  of  him  that  I  have  seen  agree  in  representing  him  as  wholly  illiterate  ; 
and  yet,  many  years  after  this  period,  he  wrote  an  interesting  and  even  elegant  narrative  of 
his  early  adventures  in  Kentucky,  wliich  is  published  in  Imlay's  Topographical  Description 
of  the  Western  Territory  nf  JVortfi  America^  and  also  prefixed  to  MeteaJf's  Collection  of  J^arra- 
tives  of  Indian  Warfare  in  the  West.  ..,-,.♦    -..•  '»  ,»  ■:. 

2  See  Note  XXXI ,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  v~ -     r   ^^   •  =- 

3  Humphrey  Marshall's  History  t^  KetUucky.  Xarralivt  af  tki  JUvmturta  of  Daniel  Boen, 
from  his  first  Arrival  in  Kentucky.,  in  1769,  to  the  End  of  the  Year  1782.     Holmes.     Warden. 

VOL.    II.  57  LL* 


450  ■     HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

announced  vigor,  it  served  to  rouse  and  exasperate  the  Americans  ;  where  it 
affected  lenity,  it  encouraged  without  conciliating  them.^  Its  illiberahty 
arose  from  the  character  of  the  king  and  the  temper  of  the  British  parha- 
ment  and  nation  ;  its  incoherence  and  imbecility  may  be  traced  partly  to 
the  composition,  and  partly  to  the  fluctuations,  of  the  British  cabinet.^  Each 
successive  administration,  inheriting  the  sprrit  of  its  predecessors,  or  con- 
trolled by  the  temper  of  the  court  or  nation,  but  regardless  of  the  credit  of 
the  measures  of  former  cabinets,  and  willing  to  evade  any  share  of  their 
unpopularity,  repealed  them  with  a  readiness  that  inspirited,  and  yet  with 
an  insolence  that  provoked,  the  colonists  ;  assigning  as  the  sole  reasons  of 
repeal  motives  of  English  interest  and  convenience,  which  arraigned  the 
wisdom  of  the  authors  of  those  measures,  guarded  the  dignity  of  the  re- 
pealing cabinet,  and  soothed  the  pride  of  the  nation.  The  lessons  so  plain- 
ly taught  by  the  introduction  and  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  instead  of 
operating  as  a  warning,  were  perversely  used  as  a  model,  to  which  the 
British  government  with  steadfast  pride  continued  ever  after  to  accommodate 
its  policy,  which  was  always  wise  too  late,  and  vibrated  between  the  opposite 
traits  of  rashness  in  repeating  irritating  measures,  and  delay  in  applying 
remedial  ones,  which  were  invariably  deferred  till  the  relative  evils  had  be- 
come incurable.  It  seemed  as  if  the  first  false  step  made  by  Grenville 
had  pledged  his  country  to  persist  in  a  perilous  experiment,  in  which  the 
chances  of  success  were  additionally  diminished  by  frequent  changes  in  the 
instrumental  process,  arising  mainly  from  the  fluctuating  composition  of  the 
cabinet.  Those  changes,  it  is  true,  were  promoted  in  some  degree  by  the 
violent  resistance  of  the  Americans  to  every  form  in  which  the  overture  of 
bereaving  them  of  their  liberties  was  repeated  ;  but  this  circumstance  was 
either  never  clearly  perceived  or  never  justly  appreciated  by  the  British 
ministers,  who,  with  amazing  folly,  believed,  that,  by  abandoning  an  assault 
upon  American  liberty  in  one  quarter,  they  would  facilitate  an  attempt 
upon  it  in  another.  With  strange  disregard  or  misconception  of  the  most 
notorious  properties  of  human  nature,  they  believed,  or  at  least  acted  as 
if  they  believed,  that  all  the  indignant  and  courageous  spirit  aroused  in  a 
brave  and  free  people  by  an  obnoxious  measure  must  be  instantly  dissipated 
or  assuaged  by  its  repeal  ;  that  provocations  might  be  repeated  without 
producing  any  increase  or  accumulation  of  hostile  and  impatient  sentiment ; 
and  that  it  was  always  in  their  power,  by  a  change  of  policy,  however  tardy, 
however  ungracious,  however  flattering  to  the  eflicacy  of  American  resistance, 
at  once  to  disband  all  the  swelling  host  of  angry  passions  from  whose  col- 
lected fury  and  victorious  force  or  menace  they  were  compelled  to  retreat. 
Yet  every  observant  man,  who  has  witnessed  the  rise  and  progress  of  a  rev- 
olution, must  have  remarked  that  a  nation  excited  to  violent  resistance  of 
oppression  is  less  gratified  by  immediate  success  than  disquieted  by  a  crav- 

'  It  was  about  this  time  that  a  party  of  English  noblemen  and  gentlemen,  travelling  in  Ger- 
many, were  entertained  at  Potsdam  by  Frederick  (styled  the  Great),  king  of  Prussia,  who  took 
occasion  to  turn  the  discourse  on  the  controversy  between  Britain  and  America.  He  said  that 
it  was  a  difficult  thing  to  govern  men  by  force  at  such  a  distance;  that,  if  the  Americans  should 
be  beaten,  which  appeared  a  little  problematical,  still  it  would  be  next  to  impossible  to  draw 
a  revenue  from  them  by  taxation  ;  that,  if  the  English  intended  conciliation,  their  measures 
were  too  rough  ;  and  if  subjugation,  they  were  too  gentle.     Moore's  Travels  in  Germany. 

*  The  frequent  changes  of  administration  in  the  commencement  of  the  reign  of  George  the 
Third  have  been  ascribed,  with  much  show  of  reason,  by  Edmund  Burke,  to  a  design  cher- 
ished at  court  of  destroying,  by  deceiving,  disuniting,  and  disgracing,  the  leading  members  of 
the  Whiggish  aristocracy  of  England.  See  Burke's  Thoughts  on  the  Causes  of  the  existing' 
Discontents,'      t.-'T-iH    •♦r-' yi  v^vHt  *s^l-isi  V■♦'^^  ^  -  ■■  ,-"■- '^  ,.*■■  ,t>- '•■ -^-^'^  ^'' ^:.-^-'.-^" "- '■^.*-f*  •''' -'* 


CHAP,  in.]  IMPOLICY  OF  THE  BRITISH   MEASURES.  45| 

ing  demand  for  some  object  whereon  to  wreak  its  exuberant  energy  and 
unexpended  rage.  What  would  have  been  the  entire  effect  of  a  deliberate 
espousal  and  steady  prosecution  of  lenient  and  liberal  policy  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  define  ;  but  we  may  safely  conclude  that  most  probably  it  would 
have  promoted  the  interest,  and  certainly  it  would  not  have  impaired  the 
honor  and  dignity,  of  Great  Britain.  A  uniform  course  of  rigorous  asser- 
tion of  authority,  on  the  other  hand,  would  have  accelerated  a  critical  strug- 
gle, of  which  the  retardation  was  highly  favorable  to  the  interests  of  Ameri- 
can liberty.  By  the  course  (for  truly  it  is  an  abuse  of  language  to  term  it 
a  plan)  which  was  actually  pursued,  the  Americans  were  thoroughly  aroused 
by  attacks  on  a  great  variety  of  points,  animated  by  partial  successes, 
strengthened  by  the  lapse  of  time,  and  confirmed  in  obstinacy  of  purpose 
by  protracted  and  indecisive  contention. 

Every  principle  of  good  policy,  deducible  from  the  issue  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  manifestly  inculcated  that  Britain  should  either  desist  altogether  from 
attempts  to  tax  America,  or  at  least  should  impose  no  tax  obnoxious  to 
the  general  opposition,  or  defeasible  by  the  general  resistance  of  the  col- 
onists. A  second  and  similar  failure  in  an  experiment  of  such  importance 
was  by  all  means  to  be  avoided  ;  and  Townshend,  indeed,  had  vainly  imag- 
ined that  by  his  Tea-duty  Act  he  at  once  asserted  the  authority  of  Britain, 
and  obviated  the  scruples  and  objections  of  America.  But,  with  the  pres- 
ent ministry,  this  measure  possessed  no  claim  of  parental  or  kindly  regard 
sufficient  to  counterbalance  the  difficulties  occasioned  by  the  vehement 
opposition  of  the  Americans,  and  the  remonstrances  of  the  British  mer- 
chants who  suffered  from  the  non-importation  agreements.  Reckoning  the 
authority  which  they  administered  defied,  and  actuated  by  a  sense  of  of- 
fended dignity,  they  embraced  vindictive  measures  against  the  colonists  on 
account  of  the  mode  in  which  they  had  conducted  their  opposition  to  a 
statute  for  which  the  cabinet  itself  entertained  little  concern  or  respect.  They 
even  warmly  opposed  a  proposition  for  the  repeal  of  this  statute,  which, 
with  strange  inconsistency,  was  introduced  in  the  close  of  the  same  session 
of  parliament  that  produced  the  violent  address  to  the  king  against  the  prov- 
ince of  Massachusetts.  On  this  occasion,  it  was  contended  by  the  ministers 
and  their  friends,  with  sincere  and  exalted  folly,  that  repeal,  though  warrant- 
ed and  even  enjoined  by  general  principles  of  national  policy,  was  forbid- 
den by  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  juncture  ;  and  Lord  North,  in 
particular,  declared,  that,  "  however  prudence  or  policy  may  hereafter  induce 
us  to  repeal  the  late  act,  I  hope  we  shall  never  think  of  it  till  we  see  Jlmer" 
ica  prostrate  at  our  feet.'*'*  Yet,  no  sooner  was  the  parliamentary  session 
concluded,  than  the  ministers  gave  notice  to  the  provincial  agents  and  other 
persons  interested  in  American  affairs  at  London,  that  in  the  following 
year  the  grievances  of  America  should  be  certainly  redressed  ;  and  in  the 
course  of  the  summer,  Lord  Hillsborough,  in  circular  letters  to  all  the 
colonies,  signified  the  intention  of  himself  and  his  colleagues  "  to  propose 
in  the  next  session  of  parliament  taking  off  the  duties  on  glass,  paper,  and 
colors,  upon  consideration  of  such  duties  having  been  laid  contrary  to  the  true 
principles  of  commerce''^ ;  and  declared  that  the  cabinet  ''entertained  no  de- 
sign to  propose  to  parliament  to  lay  any  farther  taxes  on  America  for  the 
purpose  of  raising  a  revenue." 

Lord  Botetourt,  on  receiving  this  intelligence,  hastened  to  communicate 
it  to  the  Virginian  assembly  (which  he  reconvoked)  in  a  speech  so  cour- 


452  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

teotis  and  conciliatory,  and  expressive  of  so  much  warmth  of  regard  for 
America,  that  his  language  gave  to  the  tidings  it  conveyed  more  influence 
than  was  due  to  their  own  intrinsic  grace  ;  and  yet  the  assembly,  though 
they  returned  an  affectionate  and  respectful  answer  to  his  communication, 
expressed  hope  and  confidence  in  a  tone  that  implied  fear  and  distrust. 
When  the  impression  produced  by  Loi-d  Botetourt's  gracious  manners  had 
subsided,  they  recorded  in  their  journals  a  protest  expressive  of  their  con- 
viction that  partial  remedies  were  incompetent  to  heal  the  existing  distem- 
pers. To  the  Americans  in  general  the  intelligence  transmitted  by  Lord 
Hillsborough  was  far  from  satisfactory.  The  purposed  exception  of  the 
duty  on  tea  from  repeal,  and  the  professed  design  of  repealing  the  other 
duties  upon  mere  commercial  principles,  excited  anew  their  jealousy,  and 
confirmed  them  in  the  opinion  that  the  groundwork  of  the  present  grievances 
Ivas  not  to  be  abandoned,  but  to  be  reserved  for  a  future  opportunity  of 
fresh  essays  fof  the  imposition  of  internal  taxes  boundless  in  extent  and  end- 
less in  deration.  No  sooner  was  the  tenor  of  Lord  Hillsborough's  letter 
tvm.de  known  in  Massachusetts,  than  the  merchants  and  traders  of  Boston, 
at  a  general  meeting,  unaniraously  resolved  that  the  projected  repeal  was 
iBtended  merely  to  gratify  the  British  manufacturers,  and  was  inadequate  to 
repair  or  remedy  the  grievances  of  America ;  and  they  renewed  their 
former  agreement  to  i-mport  no  more  goods  from  Britain  till  the  late  revenue 
acts  should  be  totally  repealed.  So  little  of  pacific  influence  did  Lord 
Hillsborough's  cofnmunication  exert,  that,  in  Pennsylvania,  a  much  stronger 
demonstration  of  aversion  was  elicited  by  the  terms  of  the  proposed  repeal 
than  had  been  provoked  by  the  measure  itself  which  was  to  be  partially 
abrogated.  A  committee  of  the  principal  merchants  of  Philadelphia,  in  a 
letter  addressed  to  the  merchants  of  London,  protested  that  the  system  of 
government  disclosed  by  all  the  measures  of  the  present  reign  was  such  as 
the  Americans  could  not  tamely  submit  to  [November  25,  1769]  ;  that  this 
system  tended  to  sap  the  foundations  of  liberty,  justice,  and  property  in 
America,  and  to  strip  her  citizens  of  every  blessing  essential  to  the  dignity 
and  happiness  of  human  life  ;  that  these  were  not  merely  the  ideas  of  spec- 
olative  politicians,  but  the  sentiments  and  language  of  the  people  in  general ; 
for  in  no  country  was  the  love  of  liberty  more  deeply  rooted,  or  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  rights  of  freemen  more  widely  diffused,  than  in  America  ;  that 
hothing  short  of  a  repeal  of  all  the  late  revenue  acts,  and  the  restoration 
©f  that  state  of  things  which  existed  prior  to  the  commencement  of  these 
innovations,  now  could  or  would  satisfy  the  minds  of  the  people  ;  that  Brit- 
ain by  her  fleets  and  armies  might  overawe  the  towns,  and  by  her  severe 
•restrictions,  her  admiralty  courts,  and  custom-house  officers,  ruin  the  trade 
ef  America  ;  but  that,  while  every  American  farmer  was  a  freeholder,  the 
Spirit  of  liberty  would  continue  to  prevail,  and  all  attempts  to  divest  them 
m  the  privileges  of  freemen  must  be  attended  with  consequences  injurious 
both  to  the  colonies  and  to  the  parent  state. ^ 

The  little  confidence  reposed  by  the  Americans  in  the  British  cabinet, 
ttnd  in  its  promises  of  a  redress  of  grievances,  was  still  farther  impaired  by  a 
change  which  the  ministry  soon  after  underwent,  in  the  secession  from  its 
ranks  of  Lord  Camden,  who  resigned  the  seals  [January,  1770],  and  of 
Dunning,  the  celebrated  constitutional  lawyer  and  friend  of  liberty,  who  had 
been  solicitor-general.  But  before  the  projected  measure  of  the  cabinet 
^^    Bradford.    Burk's  Virginia.    Hutchinson.       >  '^     . 


CHAP.  Ill]  AFFRAY  WITH  THE  TROOPS  IN  BOSTON.  453. 

was  carried  into  effect,  a  circumstance  occurred  in  America  fitted  to  coun- 
teract the  efficacy  even  of  a  much  greater  stretch  of  conciliation.  The 
British  senate  had  been  assured  by  Franklin  that  a  military  force  despatched 
to  America,  though  it  would  not  find,  would  easily  create,  a  rebellion  ;  but 
more  credit  was  given  by  the  present  ministers  to  the  representations  of 
Bernard,  Hutchinson,  Oliver^  Paxton,  and  other  partisans  of  prerogative, 
that  an  impending  rebellion  could  be  averted  only  by  the  exhibition  of  mili- 
tary power.  Ever  since  the  arrival  of  the  troops  at  Boston,  the  inhabitants 
of  this  city  regarded  tbe  presence  of  these  instruments  of  despotic  au- 
thority with  an  increasing  sense  of  indignity  ;  and  reciprocal  insults  and 
injuries  paved  the  way  for  a  tragical  event  which  made  a  deep  and  lasting 
impression  of  resentment  in  America.  An  aflray,  which  commenced  be- 
tween an  inhabitant  of  the  town  and  a  private  soldier,  having  been  gradually 
extended  by  the  participation  of  the  fellow-citizens  of  the  one  and  the  com- 
rades of  the  other,  terminated  to  the  advantage  of  the  soldiers,  and  in- 
flamed the  populace  with  a  passionate  desire  of  vengeance,  which,  it  has 
been  justly  or  unjustly  surmised,  was  fomented  by  some  persons  of  con- 
sideration, who  hoped  that  the  removal  of  the  troops  would  be  promoted 
by  a  conflict  between  them  and  the  towns-people.  [March  2,  1770.]  A  cor- 
responding animosity  was  cherished  by  the  soldiers,  some  of  whom  were 
severely  hurt  in  the  affray.  They  began  to  carry  clubs  in  their  hands  when 
they  walked  in  the  streets,  gave  other  symptoms  of  willingness  to  renew 
the  conflict,  and  evinced  the  most  insulting  contempt  for  the  citizens,  to 
whom  their  presence  was  already  sufficiently  offensive.  After  the  lapse 
of  three  days  from  the  first  affray  [March  5],  and  after  various  symptoms 
had  betrayed  that  some  dangerous  design  was  harboured  on  both  sides,  a 
party  of  soldiers,  while  under  arms  in  the  evening,  were  assaulted  by  a  con- 
gregation of  tbe  populace,  who  pressed  upon  them,  struck  some  of  them, 
loaded  them  with  insults,  terming  them  bloody-backs  (in  allusion  to  the 
barbarous  practice  of  flogging  in  the  British  army)  and  cowards,  and  taunt- 
ingly <iared  them  to  fire.  The  conduct  of  the  soldiers  was  far  from  blame- 
less. They  had  previously  by  studied  insult  provoked  the  rage  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  now  exasperated  it  by  retorting  the  verbal  outrages,  which  they 
possessed  the  most  fatal  means  of  avenging.  One  of  them  at  last,  on  re- 
ceiving a  blow,  fired  at  his  assailant ;  and  a  single  discharge  from  six  others 
succeeded.  Three  of  the  citizens  were  killed,  and  five  dangerously  wound- 
ed. The  tow^n  became  instantly  a  scene  of  the  most  violent  commotion  ; 
the  drums  beat  to  arms  ;  thousands  of  the  inhabitants  flocked  together,  and 
beheld  the  bloody  spectacle  of  their  slaughtered  fellow-citizens  \vith  a  rage 
that  would  have  prolonged  and  aggravated  the  calamities  of  the  night,  if 
Hirtchinson,  the  deputy-governor,  and  the  other  civil  authorities,  had  not 
promptly  interfered,  and,  arresting  the  soldiers  who  had  fired,  together  with 
their  commanding  officer,  and  loudly  blaming  them  for  firing  without  the  or- 
der of  a  magistrate,  held  forth  to  the  people  the  hope  of  more  deliberate 
vengeance,  and  prevailed  with  them  to  disperse.  The  next  morning  [March 
6],  Hutchinson  convoked  the  council,  which  was  engaged  in  discussing  the 
unhappy  event,  when  a  message  was  received  from  a  general  assemblage 
of  the  citizens,  declaring  it  to  be  their  unanimous  opinion,  that  nothing 
could  restore  the  peace  of  the  town  and  prevent  further  conflict  and  carnage, 
but  the  immediate  removal  of  the  troops.  Samuel  Adams,  who  communi- 
cated the  desire  of  his  fellow-citizeos,  expressed  it  in  the  tone  of  command 


454  '•      HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.     ?f.te  [BOOK  XI. 

and  menace.  After  some  hesitation,  Hutchinson  and  the  commander  of 
the  forces,  who  each  desired  to  throw  the  responsibility  of  the  measure 
upon  the  other,  perceiving  that  it  was  inevitable,  consented  to  embrace  it; 
the  troops  were  withdrawn,  and  the  commotion  subsided.  One  of  the 
wounded  men  died  ;  and  the  four  bodies  of  the  slain  were  conducted  to  the 
grave  with  every  ceremonial  expressive  of  public  honor  and  affection  by  an 
immense  concourse  of  people,  followed  by  a  long  train  of  carriages  belong- 
ing to  the  principal  inhabitants  of  the  town. 

Captain  Preston,  who  commanded  the  party  of  troops  engaged  in  the 
fatal  affair,  and  all  the  soldiers  who  had  fired,  were  committed  to  jail,  and 
arraigned  on  an  indictment  of  murder.  Their  trial  was  awaited  with  earnest 
expectation,  and  for  some  time  with  passionate  hope  or  stern  satisfactory 
conviction  in  the  public  mind  that  it  would  terminate  fatally  for  the  accused. 
Considering  the  mighty  cloud  of  passion,  prejudice,  and  exaggeration, 
through  which  their  conduct  was  viewed,  such  an  event  would  have  merited 
more  regret  than  reprobation.  Captain  Preston,  though  entirely  innocent, 
was  exposed  to  peculiar  danger  from  the  generosity  with  which,  in  vindicat- 
ing his  men  when  first  reproached  by  the  civil  authorities,  he  neglected  to 
exculpate  himself  from  the  charge  implied  in  their  questions,  of  having 
authorized  and  ordered  the  firing  ;  and  the  odium  under  which  he  labored 
was  not  a  litde  increased  by  the  pubHcation,  at  London,  of  a  partial  and 
irritating  representation  of  the  unhappy  transaction,  derived  from  statements 
furnished  by  himself,  but  distorted  by  the  intemperate  zeal  of  injudicious 
friends.  But  the  defence  of  the  prisoners  was  undertaken  by  two  of  the 
most  eminent  lawyers  and  determined  patriots  in  Massachusetts,  —  Josiah 
Quincy,  Jr.,  whom  we  have  already  noticed,  and  John  Adams,  a  kinsman 
and  intimate  friend  of  Samuel  Adams,  and  who  afterwards  held  the  high 
office  —  the  highest  that  a  friend  and  champion  of  human  liberty  and  hap- 
piness has  ever  filled  —  of  president  of  the  United  States  of  America. 
These  men  were  not  less  eager  to  guard  the  justice  and  honor  of  their 
country  from  reproach,  than  to  defend  her  liberty  from  invasion  ;  and  they 
exerted  themselves  in  defence  of  their  clients  with  a  manly  eloquence  and 
reasoning  worthy  of  their  cause,  and  worthily  appreciated  by  the  integrity, 
justice,  and  good  sense  of  the  jury.  Robert  Treat  Paine,  to  whom  the  pub- 
lic voice  assigned  the  office  of  prosecutor,  discharged  this  arduous  duty 
with  an  uprightness  and  ability  becoming  a  sound  lawyer  and  wise  patriot. 
Preston  was  acquitted  ;  as  were  likewise  all  the  soldiers  except  two,  who 
were  found  guilty  of  manslaughter.  This  event  was  truly  honorable  to  Mas- 
sachusetts. Some  British  poHticians,  indeed,  are  said  to  have  regarded  it 
merely  as  an  act  of  timidity,  or  a  mechanical  adherence  to  legal  rules.  But 
(as  an  ingenious  American  writer^  has  finely  observed),  in  this  forbearance 
of  the  people,  on  an  occasion  where  truth  and  reason,  combating  violent 
passion,  pronounced  the  bias  of  their  feelings  unjust  and  wrong,  there  was 
exhibited  a  force  and  firmness  of  character  which  promised  to  render  them 
unyielding  and  invincible  when  supported  by  a  sense  of  justice  and  right. 
The  vigor  with  which  extreme  injustice  is  resisted  corresponds  not  unfre- 
quently  in  direct  proportion  with  the  patient  fortitude  exerted  in  the  endu- 
rance of  its  initial  manifestations.  Though  the  issue  of  the  trial  was  gener- 
ally approved  in  Massachusetts,  the  anniversary  of  the  massacre,  as  it  was 
termed,  was  observed  with  much  solemnity  ;  and  the  ablest  of  the  provincial 
<'    -  "    i^-   -      .-  '  James  Fenimore  Cooper.  .il;.,.    .  1.  ^  '  ■     . 


CHAP.  Ill]         PARTIAL  REPEAL  OF  THE  TEA-DUTY  ACT.  45^ 

orators  were  successively  employed  to  deliver  annual  harangues  calculated 
to  preserve  the  irritating  remembrance  fresh  in  the  popular  mind. 

Various  affrays,  though  of  a  less  serious  description,  occurred  between 
the  British  troops  at  New  York  and  the  populace  of  this  city,  where  much 
discontent  was  excited  by  the  conduct  of  the  assembly,  in  consenting  at 
length  to  make  provision,  though  only  occasionally  and  reluctantly,  for  the 
accommodation  of  the  soldiers.  Some  violent  writings  having  been  pub- 
lished on  this  subject,  addressed  to  the  betrayed  inhabitants  of  JVew  York, 
M'Dougall,  a  Scotchman,  the  pubhsher,  was  committed  to  jail  on  a  charge 
of  sedition  ;  but  his  imprisonment  was  alleviated  and  dignified  by  visits  and 
demonstrations  of  regard  which  he  received  from  great  numbers  of  people, 
including  some  of  the  principal  gendemen  and  ladies  of  the  province  ;  and 
the  government  finally  liberated  him  without  having  ventured  to  bring  him 
to  trial.  1 

In  conformity  with  Lord  Hillsborough's  promise,  the  duties  which  had 
been  imposed  on  glass,  paper,  and  painters'  colors  were  now  repealed  by 
an  act  of  parliament  conceived  in  precisely  the  same  terms  as  the  law  that 
repealed  the  Stamp  Act.  The  duty  on  tea  was  continued,  with  the  avowed 
purpose  of  preserving  the  claim  of  parliament  to  sovereign  legislative  au- 
thority in  America.  This  reservation,  like  the  Declaratory  Act  which 
accompanied  the  repeal  of  the  stamp  duty,  left  the  grand  cause  of  conten- 
tion in  its  entire  force  ;  for  it  was  not  the  particulars,  but  the  principle  of 
taxation,  to  which  the  colonists  were  most  stubbornly  opposed.  Even  sup- 
posing, which  there  is  great  reason  to  doubt,  that  the  breach  between  the 
parent  state  and  her  colonies  could  yet  have  been  repaired,  the  present 
measure,  so  far  from  being  adequate  to  repair,  was  calculated  to  widen  it. 
Enough  was  yielded  to  encourage  the  Americans ;  enough  retained  to  ex- 
asperate them.  With  strange  inconsistency,  the  ministers  declared  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  in  reply  to  a  proposition  of  some  of  the  members  for 
a  total  repeal  of  the  duties,  that,  although  these  duties  were  absurd  and 
impolitic,  and  although  the  repeal  of  them  was  urgently  desirable  in  order 
to  put  an  end  to  the  American  combinations  against  importing  English 
goods,  yet  the  insolence  of  these  combinations  and  of  the  other  proceedings 
of  the  colonists  was  so  offensive,  that  a  total  repeal  was  incompatible  with 
the  dignity  of  Great  Britain.  Thus,  with  unhappy  logic,  was  it  argued,  that 
the  dignity  of  Great  Britain  required  her  to  persist  in  a  course  impolitic  and 
untenable  ;  and  that  American  resistance,  while  it  enjoined  a  partial  departure 
from  this  course,  necessitated  also  a  partial  adherence  to  it.  The  ministers 
openly  declared  that  the  language  of  the  Americans  became  every  day 
bolder  and  more  violent ;  a  truth  which  they  who  thus  propounded  it 
seemed  to  be  incapable  of  appreciating.  For,  with  such  rising  spirit  and 
temper  as  the  Americans  displayed,  it  was  evident  that  an  accommodation 
with  them  became  daily  more  difficult ;  and  that  at  every  successive  stage  of 
the  controversy  their  demands  would  be  both  enlarged  in  substance  and 
aggravated  in  the  extent  of  their  encroachment  upon  British  dignity.  Such 
a  storm  of  passion  had  been  raised  in  America  as  was  not  likely  to  subside 
at  once,  even  though  all  the  avowed  causes  of  quarrel  were  suddenly  re- 

'  Annual  Register  for  1770.  Holmes.  Bradford.  Gordon.  Hutchinson.  Franklin's  Me- 
moirs.  Life  of  Quincy^  by  his  son,  Josiah  Quincy.  Rogers.  The  people  of  South  Carolina 
suspended  for  a  while  all  commercial  intercourse  with  New  York,  on  account  of  her  depart- 
ure from  the  non-importation  policy. 


45G  .7^    HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA  '         [BOOK  XI. 

moved  ;  and  such  views  bad  been  awakened  in  the  breasts  of  many  of  the 
colonists  as  only  the  most  flattering  advantages  were  hkely  to  dispel. 

The  popular  leaders,  gratified  by  the  importance  and  interest  of  the  po- 
sition to  which  the  controversy  advanced  them,  were  by  no  means  disposed 
to  overrate  the  advantages  of  any  particular  scheme  for  its  accommodation. 
Some,  doubtless,  cherished  the  design  of  independence, — a  purpose  which 
the  royal  ministers  with  great  impolicy  openly  imputed  in  parliament  to  the 
Americans  in  general  ;  and  some,  who  harboured  no  such  wish  or  project, 
were  yet  desirous  that  their  past  efforts  should  be  as  successful  as  possible, 
and  opposed  all  accommodation  not  founded  on  an  entire  removal  of  Amer- 
ican grievances.  In  holding  a  controversy  with  Britain,  America  practically 
approached  the  condition  of  an  independent  commonwealth  ;  and  while  the 
ambitious  design  of  realizing  this  idea  was  suggested  to  her  in  the  language  of 
insult  and  menace  by  the  British  cabinet,  the  prospect  of  it  was  manifestly 
regarded  with  much  complacency  by  other  European  states.  It  was  about 
this  time,  as  Franklin  relates,  that  several  of  the  foreign  ambassadors  at 
London  assiduously  cultivated  his  acquaintance,  and  treated  him  as  one  of 
tjieir  diplomatic  body.^  The  danger  of  a  quarrel  with  America  ought  to 
have  been  impressed  with  especial  force  on  the  British  government  in  the 
present  year  by  the  insolent  aggression  to  which  Spain  was  prompted,  partly 
in  conformity  with  the  poHcy  to  which  she  was  engaged  by  the  secret  treaty 
which  we  have  remarked  with  the  French  minister,  Choiseul,  and  doubtless 
in  part  by  the  actual  embarrassment  of  her  rival  in  American  empire.  In 
the  midst  of  peace  between  the  two  crowns,  a  Spanish  force  violently 
dispossessed  the  English  of  a  settlement  they  had  formed  in  Falkland's 
Islands  ;  and  accompanied  this  outrage  with  the  most  insulting  marks  of 
contempt  for  the  British  flag.  But  the  British  government,  instead  of  being 
warned  by  its  embarrassments  efl^ectually  to  conciliate  the  Americans,  was 
induced  by  them  tamely  to  submit  to  the  indignity  sustamed  from  Spain, 
and  to  accept  a  species  of  apology  which  was  very  unsatisfactory  to  the 
national  pride. 

It  was  a  canon  of  ancient  wisdom,  that  a  sovereign,  withholding  the  just 
rights  of  his  people,  gives  them  rights  to  whatever  they  may  please  to  de- 
sire.^ We  have  seen  how  much  the  views  and  demands  of  the  Americans 
were  recently  enlarged.  The  discussion  of  British  authority  in  one  point 
lowered  its  influence  in  all  ;  and  the  flame  kindled  by  one  peculiar  topic 
of  complaint  was  gradually  extended,  till  it  embraced  every  other.  The 
Americans  were  now  determined  to  resist  the  external  no  less  than  the 
internal  taxation  of  parliament ;  and  nothing  short  of  a  repeal  of  all  the 
kte  duties,  and  a  thorough  revision  and  modification  of  the  trade  laws,  had 
the  most  remote  chance  of  restoring  harmony  between  them  and  the  parent 
state.  Some  effect,  indeed,  was  produced  by  the  present  measure  of  par- 
tial repeal,  and  contributed,  perhaps,  to  delude  the  British  ministers  with 
the  hope  that  their  policy  was  successful.  The  general  plan  of  non-impor- 
tation was  now  relinquished  by  the  Americans  ;  but  this  in  truth  was  a 
mere  indulgence  of  their  own  convenience,  and  was  most  erroneously  re^ 
garded  by  those  who  deemed  it  a  corresponding  concession  to  the  inter^ 

^  In  relatifljf  this,  he  imputes  it  to  "the  desire  they  have,  from  time  to  time,  of  hearing 
wmethiog  of  American  affJuca,  —  an  object  become  of  importance  in  foreign  courts,  who  begin 
to  jjope  that  Britain's  alarming  power,  will  be  diminiahed  by  the  defection  of  her  colonies."  -^ 

"  Omnia  dat  quijusta  negat.  '^ 


OHAP.  Ill]  PROJECT  OF  AN  EPISCOPAL  HIERARCHY.  457, 

Gsts  of  Britain.  Resolutions  were  embraced  in  the  principal  commercial 
towns,  that  no  tea  should  be  imported  while  the  duty  was  continued. 
Associations  were  formed  in  some  parts  to  drink  none  but  smuggled  tea  ; 
and  in  others,  to  abstain  from  the  use  of  tea  altogether.  The  assembly  of 
Massachusetts  [November,  1770]  expressed  displeasure  at  the  departure 
from  the  general  non-importation  agreement,  and  published  resolutions  for 
promoting  industry,  frugality^  and  domestic  manufactures.  In  a  message  to 
Hutebinsofty  who,  by  adjourning  the  assembly  to  Cambridge,  and  by  a 
piswetilious  deference  to  the  wishes  and  authority  of  the  British  government, 
had  already  involved  himself  in  warm  disputes  with  them,  they  insisted  on 
the  right  of  the  people  to  appeal  to  Heaven  in  a  controversy  with  rulers  who 
abused  their  authority  ;  they  appointed  a  solemn  fast  to  seek  the  direction 
and  blessing  of  God  ;  and  being  informed  by  Hutchinson  [177 1 1]  that  he 
could  not,  consistently  with  the  instructions  of  the  king,  assent  to  an  income 
tUx  which  they  bad  voted,  unless  they  would  qualify  it  so  far  as  to  exempt 
the  emoluments  of  the  rdyal  commissioners  of  custonfis  from  its  operation, 
they  answered,  with  passionate  asperity^  —  "  We  know  of  no  commissioners 
of  his  Majesty's  customs,  nor  of  any  revenue  his  Majesty  has  a  right  to  es- 
tablish in  J^ortk  America.  We  know  and  feel  a  tribute  levied  and  ex- 
torted from  those  who,  if  they  have  property,  have  a  right  to  the  absolute 
disposal  of  it."  Hutchinson  about  this  period  made  sundry  attempts,  by 
the  instrumentality  of  the  provincial  council  and  the  courts  of  law,  to  punish- 
the  printers  of  newspapers  in  which  his  own  conduct  and  the  policy  of 
Britain  were  arraigned  ;  but  all  his  measures  were  baffled  and  his  purpose 
was  invariably  defeated.^ 

Among  other  subjects  of  discontent  and  apprehentsion  in  America,  there 
was  one  which  was  supplied  by  the  policy  of  the  prelates  of  England, 
who,  with  persevering  importunity,  solicited  the  British  government  to  es- 
tablish an  Episcopal  hierarchy  in  the  colonies.^  These  applications,  of 
which  intelligence  was  procured  by  the  provincial  agents,  excited  the  gen- 
eral disgust  of  the  Americans,  who  beheld  ifi  the  project  only  a  measure- 
instrumental  to  the  aggrandizement  of  British  prerogative,  and  the  multipli-' 
cation  of  royal  functionaries  whose  emoluments  were  to  be  dei'ived  from  the 
American  civil  list*  In  the  year  1768,  the  assembty  of  Massachusetts 
proclaimed  that  a  general  alarm  was  excited  among  the  inhabitants  of  the 
province  by  the  projected  imposition  upon  them  of  that  very  ecclesiastical 
system  from  whose  tyranny  their  fathers  bad  retired  to  America  ;  and  in 
the  present  year,  the  assembly  of  Virginia  passed  a  vote  of  grateful  thanks 
to  some  gentlemen  of  this  province  who  distinguished  themselves  by  their 
writings  and  other  exertions  to  animate  their  countrymen  to  resist  the  in- 
troduction of  Episcopacy.  The  British  ministers,  however,  had  no  inten- 
tion of  acting  at  this  juncture  in  compliance  with  the  impolitic  counsel  of 
the  bishops.  Distracted  and  embarrassed  by  domestic  dissensions,  the 
quarrel  with  Spain,  and  the  disappointing  and  mischievous  result  of  every 
measure  relative  to  the  colonies  that  had  latterly  been  adopted,  they  were 

'  This  year  died  in  Massachusetts  the  ex-governor  Shirley. 
_  '  .Annual  Register  for  1770  and  for  1771.     Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.     Gordon 
Hol'mes.     Memoir  of  Isaiah  Thomas,  in  the  Archccologia  Americana. 

^  Their  infatuated  prosecution  of  this  object  proved  exceedingly  detrimental  to  the  political 
interests  to  which  they  were  most  ardently  devoted,  and  was  not  crowned  with  success  until 
America  had  successfully  revolted  and  compelled  Britain  to  acknowledge  her  independence. 
The  first  consecration  by  the  English  hierarchy  of  bishops  in  America  took  place  in  1787,  by. 
Authority  of  an  act  of  parliament  passed  in  the  preceding  year. 

VOL.    II.  58  JIM 


458  '       HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

at  present  averse  to  any  active  interference  in  American  affairs.  Pru- 
dence and  perplexity  alike  engaged  them  to  pause  awhile  in  a  path  so  en- 
cumbered with  difficulties  that  it  seemed  impossible  to  move  either  forward 
or  backward  in  it  without  stumbling.  Afraid  to  advance  or  enforce  the 
pretensions  of  the  parent  state,  and  ashamed  to  recede  from  them,  they 
wished  to  take  no  new  step  with  regard  to  America  till  the  harmony  which 
they  vainly  expected  from  their  last  measure  should  be  completely  estab- 
lished. But  the  delusiveness  of  this  expectation  was  clearly  perceived  by 
some  British  politicians  ;  and  not  long  after  the  repeal  act  of  the  preceding 
year,  an  attempt  was  made  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  effect  a  radical 
change  of  that  policy  which  was  visibly  tending  to  produce  the  revolt  of 
America.  Resolutions  were  proposed  for  restoring  all  matters  relative  to 
American  trade  and  finance  to  the  state  in  which  they  had  been  at  the 
commencement  of  the  king's  reign.  The  strongest  argument  in  support  of 
this  proposition  was  a  simple  recapitulation  of  the  late  measures  and  of 
their  undeniable  results  :  —  taxes  imposed,  repealed,  reimposed,  and  re- 
pealed again,  —  an  attempt  to  raise  a  revenue  in  America  for  the  relief  of 
the  burdened  people  of  England,  producing  only  an  aggravation  of  the  dis- 
tress of  the  English  merchants  and  manufacturers,  —  schemes  of  fortifying 
the  British  dominion  in  America,  issuing  in  a  state  of  things  that  betokened 
its  entire  overthrow,  —  assemblies  dissolved  for  contumacy,  and  recon- 
voked  without  making  the  slightest  submission,  —  multitudes  denounced  as 
guilty  of  sedition  and  even  of  treason,  and  yet  not  an  individual  tried  or 
punished  for  either  of  these  offences,  —  troops  sent  to  prevent  a  rebellion, 
but  actually  serving  to  provoke  it,-^  every  branch  of  the  British  govern- 
ment degraded,  and  the  resentment  and  resistance  of  America  progres- 
sively augmenting  and  invariably  triumphant.  The  ministers,  overwhelmed 
with  doubt  and  perplexity,  shrunk  from  the  discussion  to  which  they  were 
invited  ;  and,  without  attempting  to  answ^er  or  deny  these  representations, 
obtained  from  a  majority  of  the  house  a  rejection  of  the  proposed  resolu- 
tions. A  proposition  of  similar  resolutions,  made  to  the  House  of  Lords 
by  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  met  with  a  similar  fate.^ 

Only  one  Enghshman  at  the  present  juncture  had  the  sagacity  to  per- 
ceive that  the  views  and  pretensions  of  Britain  and  America  were  quite  in- 
compatible, and  that,  in  the  warmth  of  the  controversy,  these  conflicting 
views  had  been  so  far  disclosed  and  matured,  that  a  cordial  reconciHation 
was  no  longer  possible.  This  was  Dr.  Josiah  Tucker,  dean  of  Gloucester, 
one  of  the  most  learned  and  ingenious  writers  on  commerce  and  political 
economy  that  England  has  ever  produced.  With  a  boldness  equal  to  the 
comprehension  of  his  view,  he  openly  recommended,  in  several  tracts  which 
he  published  about  this  time,  an  immediate  separation  of  the  two  countries, 
and  a  formal  recognition  of  the  independence  of  the  American  States.^ 
The  doctrine  which  he  inculcated  was,  that,  when  colonies  have  reached 
such  a  degree  of  wealth  and  population  as  to  be  able  to  support  themselves, 
the  authority  of  the  parent  state  whence  they  emanated  must  necessarily  be 
trivial  and  precarious  ;  and  that,  consequently,  in  all  cases  of  this  kind,  it 
is  the  dictate  of  prudence  and  sound  policy,  that  the  parties,  instead  of  wait- 

*  Bradford.     Annual  Register  for  1770,  and /or  1771.     Franklin's  Pn'coie  Correspondence. 

'  The  voluntary  return  of  the  Americans  (disunited  among  themselves,  and  tired  with  ex- 
patiating in  the  vague  expanse  of  boundless  freedom)  to  British  domination  was  predicted, 
as  the  certain  effect  of  Tucker's  scheme,  in  some  humorous  verses,  ascribed  to  Soame 
Jenyns,  and  published  in  the .^rniMoZ  Ke^Mier /or  1776.  ,.    • 


CHAP.  III.J        WRITERS  ON  THE  AMERICAN  CONTROVERSY.  459 

ing  to  be  separated  by  emergent  quarrel  and  strife,  should  dissolve  their  con- 
nection by  mutual  consent.  Such,  he  contended,  was  now  the  situation  of 
the  British  colonies  in  America  ;  and  in  urging  upon  Britain  the  consequent 
policy  of  releasing  them  from  farther  control,  he  maintained  with  much  force 
and  sound  judgment  that  this  measure  would  be  attended  with  a  great  alle- 
viation of  the  national  expenditure,  and  with  increase  instead  of  diminution 
of  the  national  gain.  By  calculations  and  reasonings,  of  which  only  exasper- 
ated pride  or  inveterate  prejudice  could  withstand  the  cogency,  he  dem- 
onstrated that  Britain,  in  her  dealings  with  the  Americans,  must  derive  far 
more  commercial  profit  from  their  entire  freedom  and  consequent  prosper- 
ity, than  she  could  do  while  their  resources  were  cramped  by  the  restric- 
tions attendant  on  her  domination.  For  his  unpalatable  counsel  Tucker 
was  derided,  as  a  puerile  and  fantastic  visionary,  both  by  those  of  his  coun- 
trymen who  supported  and  by  those  who  opposed  the  measures  of  their 
government.^     But  time  illustrated  his  views  and  honored  his  wisdom. 

Several  eminent  writers  preceded  Tucker  in  publicly  expressing  and  de- 
Cending  their  various  sentiments  and  opinions  with  regard  to  the  points  in- 
volved in  the  controversy  between  Britain  and  America  ;  and  many  contin- 
ued to  follow  in  succession  on  both  sides  of  the  question,  till  force  was 
employed  to  decide  what  reason  proved  unable  to  adjust.  The  most  dis- 
tinguished writers  in  support  of  the  prerogative  of  Britain  were  Adam  Smith, 
Dr.  Johnson,  and  George  Chalmers.  Of  the  writers  on  the  other  side, 
the  most  eminent  of  the  native  Americans  were  Otis,^  Bland,  Dickinson, 
and  Franklin,  —  and  of  their  European  coadjutors.  Doctors  Price,  Priestley, 
and  Witherspoon,  Thomas  Paine,  and  the  ex-governor  Pownall.  It  is  not 
my  purpose  here  to  undertake  a  critical  analysis  of  the  works  of  these 
writers  ;  and  yet  some  notice  seems  proper  of  the  more  remarkable  features 
of  the  controversy  which  they  conducted.  Smith,  while  he  maintained  that 
it  was  reasonable  that  the  colonies  should  contribute  to  the  support  of  the 
general  burdens  of  the  empire,  recommended,  though  less  positively,  that 
they  should  be  represented  in  the  British  parliament  ;  and  deprecated,  in 
every  event,  a  war  with  them,  in  which  Britain  was,  he  affirmed,  not  only 
unlikely  to  succeed,  but  certain  that  every  drop  of  blood  that  flowed  was 
the  blood  of  those  whom  she  called  or  desired  to  call  her  subjects.' 
Otis,  on  the  other  hand,  while  he  asserted  the  right  of  America,  in  her  act- 
ual circumstances,  to  be  exempted  from  British  taxation,  acknowledged 
that  this  right  would  be  superseded  by  a  participation  in  the  privilege  of 
sending  representatives  to  the  British  parliament  ;  *  and  Dickinson,  who 
had  roused  the  strongest  spirit  of  resistance  to  the  British  claims,  with- 
stood for  a  while  the  purpose  which  this  spirit  produced,  and  incurred  a 
temporary  loss  of  popularity  by  firmly  resisting  upon  principle  the  project 
of  independence.^     The  inefficiency  of  Dickinson's  powers  when  exerted 

»  Tucker's  Tracts,  in  the  British  Museum.  Watkins's  Life  of  the  Duke  of  York.  This  au- 
thor  relates,  that,  after  the  independence  of  America  had  been  irrevocably  conceded,  George 
the  Third,  meeting  Tucker  at  Gloucester,  observed  to  him,  "  Mr.  Dean,  you  were  in  the  right, 
and  we  were  all  in  the  wrong."  Burke,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  termed  Tucker's  scheme 
"  a  childish  one."  There  was,  indeed,  something  like  childishness  in  the  supposition  that  a 
scheme  fraught  with  so  much  liberality  and  moderation  would  ever  be  adopted  by  a  prince 
of  arbitrary  disposition  and  by  a  haughty  nation. 

^  Otis's  political  life  was  terminated  this  year  by  insanity,  occasioned,  it  is  said,  by  the  in- 
tensity of  his  exertions  in  behalf  of  American  liberty. 

3  Smith's  Wealth  of  JVations,  Book  IV.,  Chap.  VII. 

*  Otis's  Rights  of  the  Colonies  .Asserted  and  Proved. 

'  Rogers's  Biographical  Dictionary.  ,.^  \     .     . 


4^0  *     "      HISTORY  or  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

to  restrain  his  countrymen  from  revolt,  contrasted  with  their  efficacy  when 
displayed  in  the  publication  of  the  Farmer''s  Letters,  illustrates  the  nature 
and  limits  of  the  influence  exercised  on  the  councils  of  America  by  her 
political  writers  and  orators.  They  were  totally  incompetent  to  guide  or 
control  the  current  of  public  sentiment  and  opinion  ;  and  it  was  only  when 
exerted  in  harmony  and  correspondence  with  its  fixed  bent,  that  their  genius 
was  able  to  modify  the  public  measures  and  resolutions.  They  frequently 
seemed  to  command  a  popular  assembly  or  community,  when  they  merely 
animated  its  rooted  determination,  and  became  its  leaders,  while  they  steered 
it  in  a  current  by  which  it  was  insensibly  borne  along,  and  conducted  it  in 
the  course  which  it  was  already  prepared  to  pursue.  "  In  civil  wars," 
said  that  great  captain,  statesman,  and  patriot,  La  None  Bras-de-Fer,  "the 
plough  not  unfrequently  guides  the  oxen.*'  Dr.  Johnson,  whose  views 
were  prescribed,  as  his  pamphlet  was  revised,  by  the  British  ministers, 
argued  with  great  vigor  and  ingenuity,  but  in  an  arrogant,  overbearing,  and 
disdainful  tone,  heightened  by  the  customary  swell  of  his  diction,  that  the 
colonists,  by  the  terms  of  their  charters  and  the  peculiarity  of  tlieir  social 
position,  purchased  the  advantage  of  defence  from  a  powerful  state  during 
their  national  infancy,  in  return  for  subjection  to  its  legislative  dominion, 
of  which  the  exercise  was  enlarged  in  proportion  to  the  capacity  of  the 
subject  state  to  endure  it.  He  insisted  that  the  claim  of  America  to  be 
exempted  from  parliamentary  taxation,  and  to  cooperate  with  the  rest  of 
the  British  empire  in  defraying  the  national  expenses  through  no  other  chan- 
nel than  that  of  her  own  provincial  assemblies,  was  a  claim  which  sup- 
posed dominion  without  authority,  and  subjects  without  subordination.^ 
Chalmers  referred  exclusively  to  the  colonial  charters,  and  to  the  opinions 
of  lawyers  and  antiquarians,  in  support  of  the  British  pretensions  ;  ^  and, 
like  Johnson,  overlooked  or  undervalued  the  consideration,  that  no  prerog- 
ative, however  accommodated  to  the  language  of  ancient  parchments,  or 
sanctioned  by  the  critical  exposition  of  legal  logic,  could  be  otherwise  re- 
garded by  the  Americans  than  as  an  encroachment  on  their  national  liberty, 
if  it  was  exerted  in  opposition  to  the  general  current  of  their  sentiments  and 
prepossessions.  Submission  to  power,  in  an  instance  or  to  an  extent  gen- 
erally odious  to  the  feelings  of  a  people  or  party,  however  reasonably  or 
plausibly  linked  to  the  theory  of  their  municipal  constitution  or  the  peculiar 
maxims  of  their  political  creed,  cannot  fail  to  be  resisted  by  the  powerful 
dictates  of  freer  reason  and  universal  sense  ;  —  as,  indeed,  the  British  gov- 
ernment might  have  learned  from  various  circumstances  attending  the  Rev- 
olution of  1688,  and  particularly  from  the  important  though  temporary  ac- 
cession of  the  Churchmen  and  Tories  to  that  memorable  transaction. 

In  the  present  controversy,  as  well  as  in  that  which  was  engendered  by 
the  British  Revolution,  we  are  surprised  to  find  how  frequently  frivolous 
topics  are  introduced  on  both  sides,  how  seldom  real  motives  are  fully  avowed 
by  either,  and  how  often  both  parties  seem  to  warp  their  principles  in  order 
to  embarrass  their  antagonists  or  to  fortify  themselves  by  alliances  with  pru- 
dential considerations.  The  nature,  rules,  and  limits  of  the  connection 
between  Britain  and  America  formed  a  great  political  problem,  involving 

'  *  Johnson's  Taxation  no  Tyranny,  and  The  Patriot.  In  Moore's  Life  of  Sheridan  are  pre- 
served some  notes,  composed  by  this  distinguished  orator  and  wit,  for  an  answer  which  he  pro- 
jected, but  never  completed,  to  Dr.  Johnson's  argumentation. 

*  Chalmers's  Political  .Annals  of  the  Colonies  and  Introduction  to  the  History  of  the  Revolu- 
tion of  the  Colonies.  ►     "■■ 


CHAP,  m.]        WRITERS  ON  THE  AMERICAN   CONTROVERSY.  4g| 

numerous  interests  and  the  general  principles  of  civil  liberty,  and  of  which  a 
satisfactory  solution  was  vainly  sought  from  parchment  authorities,  the  faded 
fruits  of  a  past  season  and  remote  period,  when  neither  the  grantors  nor  the 
occupiers  of  A  me  can  territory  contemplated  any  thing  like  the  present  state 
of  the  two  countries.  Though  tlie  Americans  were  generally  animated  by 
a  strong  aversion  to  British  prerogative,  a  jealous  sense  of  dependence  and 
ill-treatment,  and  an  earnest  hope  and  purpose  to  be  free,  —  few  of  their 
advocates  declined  to  accept  tlie  challenge  of  their  adversaries  to  stake  the 
issue  of  this  controversy  on  a  mixed  and  confused  discussion  of  the  princi- 
ples of  the  British  constitution,  and  of  the  provincial  usages  and  the  legal 
import  of  the  provincial  charters  ;  and,  according  as  one  or  other  of  these 
sources  of  authority  was  thought  to  administer  support  to  British  prerogative 
or  American  liberty,  were  they  alternately  cited  and  derided  on  both  sides, 
in  the  conduct  of  this  argumental  contest.  It  had  been  more  creditable  for 
both  parties,  if  the  controversy  could  have  been  conducted  without  any  ref- 
erence whatever  to  the  provincial  charters.  For,  if  it  was  absurd  that  the 
British  government,  which  had  on  some  occasions  modified  and  in  various 
instances  attempted  to  subvert  altogether  those  charters,  should  yet  assert 
their  absolute  inviolability  in  so  far  as  they  seemed  to  confirm  its  disputed 
prerogative  over  the  colonies,  —  it  was  no  less  unreasonable  that  the  colo- 
nists should  appeal  to  their  charters  alone,  wherever  their  tenor,  unaltered 
by  authority,  seemed  to  favor  the  colonial  pleas,  and  yet  appeal  from  them 
to  the  principles  of  the  British  constitution,  or,  with  more  latitude,  to  the 
maxims  of  abstract  reason  and  the  natural  rights  of  man,  in  every  instance 
in  which  the  original  terms  or  subsequent  alterations  of  the  charters  seemed 
to  warrant  the  adverse  pretensions.  The  Americans  were  far  more  sensible 
than  willing  to  proclaim  their  full  sense  of  the  injustice  and  absurdity  of  the 
doctrine  which  would  render  the  rights  and  liberties  of  a  numerous  and  en- 
lightened people  dependent  on  the  terms  of  charters  and  compacts  framed 
between  a  handful  of  men  in  a  distant  and  ignorant  age.  Their  ancestors, 
they  deemed,  had  no  legitimate  commission  to  settle  unalterably  the  terms 
of  future  existence.  Among  other  argumentative  artifices  of  the  partisans 
of  America,  they  continually  paUiated  and  underrated  the  acts  of  tumultua- 
ry violence  by  which  the  vindictive  measures  of  the  British  government  were 
provoked  ;  maintaining  with  great  vehemence,  but  little  veracity,  that  the 
disturbances  in  America  were  quite  insignificant,  and  that  Britain,  with  ty- 
raimical  injustice,  punished  whole  provinces  for  the  riotous  proceedings  of  a 
few  obscure  and  ignorant  men. 

Price,  in  defending  with  his  usual  and  admirable  perspicuity  the  claims  of 
the  Americans,  relied  on  the  principles,  more  or  less  fixed,  of  the  British 
constitution,  of  which  he  supposed  America  to  be  entitled  to  as  ample  a 
practical  share  as  England  herself.  To  him  it  seemed  contrary  to  reason 
that  the  British  dominion  should  spread  without  a  corresponding  enlarge- 
ment of  the  prevalence  of  the  British  constitution.^  Frankhn  at  first  account- 
ed that  a  supreme  control  over  every  part  of  the  British  empire  resided  in 
the  parliament,  and,  as  a  witness  in  behalf  of  America  at  the  bar  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  he  admitted  the  legitimate  exertion  of  this  control  in  the  regu- 
lation of  commerce  and  the  imposition  of  external  taxes.  Altered  circum- 
stances and  farther  consideration  led  him  to  abandon  this  notion ;  and  he  ad- 

•    *  Price's  Observations  on  Civil  Liberty.     For  this  pamphlet  Dr.  Price  received  the  thanks  of 
the  civic  cprporftlion  of  London.     .Annual  Register  for  1776. 

MM  * 


462  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

vised  the  assembly  of  Boston  to  acknowledge  a  dependence  on  the  king 
alone,  and  to  desist  from  and  repudiate  its  unmeaning  profession  of  recog- 
nizing '■'•  a  due  subordination  "  to  parliament.  His  countrymen  entered 
readily  into  this  altered  view,  which,  indeed,  many  of  them  had  anticipated  ; 
and  it  was  at  the  present  period  the  general  sentiment  of  the  Americans, 
that  all  the  control  which  parliament  had  ever  before  exerted  over  them 
was  either  an  unjust  usurpation  or  a  temporary  guardianship,  which  the  na- 
tional maturity  of  America  rendered  no  longer  legitimate.  In  witty  and  iron- 
ical compositions  which  he  furnished  to  the  public  journals,  Franklin  assimi- 
lated the  pretensions  of  Britain  over  America  to  such  claims  as  the  king  of 
Prussia  or  other  German  potentates  might  arrogate  over  the  British  people 
as  descendants  of  emigrants  from  Germany.  Yet,  accustomed  to  consider 
himself  an  officer  of  the  British  crown,  familiar  with  the  greatness  and  power 
of  Britain,  and  cherishing  a  complacent  regard  for  the  grandeur  of  an  empire 
which  his  genius  had  dignified  and  his  counsels  had  enlarged,  it  was  with 
long  reluctance  (never,  indeed,  entirely  eradicated)  that  Franklin  contem- 
plated the  prospect  of  its  dismemberment,  and  the  perilous  extremity  of 
American  revolt  and  civil  war  ;  and  this  reluctance  was  increased  by  the 
conviction  he  entertained  that  industry  and  economy  would  of  themselves 
render  the  Americans  practically,  as  the  progress  of  population  must  ren- 
der them  irresistibly,  independent  of  Britain,  and  enable  them  without  a 
struggle  either  to  dissolve  their  connection  with  her  or  to  dictate  the  terms 
of  it.  His  views  and  reasonings  on  this  subject  were  often  nice,  subtle, 
and  fine-spun ;  resembling  rather  the  visions  of  a  speculative  philosopher 
than  the  judgments  of  an  experienced  politician.  His  eagerness  to  conciliate 
and  temporize  was  so  much  more  visible  to  the  British  court,  than  the  con- 
current and  far  more  deeply  rooted  sentiment  which  he  cherished  of  jeal- 
ous and  determined  attachment  to  his  countrymen  and  their  cause,  as  to  have 
induced  many  persons  in  England  to  question,  though  unjtistly,  his  sincerity. 
In  reality,  he  was  a  great  deal  more  sincere  than  consistent.  Laboring  to 
extenuate  in  the  eyes  of  the  British  ministers  the  ebullitions  of  violence  in 
America,  he  prevailed  upon  his  own  mind  to  underrate  the  significance  of 
these  symptoms  ;  and  even  after  dismissal  from  office,  accompanied  with  the 
most  offensive  indignities  by  the  British  government,  had  closed  his  hopes  of 
promotion  in  its  service,  he  persisted  in  chnging  to  the  delusive  idea  that 
harmony  might  be  restored  and  the  dismemberment  of  the  British  empire 
prevented.^ 

The  views  and  sentiments  of  Paine,  though  supported  with  athletic  force 
of  intellect,  clear,  lively  spirit,  and  a  glowing,  intrepid  eloquence  well  calcu- 
lated to  warm  and  arouse,  were  founded  on  principles  (if  any,  indeed,  prop- 
erly speaking,  can  be  traced  at  their  foundation)  the  most  vague  and  inde- 

*  Franklin's  Memoirs  and  Correspondence.  On  his  return  to  Pennsylvania  from  England, 
in  1775,  Franklin,  as  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  College  of  Philadelphia,  proposed  as  the  sub- 
ject of  a  prize  essay  to  the  students,  "  The  Motives  to,  and  the  Advantages  of,  a  perpetual 
Union  between  Britain  and  her  Colonies."  His  own  view  of  those  motives  and  advantages 
was  thus  expressed  :  —  "  Britain  will  derive  advantage  from  our  assistance  in  war,  and  our 
employment  of  her  merchants  and  manufacturers  in  peace  ;  while  her  government  will  be 
Btrengthened  by  the  disposal  of  profitable  posts  and  places  among  us.  On  our  side,  we  have  to 
expect  the  protection  she  can  afford  us,  and  the  advantage  of  a  common  umpire  in  our  dis- 
putes. By  a  prudent  moderation  and  kindness  on  her  part,  and  by  a  decent  behaviour  on 
ours,  bearmg  with  the  infirmities  of  her  government  as  we  would  with  those  of  an  aged 
parent,  though  firmly  asserting  our  privileges,  and  declaring  thai  we  mean  at  a  proper  time  to 
vindicate  them.,  this  advantageous  union  may  still  be  long  continued."  It  is  difficult  to  read 
this,  and  especially  to  trace  it  to  Franklin,  without  a  smile  of  surprise  or  incredulity. 


CHAP.  Ill]        WRITERS  ON   THE  AMERICAN  CONTROVERSY.  4^5 

terminate.  A  native  of  England  and  son  of  a  Quaker,  this  ingenious  man, 
prior  to  his  removal  to  America,  had  beheld  only  the  artificial  and  compli- 
cated municipal  frames  of  European  commonwealths,  wherein  the  general 
rights  of  mankind  were  nearly  buried  under  the  privileges  and  trappings  of 
oligarchy  ;  and  the  principles  of  liberty  formed  a  theory  traceable  (if  at  all) 
only  by  difficult  and  operose  research  amidst  established  usages  that  widely 
departed  from  its  obvious  dictates.  In  America,  he  found  a  closer  cor- 
respondence between  the  established  municipal  systems  and  the  Hneaments 
of  those  principles  of  liberty  which  he  regarded  as  the  genuine  offspring  of 
truth,  sense,  and  nature  ;  and,  with  ardent  hope  and  desire,  he  hailed  the 
prospect  of  a  higher  development  of  those  principles,  from  the  rejection 
and  overthrow  of  the  opposite  principles  of  regal  and  aristocratical  preemi- 
nence, which  rather  embarrassed  the  theory  than  influenced  the  practical 
effect  of  the  American  institutions.  Paine  was  an  enthusiastic  votary  of  the 
temporal  happiness  and  liberty  of  mankind,  but  ignorant  and  regardless  of 
their  highest  duties  and  noblest  destination.  Though  as  yet  guildess  of 
those  blasphemous  impieties  which  have  rendered  his  name  odious  to  Chris- 
tian ears,  he  was  already  a  disbeliever  of  revealed  religion,  of  which  the 
doctrines  were  taught  to  him  in  his  youth  by  ignorant  and  weak-minded  in- 
structors, and  discredited  to  him  in  his  manhood  by  the  cant  and  grimace  of 
hypocrites  and  tyrants,  —  of  arbitrary  princes  and  their  hireling  clergy,  in 
whose  mouths  the  precepts  delivered  by  the  divine  Friend  and  Redeemer 
of  the  human  race  were  transmuted  into  the  cozening  language  and  inter- 
ested counsels  of  the  oppressor  to  the  slave.  Some  glimmerings  of  this 
sentiment  were  discernible  in  the  essays  by  which  he  animated  the  Ameri- 
cans to  resist  Britain  and  contend  for  liberty.^  For  this  he  underwent  a 
severe  and  indignant  castigation  from  Witherspoon,  who  was  as  much  of- 
fended to  see  the  rights  of  man  separated  from  his  duties,  liberty  made  a 
cloak  for  licentiousness,  and  the  interests  of  America  linked  with  infidelity, 
as  Paine  had  been  offended  with  a  religion  dishonored  by  hypocritical 
professors  and  tyrannical  patrons.  No  writer  argued  in  defence  of  Amer- 
ican resistance  and  revolt  with  more  force  or  simplicity  than  Witherspoon, 
who  insisted  that  a  subject  nation,  Hke  an  individual  youth,  advanced  with 
corresponding  steps  to  manhood  and  to  liberty  ;  that  America  was  now  so 
far  advanced,  that  she  could  no  longer,  except  by  tyranny,  be  governed  by 
a  distant  empire  ;  that  the  incompetence  of  Britain  to  retain  her  dominion 
was  proved  by  the  injustice,  fluctuation,  impolicy,  and  inefficiency  of  her 
recent  measures  ;  and  the  capacity  of  the  Americans  for  independence,  by 
the  spirit,  firmness,  and  efficacy  of  their  resistance.  In  opposition  to  the 
Quakers  and  some  other  professors  of  Christianity,  whom  Paine  loaded 
with  angry  malediction  and  sarcastic  insult  for  renouncing  all  resistance  to 
established  authority,  as  inconsistent  with  certain  precepts  in  the  New 
Testament,  Witherspoon  calmly  yet  firmly  maintained  that  the  prohibitive 
strain  of  those  precepts  had  no  relation  whatever  to  the  actual  circumstances 
of  the  Americans  in  their  controversy  with  England  ;  and  that  it  was  both 
the  right  and  the  duty  of  every  friend  of  religious  liberty  in  America  to 
contend  for  the  preservation  of  political  freedom.^ 

Under  governments  of  a  mixed  nature,  indeed,  and  founded  on  human 
compacts,  the  practical  question  of  the  right  of  a  Christian  people  to  re- 

'  Paine's  American  Crisis. 

*  Witherspoon 's  Sermons  and  Address  to  the  Scottish  Residents  in  America 


464  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

sist  the  powers  that  be  is  never  so  simple  as  theorists  are  apt  to  represent 
it.  Who  are  the  powers  that  be  ?  In  England,  during  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  First,  for  example,  the  parliament  had  as  much  claim  to  that  title  as  the 
king.  In  America,  at  the  epoch  of  which  we  treat,  the  provincial  assem- 
blies partook  it  with  the  organs  of  power  in  the  parent  state  ;  and  when  they 
and  the  mass  of  the  population,  in  order  to  oppose  the  encroachments, 
were  compelled  to  disown  the  authority  of  those  organs,  they  wholly  en- 
grossed it.  It  was  the  opinion  of  Witherspoon,  and  of  many  other  persons 
of  sincere,  deep,  and  enlightened  piety  in  America,  that,  where  collisions 
arise  between  different  authorities  in  the  same  empire,  every  man  possesses 
the  right  of  choosing  the  side  he  shall  support,  bounded  by  the  duty  of 
consulting  the  interests  of  religion  and  liberty,  and  of  respecting  the  opinions 
and  wishes  of  the  majority  of  the  community.  The  Scriptural  precepts 
referred  to  by  the  Quakers,  and  other  advocates  of  submission,  they  deemed 
were  intended  (in  so  far  as  their  application  might  be  supposed  universal) 
to  inculcate  the  duty  without  defining  the  limits  of  obedience  to  civil  au- 
thority, and  to  recommend  a  peaceable,  moderate,  and  contented  disposi- 
tion, and  averseness  to  wanton  or  unnecessary  change.^  John  Wesley  was 
at  first  opposed,  on  religious  principles,  to  American  resistance,  and,  in 
letters  to  the  Methodists  in  America,  endeavoured  without  efl^ect  to  dissuade 
them  from  embracing  the  cause  of  their  country.  But  he  very  soon 
changed  his  opinion,  and  even  encouraged  the  Americans  in  revolt  by  ex- 
pressions of  his  good  wishes  and  approbation.^ 

All  great  passions  in  their  effervescence  exert  a  contagious  influence  ; 
and  there  is  something  in  the  aspect  of  a  people  gallantly  struggling  for 
freedom,  and  indignandy  resisting  the  oppression  of  a  stronger  and  pre- 
dominant power,  wonderfully  calculated  to  interest  the  favor  and  kindle  the 
ardor  of  liberal  and  energetic  minds.  The  American  controversy,  hke 
every  other  revolutionary  vortex,  absorbed  a  great  variety  of  human  senti- 
ment and  character.  Virtue  and  vice,  patriotism  and  licentiousness,  am- 
bitious genius  and  wild  enthusiasm,  ever  combine  to  warm  the  feelings  and 
multiply  the   numbers   of    the   partisans  and   promoters   of   revolutionary 

'  The  influence  of  the  genuine  principles  of  Christianity  is  at  once  favorable  to  social  order 
and  opposed  to  the  pretensions  of  arbitrary  power.  Those  American  States  in  which  religion 
had  the  greatest  prevalence  were  the  most  distinguished  for  social  order  and  warm  yet  rational 
attachment  to  liberty.  In  monarchical  governments,  if  kings  would  be  content  to  abstain  from 
interference  with  the  religion  and  the  religious  institutions  of  their  subjects,  they  might  de- 
rive the  full  benefits  of  the  quiesceiit  agency  of  Christianity  on  the  human  mind.  By  uniting, 
the  state  with  the  churchy  sovereigns  contrive  to  make  the  church  partly  responsible  for  the 
errors  of  their  own  civil  policy,  and  defeat  the  efficacy  of  the  religious  precepts  which  enjoin 
submission  and  moderation,  by  taking  the  preaching  of  these  precepts  into  their  own  hands, 
and  counteracting  their  preaching  by  their  own  example.  When  they  who  style  themselves 
the  human  heads  of  the  church  are  free  to  press  and  pursue  every  temporal  privilege  and  po- 
etical claim,  shall  the  members  be  deprived  of  the  same  latitude  ?  Thus  men  must  feel ;  and, 
unhappily,  princes,  cultivating  an  alliance  with  the  church,  have  been  much  more  successful 
in  discrediting  religion  than  in  strengthening  their  own  pretensions.  A  political  church  in- 
troduces a  confusion  into  men's  notions,  and  with  one  hand  stirs  the  passions  on  which  it  seeks 
txi  pour  oil  with  the  other.  The  pernicious  policy  of  uniting  ecclesiastical  establishments  with 
municipal  governmen^t  is  very  forcibly  exposed  by  De  Tocqueville,  in  his  treatise  on  Democ- 
rncy  in-  America.  May  we  not  apply  to  communities  the  apostolical  injunction  to  individual 
sliives,  —  to  abide  patiently  the  lot  which,  rooted  and  fixed  as  it  was,  could  not  presently  be 
altered,  and  could  not  be  resisted  without  violence,  convulsion,  and  bloodshed,  —  and  which 
yet  was  qualified  by  the  permissive  direction,  "  If  thou  mayest  be  made  fi-ee,  use  it  rather  "  ? 
The  right  to  be  free  becomes  a  duty,  when  it  is  united  with  the  power. 

*  Southey's  Life  of  Wesley.  Wesley's  niece,  Mrs.  Wright,  the  celebrated  modeller  in  wax, 
was  born  in  Pennsylvania,  and  warmly  attached  to  the  interests  of  America,  which  she  ap- 
pears to  have  promoted  by  exertions  more  politic  than  strictly  honorable.  Franklin's  Private 
('orrespuudence 


CHAP.  III.]  INSURRECTION  IN  NORTH  CAROLINA.  4g5 

change.  At  such  seasons,  genius  and  talent,  apart  from  every  other  virtue 
except  devotion  to  the  pubhc  cause,  bear  a  high  premium  in  popular  esti- 
mation ;  and  the  general  esteem  is  apt  too  fondly  to  consecrate  the  qualifi- 
cations which  seem  peculiarly  and  immediately  to  redound  to  the  general 
honor  and  advantage.'  The  talents  and  passions  of  ardent  minds  enrol 
themselves  in  the  public  service  ;  and  men,  whose  eloquence  has  merely 
adorned  and  illustrated  the  stream  of  popular  sentiment  and  opinion,  are  too 
often  hailed  with  exaggerated  encomium  as  its  sources  or  guides.  It 
was  happy  for  the  Americans,  that,  during  the  whole  of  their  revolutionary 
controversy,  mere  talent  never  obtained  an  influence  exceeding  or  even 
approaching  the  authority  of  sense  and  virtue.  The  bold  and  glowing  sal- 
lies of  genius  and  enthusiasm  were  admired  ;  but  the  public,  though  warmed, 
was  not  dazzled  by  them,  and  preferably  derived  its  policy  from  the  mod- 
erate but  sound  and  steady  counsels  of  wise  and  honest  men.  The  Ameri- 
cans were  generally  imbued  with  the  persuasion  (which  some  notable  events 
in  their  subsequent  experience  tended  to  illustrate  and  confirm)  that  a 
nation  can  never  be  safely  indifferent  to  the  moral  character  of  its  political 
chiefs  and  leaders,  and  that  private  virtue  and  prudence  afford  the  surest 
test  of  the  purity  and  stabiHty  of  patriotic  purpose  and  resolution."^  All  the 
valuable  services  which  the  Americans  received  from  their  eloquent  and 
zealous  partisan,  Thomas  Paine,  though,  justly  appreciated  and  richly  re- 
quited by  them,  could  never  render  his  name  popular  in  America.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  Thomas  Paine,  of  Boston, 
obtained  an  act  of  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  authorizing  him  to  change 
his  name  to  Robert  Tjreat  Paine,  "  because  he  was  unwiUing  to  bear  the 
name  of  a  certain  noted  infidel  and  reviler  of  rehgion."^ 

North  Carohna  had  been  for  some  time  past  convulsed  with  disorders, 
which  at  length  broke  out  in  an  insurrection  so  completely  disconnected  with 
the  general  agitation  by  which  America  was  pervaded,  that  the  insurgents 
afterwards  formed  one  of  the  strongest  bodies  of  royalist  partisans,  who, 
dissenting  from  their  countrymen  in  general,  adhered  to  and  supported  the 
pretensions  of  Britain.  And  yet,  in  reality,  it  w^as  the  corruption  or  inca- 
pacity of  functionaries  of  the  British  government  that  produced  the  very 
evils  of  which  those  persons  now  complained.  We  have  formerly  remarked  '* 
the  abuses  which  prevailed  in  the  civil  administration  of  this  province,  and 
which* the  appointment  of  Tryon  to  be  its  governor  was  expected  to  cure. 
This  expectation  was  disappointed.  One  of  the  most  irritating  abuses  was 
the  exaction  of  exorbitant  fees  by  public  officers  on  all  legal  proceedings, 
and  particularly  on  all  deeds  and  ceremonies  requisite  by  law  to  the  validity 
of  sales  and  acquisitions  of  landed  property.  Tryon,  in  conformity  with  his 
instructions,  issued  a  proclamation  against  this  abuse  ;  but,  as  he  either  neg- 
ligently or  corruptly  confined  himself  to  proclaiming,  without  attempting  to 
execute,  a  purposed  reform,  his  conduct  served  only  to  sanction,  without 
curing  or  alleviating,  the  general  discontent.  In  addition  to  this  grievance, 
a  number  of  the  sheriffs  and  of  the  receivers  of  the  provincial  taxes  were 

^  It  was  a  proverbial  saying  in  ancient  Greece,  that  "  Civil  discord  is  a  season  in  which  tlie 
highest  reputation  may  be  gained  by  the  worst  men."     Plutarch,  Life  of  Alexander. 

*  "  We  have  here  an  explanation  of  a  striking  fact  in  the  history  of  our  Revolution  ;  we 
mean  the  want  or  absence  of  that  description  of  great  men  whom  we  meet  in  other  countries, 
men  who,  by  their  distinct  and  single  agency,  and  by  their  splendid  deeds,  determine  a  na- 
tion's fate.  There  was  too  much  greatne.ss  m  the  American  people  to  admit  this  overshad- 
owing greatness  of  leaders."    Dr.  Channing's  Remarks  on  the  Life  and  Character  of  Bonaparte. 

3  Stuart's  Three  Years  m  North  America.  *  Ante^  Book  X-,  Chap.  VI. 

VOL.   II.  59 


466  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

suffered  to  continue  long  indebted  to  the  provincial  treasury  for  a  heavy 
arrear  of  public  moneys  which  they  had  collected,  but  delayed  to  account 
for  ;  and  it  was  not  unreasonably  surmised  that  the  weight  of  the  taxes  was 
•aggravated  by  this  misappHcation  of  their  produce.  An  association  was 
gradually  formed  by  a  great  number  of  poor  colonists,  who  assumed  the 
title  of  Regulators,  and  who  entered  into  a  compact,  which  they  ratified  by 
oath,  to  pay  no  taxes  whatever,  till  all  exorbitant  fees  were  abolished,  and 
official  embezzlement  punished  and  prevented.  The  general  ill-humor  was 
increased  by  a  vote  of  the  assembly  of  a  large  sum  of  money  to  build  a  pal- 
ace for  the  governor,  as  an  expression  of  pubhc  gratitude  for  the  repeal  of 
the  Stamp  Act  ;  and  also  by  the  imposition  for  this  purpose  of  a  tax,  which 
began  to  operate  at  the  very  time  when  the  parliamentary  impost  on  tea, 
glass,  paper,  and  painters'  colors  was  promulgated.  Tryon  with  great 
difficulty  pacified  the  Regulators  by  promises  which  were  only  delusively 
fulfilled.  Fanning,  one  of  the  recorders  of  conveyances  of  land,  was  tried 
on  six  indictments  for  extortion,  and  found  guilty  in  every  instance.  The 
royal  judges,  however,  sentenced  him  to  pay  only  the  fine  of  one  penny, 
—  a  sentence  more  insulting  to  the  people  than  would  have  been  the  boldest 
injustice  in  openly  absolving  him. 

This,  and  other  similar  transactions,  revived  the  association  of  the  Reg- 
ulators, who,  incensed  and  blinded  with  indignation  and  ignorance,  easily 
became  the  dupes  of  leaders  of  whom  some  were  madmen  and  others  knaves. 
One  of  those  leaders,  named  Few,  whose  hfe  was  afterwards  vindictively 
abridged  by  the  executioner,  instead  of  being  charitably  prolonged  in  a  lu- 
natic asylum,  alleged  that  he  was  commissioned  by  Heaven  to  deliver  the 
whole  world  from  oppression,  and  specially  directed  to  commence  his  work 
in  North  Carolina.  After  various  outrages,  the  Regulators,  assembling  in 
the  present  year  to  the  number  of  two  thousand,  declared  their  purpose  of 
abolishing  courts  of  justice,  exterminating  all  lawyers  and  public  officers, 
and  prostrating  the  provincial  government  itself  beneath  some  wild  and 
indeterminate  scheme  of  democracy,  which,  doubdess,  its  abettors  as  little 
comprehended  as  they  were  qualified  to  accomphsh.  All  the  sober  and 
respectable  part  of  the  community  perceived  the  necessity  of  defending 
themselves  against  the  folly  and  fury  of  the  insurgents,  whom  Tryon  was 
soon  enabled  to  oppose  with  eleven  hundred  of  the  provincial  militia.  In 
a  battle  at  Almansee  [May  16,  1771],  the  Regulators  were  completely  de- 
feated, with  the  loss  of  three  hundred  of  their  number,  who  were  found 
dead  on  the  field.  Seventy  of  the  militia  were  killed  or  wounded.  Twelve 
of  the  defeated  insurgents  were  afterwards  tried  and  condemned  to  die  for 
high  treason  [June,  1771]  ;  six  of  these  were  executed  ;  the  rest  of  the 
fugitives,  except  some  of  their  leaders  who  escaped  from  the  province, 
submitted  to  the  government  and  took  the  oath  of  allegiance. 

Tryon,  though  he  had  dissolved  an  assembly  for  imitating  the  Virginian 
resolutions  in  1769,  was  yet  in  the  main  popular  with  all  the  most  substantial 
and  respectable  inhabitants  of  North  Carolina.  This  advantage  he  owed  to 
the  diligence  with  which  he  avoided  to  provoke  or  aggravate  disputes  with 
the  assembly,  and  to  the  zeal  with  which  he  opposed  a  proposition  of  Lord 
Charles  Montague,  the  governor  of  South  Carolina,  for  establishing  a 
boundary  line  very  unfavorable  to  the  northern  province.  Nevertheless, 
only  a  short  time  after  he  had  suppressed  the  insurrection  of  the  Regulators, 
Tryon  was  removed  to  the  government  of  New  York,  and  succeeded  in 


CHAP.  Ill]         AFFAIR  OF  THE  GASPEE  IN  RHODE  ISLAND.  4^7. 

North  Carolina  by  Josiah  Martin,  a  vain,  weak,  and  insolent  man,  who  en- 
deavoured to  lower  the  character  of  his  predecessor  by  defending  and  coun- 
tenancing all  who  were  supposed  to  have  aided  or  befriended  the  Regula- 
tors ;  and  to  recommend  himself  to  the  British  ministry  by  seizing  every 
opportunity  of  disputing  with  and  complaining  of  the  provincial  assembly. ^ 
This  was  an  appointment  most  unpropitious  to  the  credit  and  authority  of 
the  British  government  with  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  province,  except 
those  unfortunate  persons  whose  ignorance,  deluded  by  the  caresses  of  Mar- 
tin, induced  them  to  transfer  their  resentment  from  the  parent  state  to  the 
provincial  institutions.  And  when  we  consider,  that,  in  the  same  year, 
Hutchinson,  one  of  the  most  unpopular  characters  in  America,  was  ap- 
pointed to  succeed  his  former  principal,  Bernard,  as  governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, —  and  that  his  two  brothers-in-law,  Andrew  and  Peter  Oliver,  un- 
popular both  by  their  public  conduct  and  then:  connection  with  him,  were 
appointed,  the  first,  lieutenant-governor,  and  the  second,  chief  justice  of  this 
province,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  perplexity  and  hesitation  latterly 
betrayed  by  the  cabinet  of  the  parent  state  issued  in  counsels  that  were  far 
from  disclosing  the  influence  of  deliberate  wisdom  or  the  discernment  of 
sound  policy.  On  tlie  inauguration  of  Hutchinson,  the  authorities  of  Harvard 
College  addressed  him  with  felicitation  more  complimentary  than  sincere, 
and  the  students  performed  an  anthem  set  to  words  of  the  following  strain  : 
—  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord  :  From  henceforth,  behold  !  all  nations  shall  call 
thee  blessed  ;  for  thy  rulers  shall  be  of  thy  own  kindred,  your  nobles  shall 
be  of  yourselves,  and  thy  governor  shall  proceed  from  the  midst  of  thee." 

An  act  of  violence  committed  by  the  colonists  of  Rhode  Island,  though 
less  memorable  in  respect  of  its  intrinsic  importance  than  the  insurrection 
of  the  Regulators  in  North  Carolina,  excited  more  general  attention  from  its 
significance  as  an  indication  of  the  height  to  which  the  general  current  of 
American  sentiment  was  rising.  [1772.^]  The  commander  of  the  Gaspee, 
an  armed  British  schooner  stationed  at  Providence,  had  exerted  much  ac- 
tivity in  supporting  the  trade  laws  and  punishing  the  increasing  contraband 
traffic  of  the  Americans  ;  and  had  provoked  additional  resentment  by  firing 
at  the  Providence  packets  in  order  to  compel  them  to  salute  his  flag  by  low- 
ering theirs  as  they  passed  his  vessel,  and  by  chasing  them  even  into  the 
docks  in  case  of  refusal.  The  master  of  a  packet  conveying  passengers  to 
Providence  [June  9],  which  was  fired  at  and  chased  by  the  Gaspee  for  neg- 
lecting to  pay  the  requisite  tribute  of  respect,  took  advantage  of  the  state 
of  the  tide  (it  being  almost  high  water)  to  stand  in  so  closely  to  the  shore 
that  the  Gaspee  in  the  pursuit  might  be  exposed  to  run  aground.  The  arti- 
fice succeeded  ;  the  Gaspee  presently  stuck  fast,  and  the  packet  proceeded 
in  triumph  to  Providence,  where  a  strong  sensation  was  excited  by  the 
tidings  of  the  occurrence,  and  a  project  was  hastily  formed  to  improve  the 
blow  and  destroy  the  obnoxious  vessel.  Brown,  an  eminent  merchant,  and 
Whipple,  a  ship-master,  took  the  lead  in  this  bold  adventure,  and  easily 
collected  a  sufficient  band  of  armed  and  resolute  men  with  whom  they  em- 
barked in  whale-boats  to  attack  the  British  ship  of  war.  At  two  o'clock  the 
next  morning  [June  10],  they  boarded  the  Gaspee  so  suddenly  and  in  such 
numbers,  that  her  crew  were  instantly  overpowered,  without  hurt  to  any  one 

•  Williamson.     Holmes.     Jlnnual  Register  for  1771. 

*  This  year,  a  territorial  dispute  between  the  province  of  Connecticut  and  tne  Mohegan 
or  Mohican  tribe  of  Indians,  which  had  endured  for  thirty  years,  weis  terminated  by  a  decree 
of  the  British  privy  council  in  favor  of  the  province.     Annual  Register. 


^8  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK   XI. 

except  her  commanding  officer,  who  was  wounded.  The  captors,  having 
despatched  a  part  of  their  number  to  convey  him  together  with  his  private 
effects  and  his  crew  ashore,  set  fire  to  the  Gaspee  and  destroyed  her  with  all 
her  stores.  The  issue  of  this  daring  act  of  war  against  the  naval  force  of 
the  king  was  as  remarkable  as  the  enterprise  itself.  The  British  govern- 
ment offered  a  reward  of  five  hundred  pounds,  together  with  a  pardon  if 
claimed  by  an  accomplice,  for  the  discovery  and  apprehension  of  any  person 
concerned  in  the  treasonable  attack  on  the  Gaspee  ;  and  a  commission  under 
the  great  seal  of  England  appointed  Wanton,  the  governor  of  Rhode  Island, 
Peter  Oliver,  the  new  chief  justice  of  Massachusetts,  Auchmuty,  the  judge- 
admiral  of  America,  and  certain  other  persons,  to  preside  upon  the  trial  of 
the  offenders.  But  no  trial  took  place.  Nobody  came  forward  to  claim 
the  proffered  reward  ;  some  persons,  who  were  apprehended  in  the  hope  that 
they  might  be  induced  by  threats  and  terror  to  become  witnesses,  were  en- 
abled by  popular  assistance  to  escape  before  any  information  could  be  ex- 
tracted from  them  ;  and  in  the  commencement  of  the  following  year,  the 
commissioners  reported  to  the  British  ministry  their  inability,  notwithstand- 
ing the  most  diligent  inquisition,  to  procure  evidence  or  information  against  a 
single  individual.^ 

Meanwhile,  the  flame  of  discontent  was  fanned  in  Massachusetts  by  the 
personal  animosity  that  daily  increased  between  Hutchinson  and  the  ma- 
jority of  the  provincial  assembly.  Hutchinson,  whom  we  have  had  frequent 
occasion  to  notice,  was  a  man  endowed  with  much  address,  agreeable  man- 
ners, and  respectable  talents,  of  which  the  efficacy  was  promoted  by  great 
industry  and  activity  ;  but  vain,  ambitious,  and  credulous  ;  a  diligent  and 
successful  student  of  the  laws,  history,  and  politics  of  New  England,  yet 
never  attaining  a  just  estimate  of  the  character  and  genius  of  her  people. 
In  former  years  he  had  been  a  popular  citizen  ;  and  was  reckoned,  not  in- 
deed a  zealous,  but  a  prudent  patriot,  and  a  dexterous  politician.  His 
popularity,  redeemed  from  a  partial  eclipse  by  the  uprightness,  diligence, 
and  abihty  with  which  he  discharged  the  functions  of  chief  justice,  was  irre- 
trievably ruined  by  circumstances  which  we  have  already  recounted.  He 
still  retained  a  number  of  friends,  by  whom,  among  other  topics  of  com- 
mendation, his  birth  "in  New  England  and  the  politeness  of  his  manners  were 
favorably  contrasted  with  the  British  extraction  and  the  personal  insolence 
of  Bernard.  But  those  circumstances  eventually  rendered  him  only  more 
deeply  and  generally  detested,  when  it  was  discovered  that  he,  a  native  of 
America,  and  a  person  of  so  much  seeming  moderation  that  no  violent  coun- 
sels had  been  expected  from  him,  was  at  this  period  carrying  on  a  secret 
correspondence  with  the  British  ministry,  whom  he  strenuously  exhorted  to 
undertake  the  most  important  innovations  on  the  provincial  institutions,  for 
the  purpose  of  extending  royal  prerogative  and  abridging  popular  liberty. 
Then,  indeed,  almost  all  his  countrymen  fell  away  from  him  ;  and  he  be- 
came more  odious  than  it  was  possible  for  Bernard  or  any  other  native  of 
England  to  have  rendered  himself  in  America.  During  the  whole  scene 
of  the  controversy  with  Britain,  and  of  the  revolution  that  ensued  from  it, 
the  moderation  which  the  Americans  displayed  towards  the  natives  of  Brit- 
ain was  strikingly  contrasted  w^ith  the  implacable  rage,  impatience,  and  ha 
tred  they  indulged  against  American  Royalists  ;^  and  a  curious  saying  be- 

'  Gordon.     Holmes.     Quincy. 

2  Americans  whose  predilection  for  the  royal  cause  was  only  suspected,  or  had  vented  it- 
self merely  in  ambiguous  language  or  conduct,  were  frequently  tarred  and  feathered  by  their 


CHAP.  Ill]        GOVERNOR  HUTCHINSON.  — ROYAL  SALARIES.  4^9 

came  current  in  America,  that,  "  Although  we  are  commanded  to  forgive 
our  enemies,  we  are  nowhere  required  to  pardon  our  friends."  Hutchin- 
son was  already  to  his  countrymen  an  object  of  strong  and  general  dislike  ; 
and  it  was  highly  impolitic  of  the  British  ministers  to  embarrass  the  execu- 
tion of  their  measures  with  the  adventitious  weight  of  his  peculiar  unpopu- 
larity. Professing  an  earnest  desire  to  obtain  accurate  reports  of  the  state 
of  public  feeling  and  opinion  in  America,  they  would  have  pursued  this 
end  more  wisely  by  sending  out  a  new  governor  from  England  to  Massa- 
chusetts, than  by  conferring  this  office  on  a  man  whose  representations  had 
already  proved  fallacious,  and  who  had  taken  such  an  active  part  in  the  late 
political  struggles  that  his  views  were  necessarily  warped  by  his  passions. 
As  firmly  as  Cardinal  Wolsey  (a  spirit  of  far  higher  order)  did,  and  proba- 
bly with  as  much  self-deceit,  Hutchinson  believed  that  his  pohtical  conduct 
was  entirely  disinterested,  and  ascribed  all  his  exertions  to  abet  royal  pre- 
rogative to  a  genuine  and  simple  zeal  for  the  due  dignity  of  the  crown  and 
the  general  welfare  and  honor  of  the  empire.  He  resembled  not  a  httle  his 
official  predecessor.  Governor  Dudley.  Both  were  sincerely  attached  to 
their  country  ;  but  both,  dazzled  by  ambition,  enamoured  of  aristocracy, 
and  bent  on  preeminence,  were  led  by  mixed  motives  of  political  principle 
and  personal  convenience  to  prefer  a  splendid,  wealthily  endowed  magistra- 
cy, invested  with  a  powerful  control  over  the  citizens,  to  a  system  of  gov- 
ernment more  humble  in  its  garb  and  pretensions,  and  more  dependent  on  the 
will  and  approbation  of  a  free  people.^ 

Hutchinson  had  enjoyed  his  commission  as  governor  but  a  very  short 
time,  when  he  acquainted  the  provincial  assembly  that  he  no  longer  required 
a  salary  from  them,  as  the  king  had  made  provision  for  his  support.  By  this 
measure  the  British  court  expected  gradually  to  introduce  into  practical  op- 
eration the  principle  for  which  it  had  already  contended,  of  rendering  the 
emoluments,  as  well  as  the  communication  and  endurance,  of  executive  func- 
tions in  America  wholly  dependent  on  the  pleasure  of  the  crown  ;  and  prob- 
ably it  was  supposed  that  the  Americans  would  give  little  heed  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  an  innovation  of  which  the  first  practical  effect  was  to  relieve  them 
from  a  considerable  burden.  But  the  Americans  valued  liberty  more  than 
money,  and  justly  accounted  it  the  political  basis  on  which  reposed  the  sta- 
bility of  every  temporal  advantage.  Hutchinson's  communication  was  delib- 
erately pondered,  and  about  a  month  afterwards  [July  10],  the  assembly  by 

countrymen,  —  that  is,  their  naked  bodies  were  first  smeared  with  tar,  and  then  rolled  in  a  heap 
of  feathers.  The  burlesque  and  even  jocular  cast  of  this  operation  blinded  the  eyes  of  the  pop- 
ulace to  its  cruelty  ;  laughter  stifled  humanity  and  compassion  :  and  ferocity  was  disguised  and 
promoted  by  blending  vengeance  with  sport.  In  the  French  Revolution,  the  number  of  real 
or  supposed  aristocrats,  who,  with  mingled  jest  and  cruelty,  were  hanged  by  the  populace  on 
the  lamp-posts  of  Paris,  illustrated  still  more  forcibly  the  danger  of  connecting  ludicrous  ideas 
with  penal  inflictions. 

The  American  Royalists  subsequently  exacted  a  bloody  and  disproportioned  revenge  of  the 
insults  they  had  endured  from  their  countrymen.  When  they  took  arms  in  behalf  of  Britain, 
they  surpassed  even  the  Indians  in  the  rapine,  perfidy,  and  ferocious  cruelty  which  character- 
ized their  warfare. 

'  In  America,  says  an  eminent  political  writer,  magistrates,  deprived  of  all  imposing  state 
and  costume,  are  reduced  to  depend  on  personal  merit  alone.  They  are  invariably  accessible 
to  all,  attentive  to  every  application,  and  gracious  in  their  language  ;  perfectly  sensible  that 
they  have  received  the  right  of  placing  themselves  above  others  by  their  power,  only  on 
condition  of  descending  to  the  level  of  all  by  their  manners.  De  Tocqueville  on  American 
Democracy.  This  was  what  Dudley,  Hutchinson,  and  the  other  partisans  of  royalty  and  ar- 
istocracy desired  earnestly  to  avoid,  and  what  the  genius  of  democracy  has  accomplished  in 
America,  —  where  (to  use  an  expression  of  the  historian  Sismondi)  the  government  belongs  to 
the  people,  and  not  the  people  to  the  government. 

NN 


470  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

a  message  declared  to  him,  that  the  royal  provision  for  his  support,  and  his 
own  acceptance  of  it,  was  an  infraction  of  the  rights  of  the  inhabitants  recog- 
nized by  the  provincial  charter,  an  insult  to  the  assembly,  and  an  invasion 
of  the  important  trust  which  from  the  foundation  of  their  commonwealth 
they  had  ever  continued  to  exercise.  Hutchinson,  who,  like  many  schol- 
ars, entertained  sentiments  rather  kindly  than  respectful  of  the  mass  of  man- 
kind, and  never  justly  appreciated  the  fortitude,  resolution,  and  foresight  of 
his  countrymen,  appears  to  have  been  struck  with  surprise  at  their  conduct 
on  this  occasion.  This,  at  least,  is  the  most  intelligible  explanation  of  his 
behaviour,  when,  some  time  after,  they  desired  his  assent  to  the  usual  pro- 
vision they  made  for  the  salaries  of  the  judges.  Instead  of  frankly  granting 
or  withholding  his  sanction,  he  continued  to  hesitate  and  temporize,  until  a 
remonstrance  from  the  assembly  elicited  from  him  the  avowal,  for  which 
they  were  quite  prepared,  that  he  could  no  longer  authorize  a  provincial  pro- 
vision for  the  judges,  as  the  king  had  undertaken  to  provide  for  their  rem.u- 
neration  also.  The  assembly  instantly  passed  a  resolution  declaring  that 
this  measure  tended  to  the  subversion  of  justice  and.  equity;  and  that, 
while  the  tenure  of  judicial  office  continued  to  depend  on  the  pleasure  of  the 
king,  "  any  of  the  judges  who  shall  accept  of  and  depend  upon  the  pleasure 
of  the  crown  for  his  support,  independent  of  the  grants  of  the  assembly,  will 
discover  that  he  is  an  enemy  to  the  constitution,  and  has  it  in  his  heart  to 
promote  the  estabhshment  of  arbitrary  power  in  the  province."  We  shall 
here  so  far  overstep  the  march  of  time  and  order  of  events  as  to  notice  the 
issue  of  this  particular  dispute,  which  did  not  occur  till  the  commencement 
of  the  year  1774,  when  four  of  the  judges  acquainted  the  assembly  that 
they  had  received  the  salary  voted  to  them  by  the  representatives  of  the 
people,  and  refused  to  accept  emolument  from  any  other  quarter  ;  but  Oli- 
ver, the  chief  justice,  announced  that  he  had  received  the  king's  salary, 
and  without  his  Majesty's  permission  could  not  accept  any  other  emolument. 
The  assembly  thereupon  tendered  an  impeachment  against  Oliver  to  the 
governor  and  council  ;  and  as  Hutchinson  refused  to  receive  it,  they  pro- 
tested that  his  refusal  was  occasioned  by  his  own  dependence  on  the  crown. 
They  had  never,  indeed,  any  hope  that  it  would  be  received,  and  were  in- 
cited to  these  measures  by  the  desire  of  rendering  Hutchinson  and  Oliver 
additionally  unpopular. 

In  the  close  of  the  present  year,  Samuel  Adams  suggested  to  his  coun- 
trymen the  expediency  of  a  measure  fitted  to  counteract  the  representations 
of  Hutchinson  and  his  adherents,  who  gave  out  that  the  popular  opposition 
was  more  formidable  in  appearance  than  in  reality,  and  was  at  bottom  mere- 
ly an  intrigue  of  a  few  factious  men  ;  and  in  conformity  with  his  suggestion, 
the  inhabitants  of  Boston  [November  22,  1772],  elected  twenty-one  of 
their  fellow-citizens  as  a  committee  empowered  to  correspond  with  the  rest 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  province,  to  consider  and  represent  the  common 
grievances,  and  to  publish  to  the  world  an  account  of  their  transactions. 
The  committee  thus  elected  prepared  and  dispersed  throughout  the  province 
a  report  of  all  the  encroachments  that  had  been  attempted  or  committed  up- 
on American  liberty,  together  with  a  circular  letter  which  concluded  in  these 
terms:  —  "Let  us  consider,  brethren,  that  we  are  strugghng  for  our  best 
birthright  and  inheritance,  of  which  the  infringement  renders  all  other  bless- 
ings precarious  in  their  enjoyment,  and  consequently  trifling  in  their  value. 
JVe  are  not  afraid  of  poverty,  but  we  disdain  slavery.     Let  us  disappoint 


CHAP.  Ill]  COMMITTEES  OF  CORRESPONDENCE.  47 1 

the  men  who  are  raising  themselves  on  the  ruin  of  this  country.  Let  us 
convince  every  invader  of  our  freedom  that  we  will  be  as  free  as  the  consti- 
tution which  our  fathers  recognized  will  justify." 

The  powerful  influence  of  this  measure  was  not  confined  to  the  province  of 
Massachusetts,  nor  even  to  the  States  of  New  England.  A  few  months  after 
[March,  1773],  the  assembly  of  Virginia  declared  their  resolution  of  main- 
taining an  uninterrupted  intercourse  with  the  sister  colonies,  and  for  this  pur- 
pose appointed  a  committee  of  eleven  persons,  who  were  instructed  to  use 
their  utmost  endeavours  to  procure  authentic  intelligence  of  all  the  trans- 
actions of  the  British  parliament  or  ministry  relative  to  America,  and  to 
maintain  a  correspondence  on  this  subject  with  the  other  provincial  commu- 
nities. This  measure,  which  produced  an  important  effect  in  animating  the 
resolution  and  harmonizing  the  proceedings  of  the  x\mericans,  was  so  grate- 
ful in  particular  to  the  citizens  of  Boston,  that,  in  a  letter  of  instructions 
which  they  addressed  shortly  after  to  their  representatives  in  the  assembly, 
they  desired  them  seriously  to  consider  if  the  salvation  of  American  liberty 
and  the  restoration  of  friendship  between  America  and  Britain  did  not 
demand  an  immediate  concurrence  with  the  wise  and  salutary  proposal  of  our 
noble  patriotic  sister  colony  of  Virginia.  The  recommendation  of  the  citi- 
zens of  Boston  was  favorably  received  by  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts, 
which  instantly  appointed  a  committee  of  correspondence  with  the  other 
colonies.  In  a  circular  letter  published  shortly  after  by  this  committee, 
the  prospect  of  a  quarrel  between  England  and  Spain  w^as  remarked  in  these 
terms  :  —  "  Should  a  war  take  place,  which  by  many  is  thought  to  be  prob- 
able, America  will  be  viewed  by  the  administration  as  important  to  Great 
Britain.  Her  aid  will  be  deemed  necessary  ;  her  friendship  will  be  courted. 
Would  it  not,  then,  be  wise  in  the  several  American  governments  to  withhold 
all  kind  of  aid  in  a  general  war,  till  their  rights  and  liberties  are  permanently 
restored  and  secured.''"  "With  regard  to  the  extent  of  rights,^^  they 
added,  "  which  the  colonies  ought  to  insist  upon^  it  is  a  subject  which  re- 
quires the  greatest  attention  and  deliberation.  This  is  a  strong  reason  why 
it  should  claim  the  earliest  consideration  of  every  committee  ;  that  we  may 
be  prepared,  when  time  and  circumstances  shall  give  to  our  claim  the  surest 
prospect  of  success.  And  when  we  consider  how  one  great  event  has  hur- 
ried on  after  another,  such  a  time  may  come  sooner  than  we  suppose. ^^ 

Hutchinson,  about  this  time,  with  a  rash  confidence  in  his  own  talents  and 
an  eager  hope  of  recommending  himself  to  the  British  court,  undertook  in  his 
speeches  to  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  to  support  by  argument  the  legis- 
lative supremacy  of  parliament,  —  a  doctrine  which  we  have  seen*that  his 
own  original  opinions  outstripped  those  of  his  countrymen  in  opposing.  This 
misplaced  exertion  of  zeal  was  generally  disapproved,  even  in  England, 
where  it  was  remarked  with  displeasure  that  principles  solemnly  established 
by  the  crown  and  parliament  were  at  once  unhinged  and  degraded  by  the 
presumptuous  argumentative  patronage  of  a  provincial  governor.  The  as- 
sembly, though  with  some  reluctance,  accepted  his  challenge  to  argue  the 
point ;  and  the  general  impression  in  America  pronounced  them  victors  in 
the  discussion.^ 

Among  other  subjects  of  dispute  with  the  British  government  and  its 
officers  was  one  more  creditable  to  Massachusetts  than  even  her  magnani- 

^  Eliot,  art.  Hutchinson,  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.  Hutchinson.  Gordon.  Brad- 
ford.   Holmes     Pitkin. 


472  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

mous  concern  for  the  liberty  of  her  citizens  and  their  fellow-colonists.  Ne- 
gro slavery  still  subsisted  in  every  one  of  the  American  provinces  ;  and  the 
unhappy  victims  of  this  yoke  were  rapidly  multiplied  by  the  progressive  ex- 
tension of  the  slave-trade.^  Georgia,  the  youngest  of  all  the  States,  con- 
tained already  fourteen  thousand  negroes  ;  and  in  the  course  of  the  present 
year  alone,  more  than  six  thousand  were  imported  into  South  Carolina.  In 
New  England  the  number  of  slaves  was  very  insignificant ;  and  their  treat- 
ment so  mild  and  humane  as  in  some  measure  to  veil  from  the  public  eye  the 
iniquity  of  their  bondage.  A  provincial  law,  enacted  in  the  year  1712, 
prohibited  the  importation  of  slaves  into  Massachusetts,  without  restraining 
her  merchants  from  participating  in  the  vile  traffic  that  ministered  to  the  sup- 
ply of  slaves  to  other  States.  But  the  recent  discussions  with  regard  to 
liberty  and  the  rights  of  human  nature  were  calculated  to  awaken  in  generous 
minds  a  juster  impression,  if  not  of  slavery,  at  least  of  slave-deahng  ;  and 
during  the  latter  part  of  Governor  Bernard's  administration,  a  bill  prohibitory 
of  all  traffic  in  negroes  was  passed  by  the  Massachusetts  assembly.  Bernard, 
however,  in  conformity  with  his  instructions  from  the  crown,  refused  to 
affirm  this  law,  and  thus  opposed  himself  to  the  virtue  as  well  as  to  the  liberty 
of  the  people  whom  he  governed.  On  three  subsequent  occasions,  laws 
abolishing  the  slave-trade  were  enacted  by  the  same  assembly  during  Hutch- 
inson's administration  ;  but  all  were  in  like  manner  negatived  by  the  gov- 
ernor. And  yet  it  was  at  this  very  period,  while  Britain  was  permitting 
her  merchants  annually  to  make  slaves  of  more  than  fifty  thousand  men, 
that  her  orators,  poets,  and  statesmen  loudly  celebrated  the  generosity  of 
English  virtue  in  suffering  no  slaves  to  exist  on  EngHsh  ground,  and  the 
transcendent  equity  of  her  judicial  tribunals  in  liberating  one  negro  ^  who 
had  been  carried  there.  Though  Massachusetts  was  thus  prevented  from 
abolishing  the  slave-trade,  the  relative  discussions  that  took  place  were  by 
no  means  unproductive  of  good.  A  great  amelioration  became  visible  in  the 
condition  of  all  the  negroes  in  the  province  ;  and  many  of  ^the  proprietors 
gave  liberty  to  their  slaves.^  This  just  action- — for  such,  and  such  only, 
it  deserves  to  be  termed  —  has  obtained  hitherto  scarcely  any  notice  from 
mankind  ;  while  the  subsequent  and  similar  conduct  of  the  Quakers  in 
Pennsylvania  has  been  celebrated  with  warm  and  general  encomium.      So 

'  "  The  number  of  negro  slaves  bartered  for  in  one  year  (1768)  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  fronj 
Cape  Blanco  to  Rio  Congo,  by  the  different  European  nations,  was  as  follows :  Great  Britain, 
53,100;  British  Americans,  6,300;  France,  23,520 ;  Holland,  11,300 ;  Portugal,  1,700;  Den- 
mark, 1,200;  in  all  104,100,  bought  by  barter  for  European  and  Indian  manufactures;  £15 
sterling  being  the  average  price  given  for  each  negro."     Annual  Register  for  1769. 

"It  is  evident,"  says  the  Abbe  Raynal,  "from  the  most  accurate  and  undeniable  calcula- 
tions, that  there  dies  every  year  in  America  the  seventh  part  of  the  blacks  that  are  imported 
thither  from  Guinea.    Fourteen  hundred  thousand  unhappy  beings,  who  are  now  in  the  Euro- 

Eean  colonies  in  the  New  World,  are  the  unfortunate  remains  of  nine  millions  of  slaves  that 
ave  been  conveyed  thither." 

2  Somersett,  the  negro  liberated  by  the  English  Court  of  King's  Bench  in  1772.  Howell's 
State  Trials.  Somersett's  case  is  erroneously  supposed  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  kind  that 
occurred,  in  Great  Britain.  More  than  ten  years  before,  a  negro  slave  imported  into  Scotland 
was  liberated  by  the  sentence  of  the  Admiralty  Court  of  Glasgow,  in  which  Thomas  Gra- 
hame,  the  grandfather  of  the  author  of  this  History.,  then  held  the  office  of  judge. 

^  Bradford.  Holmes.  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.  "  The  great  revolution  which 
has  taken  place  in  the  Western  World  may  probably  conduce  (and  who  knows  but  that  it  was 
designed  ?)  to  accelerate  the  fall  of  this  abominable  tyranny  [the  institution  of  negro  slavery]  ; 
and  now  that  this  contest  and  its  attendant  passions  are  no  more,  there  may  succeed  perhaps 
H  season  for  reflecting,  whether  a  legislature,  which  had  so  long  lent  its  assistance  to  the  sup- 
port of  an  institution  replete  with  human  misery,  was  fit  to  be  trusted  with  an  empire  the  most 
extensive  that  ever  obtained  in  any  age  or  quarter  of  the  world."  Paley's  Moral  and  Political 
Philosophy. 


CHAP.     II.]       ATTEMPT  TO  ENFORCE  THE  TEA-DUTY  ACT.  473 

capricious  is  the  distribution  of  fame  ;  and  so  much  advantage  does  the 
reputation  of  virtue  derive  from  alliance  with  sectarian  spirit  and  interest. 
Some  enslaved  negroes  in  Massachusetts  obtained  justice  to  themselves  by 
legal  process.  Between  the  year  1770  and  the  commencement  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  various  suits  for  freedom  and  for  wages  on  account  of 
past  service  were  instituted  by  those  negroes  against  their  masters  ;  and  in 
€very  case  the  provincial  juries  returned  verdicts  in  favor  of  the  plaintiffs.^ 

The  British  government,  meanwhile,  having  rashly  determined  to  en- 
force the  Tea-duty  Act,  —  of  which  the  most  considerable  effect  hitherto 
was  a  vast  importation  of  smuggled  tea  into  America  by  the  French,  the 
Dutch,  the  Danes,  and  the  Swedes, — attempted  to  compass  by  policy 
what  constraint  and  authority  had  proved  insufficient  to  accomplish.  The 
measures  of  the  Americans  had  already  occasioned  such  diminution  of  ex- 
ports from  Britain,  that  the  warehouses  of  the  English  East  India  Com- 
pany contained  above  seventeen  millions  of  pounds  of  tea,  for  which  it  was 
difficult  to  procure  a  market.  The  unwillingness  of  the  Company  to  lose 
their  commercial  profits,  and  of  the  ministry  to  forego  the  expected  revenue 
from  the  sale  of  tea  in  America,  induced  a  compromise  for  their  mutual 
advantage.  A  high  duty  was  imposed  hitherto  on  the  exportation  of  tea 
from  England  ;  but  the  East  India  Company  were  now  authorized  by  act 
of  parliament  to  export  their  tea  free  of  duty  to  all  places  whatever.  [May, 
1773.]  By  this  contrivance  it  was  expected  that  tea,  though  loaded  with 
an  exceptionable  tax  on  its  importation  into  America,  would  yet  readily  ob- 
tain purchasers  among  the  Americans ;  as  the  vendors,  relieved  of  the  Brit- 
ish export  duty,  could  afford  to  sell  it  to  them  even  cheaper  than  before  it 
was  made  a  source  of  American  revenue. 

The  crisis  now  drew  near  when  the  Americans  were  to  decide  whether 
they  would  submit  to  be  taxed  by  the  British  parliament,  or  practically 
support  their  own  principles,  and  brave  the  most  perilous  consequences 
of  their  infiexibihty.  One  common  sentiment  was  awakened  throughout 
the  whole  continent  by  the  tidings  of  the  ministerial  device,  which  was 
universally  reprobated  as  an  attempt,  at  once  injurious  and  insulting,  to 
bribe  the  Americans  to  surrender  their  rights  and  bend  their  own  necks 
to  the  yoke  of  arbitrary  power.  A  violent  ferment  arose  ;  the  corre- 
sponding committees  and  political  clubs  exerted  their  utmost  activity  to 
rouse  and  unite  the  people  ;  and  it  was  generally  declared,  that,  as  every  cit- 
izen owed  to  his  country  the  duty  at  least  of  refraining  from  being  accessory 
to  her  subjugation,  every  man  who  countenanced  the  present  measure  of  tlie 
British  government  should  be  deemed  an  enemy  of  America.  To  the 
several  committees  was  intrusted  the  power  of  launching  this  dangerous 
proscription.  Some  of  the  popular  leaders  expressed  doubts  of  the  pru- 
dence of  actual  resistance  to  a  measure  of  so  httle  intrinsic  importance, 
and  preferably  urged  that  the  people  should  be  restrained  from  violence 
till  the  occurrence  of  an  opportunity  of  exciting  and  directing  their  force 
against  some  invasion  of  American  liberty  more  momentous  and  alarming. 
But  to  this  suggestion  it  was  reasonably  and  successfully  rephed,  that  such 
an  opportunity  might  never  occur  again  ;  that  Britain,  warned  by  the  past, 
would  avoid  sudden  and  startling  innovations  ;  that  her  policy  would  be,  by 
multiplying  posts  and  offices,  and  either  bestowing  them  on  her  partisans 
or  employing  them  to  corrupt  her  antagonists,  to  increase  her  force   pru- 

VOL.    II.  60  NN  * 


474  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

portionally  faster  than  the  force  of  the  patriotic  party  would  increase  by  the 
growth  of  the  American  population  ;  that  she  had  latterly  sent  out  as  her 
functionaries  a  number  of  young  men,  who,  marrying  into  provincial  fami- 
lies of  influence  and  consideration,  had  weakened  the  force  of  American 
opposition  ;  and  that  now  was  the  time  to  profit  by  the  general  irritation  of 
the  people  and  the  blunders  committed  by  Britain,  in  order  to  precipitate  a 
collision  which  sooner  or  later  was  inevitable,  and  to  prevent  a  seeming 
accommodation  of  the  quarrel  which  would  only  deteriorate  the  interests  of 
America. 

The  East  India  Company,  confident  of  finding  a  market  for  their  tea, 
reduced  as  it  now  was  in  price,  freighted  several  ships  to  America  with 
this  commodity,  and  appointed  consignees  to  receive  and  dispose  of  it. 
Some  cargoes  were  sent  to  New  York,  some  to  Philadelphia,  some  to 
Charleston,  the  metropolis  of  South  Carolina,  and  some  to  Boston.  The 
inhabitants  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  prevailed  with  the  consignees  to 
disclaim  their  functions,  and  forced  the  ships  to  return  with  their  cargoes 
to  London.  The  inhabitants  of  Charleston  unladed  the  tea,  and  deposited 
it  in  public  cellars,  where  it  was  locked  up  from  use  and  finally  perished. 
At  Boston,  the  consignees,  who  were  the  near  kinsmen  of  Governor  Hutch- 
inson, at  first  refused  to  renounce  their  appointments  [November  6]  ;  and 
the  vessels  containing  the  tea  lay  for  some  time  in  the  harbour  watched  by 
a  strong  guard  of  the  citizens,  who,  from  a  numerous  town-meeting,  de- 
spatched peremptory  commands  to  the  ship-masters  not  to  land  their  ob- 
noxious cargoes.  After  much  delay,  the  consignees,  alarmed  by  the  increas- 
ing violence  of  the  people,  solicited  leave  from  the  governor  to  retire,  but 
were  encouraged  by  him  to  persist.  They  proposed  then  to  the  people 
that  the  tea  should  be  landed,  and  preserved  in  some  public  store  or  maga- 
zine ;  but  this  compromise  was  indignantly  rejected.  At  length  the  popular 
rage  broke  through  every  restraint  of  order  and  decency.  From  the  symp- 
toms of  its  dangerous  fervor  the  consignees  fled  in  dismay  to  the  Castle  ; 
while  an  assemblage  of  men,  dressed  and  painted  like  Mohawk  Indians, 
boarded  the  vessels  and  threw  the  tea  into  the  ocean. ^  [December  16.]  It 
was  remarked  with  some  surprise,  that  during  the  whole  of  this  transaction 
the  civil  and  military  force  of  government,  including  the  garrison  of  Castle 
William  and  several  ships  of  war  in  the  harbour,  remained  completely  inac- 
tive. The  governor,  indeed,  issued  a  proclamation  forbidding  the  people 
to  assemble  in  factious  meetings.  But  the  council,  when  their  protection 
was  implored  by  the  consignees,  refused  to  interfere  at  all  in  the  matter  ;  and 
though,  after  the  outrage  was  committed,  they  condemned  its  perpetration, 
and  invoked  legal  vengeance  on  all  who  had  been  engaged  in  it,  the  futility 
of  this  demonstration  was  obvious  to  every  eye.  To  procure  legal  proof 
that  would  implicate  even  a  single  individual  was  notoriously  impossible. 
The  conduct  of  the  East  India  Company,  in  assisting  the  policy  of  the  British 
government,  excited  strong  displeasure  in  America.  This  sentiment  was 
manifested  in  a  singular  manner  in  Rhode  Island,  where  a  confederacy  of 
respectable  women  united  in  resolutions  to  abstain  from  and  discourage 
the  use  of  tea  procured  from  the  East  India  Company.  Learning  that  an 
inhabitant  of  the  province  had  imported  some  of  the  obnoxious  commodity, 
they  requested  him  to  return  it ;   and  he  instantly  complied.^     Thus  again 

^  See  Note  XXXII. ,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
,        .Annual  Register  for  1773  and /or  1774.     Gordon.     Franklin's  PrJ,vate  Correspondence. 


CHAP.  III.]  DISCLOSURE  OF  HUTCHINSON'S  LETTERS.  475 

was  another  notable  scheme  of  the  British  government  rendered  completely 
abortive. 

The  people  of  Massachusetts  were  the  more  easily  excited  to  the  vio- 
lence we  have  remarked  by  the  disclosure  which  took  place  in  the  summer 
of  the  present  year  of  the  secret  correspondence,  formerly  adverted  to, 
of  Hutchinson  and  some  other  kindred  politicians  with  the  British  ministry. 
According  to  the  defensive  statement  published  by  Franklin  of  his  own 
share  in  this  transaction,  a  person  of  character  and  distinction  in  England, 
whom  he  refused  to  name  (perhaps  the  ex-governor  Pownall),i  after  having 
repeatedly  assured  him  that  all  the  measures  of  the  British  government 
the  most  offensive  to  America  had  originated  from,  and  indeed  greatly 
fallen  short  of,  the  suggestions  and  solicitations  addressed  by  native  Ameri- 
cans to  the  British  ministry,  at  length  verified  this  statement  by  exhibiting  a 
series  of  letters  (how  procured  by  himself  w^as  never  explained)  addressed 
to  persons  holding  official  situations  in  England,  from  Hutchinson,  Oliver, 
and  other  individuals,  representing  all  the  popular  transactions  in  America 
under  the  most  irritating  colors,  and  warmly  pressing  an  alteration  of  the 
provincial  conslitutir^is,  and  the  support  of  British  prerogative  by  military 
power.  Franklin,  struck  with  surprise,  as  he  affirmed,  at  this  discovery, 
and  indulging  all  the  latitude  of  political  passion,  solicited  and  obtained 
leave  to  send  the  letters  to  Massachusetts,  on  condition  that  they  should  be 
communicated  only  to  a  few  of  the  leading  politicians  of  this  province,  and 
neither  printed,  copied,  nor  generally  divulged.  He  declared  that  he  con- 
sidered a  disclosure  of  the  contents  of  these  letters  a  debt  he  owed  to  his 
constituents,  and  the  production  of  the  original  documents  essential  to  the 
verification  of  his  statement  of  their  contents.  How  the  letters  reached, 
ajid  whether  by  fair  and  honorable  means  (which  is  hardly  possible),  the 
hands  of  the  individual  from  whom  he  received  them,  is  left  a  matter  of 
conjecture  and  uncertainty  by  the  obscurity  which  still  prevents  that  indi- 
vidual from  being  distinctly  or  satisfactorily  recognized.  Various  persons 
were  exposed  to  the  suspicion  of  having  purloined  the  letters  ;  and  a  duel, 
originating  in  a  dispute  on  this  subject,  having  taken  place  between  Whately, 
a  London  banker,  brother  of  a  former  secretary  of  the  treasury,  and  Temple, 
the  deputy-governor  of  New  Hampshire,  Franklin,  in  order  to  prevent  far- 
ther bloodshed,  and  exonerate  innocent  persons  from  suspicion,  volunteered 
the  avowal  of  his  share  in  the  transaction.  His  profession  of  having  been 
actuated  by  a  sense  of  duty  to  his  countrymen  in  Massachusetts  was  sar- 
castically disputed  by  antagonists,  who  maintained,  more  plausibly  than 
reasonably,  that  this  sentiment  was  inconsistent  with  the  condition  by  which 
he  restricted,  or  rather  attempted  to  restrict,  the  communication  of  the 
letters  to  a  few  individuals,  and  to  withhold  this  important  disclosure  from 
the  main  body  of  his  constituents.  But  the  condition  attached  to  the  exhi- 
bition of  the  papers  was  prescribed  to  Franklin,  and  perhaps  originated  from 
an  apprehension  of  provoking  the  populace  of  Boston  to  some  act  of  vio- 
lence against  the  person  of  Hutchinson,  if  the  matter  were  suddenly  blazed 
abroad. 

Franklin  was  farther  reproached  by  his  antagonists  with  treachery,  m 
prying  into  and  disclosing  the  private  letters  (for  they  were  not  official  de- 

•  Pownall  was  a  more  enterprising  than  scrupulous  politician.  About  twenty  years  after  the 
revolt  of  North  America,  he  published  a  pamphlet  exhorting  the  British  government  to  encour- 
age and  assist  the  American  colonies  of  Spain  to  emancipate  themselves  from  the  dominion  of 
their  parent  state. 


476  HISTORY   OF   NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

spatches)  of  individuals  without  their  permission,  and  for  the  purpose  of 
stimulating  the  resentment  of  the  colonists  against  the  British  government, 
in  whose  service  he  himself  at  the  time  held  an  office  of  trust.  In  answer 
to  this  charge,  he  insisted  that  the  correspondence  of  public  officers  rela- 
tive to  pubHc  affairs,  and  containing  statements  which  formed  the  source  of 
great  pubhc  measures,  was  not  a  private,  though  it  might  be,  as  in  the  pres- 
ent case  it  had  been,  a  secret  transaction  ;  that  its  secrecy  was  highly  inju- 
rious both  to  Britain  and  America,  inasmuch  as  the  parent  state  was  de- 
ceived by  partial  and  clandestine  representations  ;  while  the  colonists,  unac- 
quainted with  these  calumnies,  were  unable  to  vindicate  themselves,  and, 
ignorant  of  the  real  source  of  the  harsh  measures  recently  employed  against 
them,  harboured  against  Britain  a  resentment  more  justly  merited  by  a  few 
individuals  in  America  ;  and  that  he  hoped,  by  disclosing  the  letters  to  the 
popular  leaders,  to  induce  them  to  employ  their  influence  to  moderate  the 
displeasure  of  the  people  against  the  parent  state.  But  in  reality  the  policy 
of  the  British  government  was  more  the  cause  than  the  effect  of  the  com- 
munications it  received  from  its  provincial  functionaries  ;  the  popular  leaders 
in  Massachusetts  were  already  informed  of  the  general  tenor  of  Hutchinson's 
correspondence  with  the  British  court ;  and  Franklin's  argument,  were  it 
as  sound  as  it  is  plausible,  would  sanction  that  specious  but  pernicious 
axiom  of  casuistical  morality,  that  upright  intentions  may  justify  dishonest 
actions,  and  the  generosity  of  the  proposed  end  extend  the  protection  of  its 
own  glory  to  the  character,  however  ambiguous,  of  the  means  pursued  for 
its  attainment.  Yet  that  he  really  cherished  the  view  which  he  professed, 
subtle  and  chimerical  as  it  appears,  is  rendered  probable  by  the  fact,  that 
for  two  years  more  he  continued  to  hope  and  endeavoured  to  promote  a 
reconciliation  between  Britain  and  America ;  and  that  during  this  period  he 
repeatedly  expressed,  not  merely  indulgence,  but  approbation,  of  the  con- 
duct of  his  son,  the  royal  governor  of  New  Jersey,  who  was  a  stanch  sup- 
porter of  British  prerogative,  —  a  sentiment  which  he  could  not  reasonably 
have  entertained,  if  he  had  expected  that  the  controversy  between  British 
prerogative  and  American  liberty  would  terminate  in  a  civil  war.^  It  was 
farther  defensively  urged  by  Franklin,  that  copies  of  many  letters  which 
were  intended  to  be  secret,  written  both  by  himself  and  other  friends  of 
the  Americans  in  England  were  procured  and  conveyed  to  Britain  by  the 
partisans  of  British  prerogative  in  America  ;  and  however  unsatisfactory  to 
the  pure,  elevated,  and  inflexible  requisitions  of  theoretical  morality,  this 
consideration  will  be  allowed  by  all  practical  politicians,  not  indeed  com- 
pletely to  exonerate  Franklin  from  blame,  but  to  suggest  a  forcible  apology 
for  his  conduct.  For  it  is,  and  I  hope  always  will  be,  accounted  a  propo- 
sition repugnant  to  sense  and  honor,  that  any  individual,  however  situated, 
can  laudably,  or  even  blamelessly,  peruse  and  comm.unicate  the  contents 
of  letters  which  have  passed  between  other  living  men  not  engaged  in  war 
with  his  country,  and  have  reached  his  own  hands  by  a  channel  which  he  de- 
clines to  explain.  Nothing  but  the  blind  rage  or  blinding  casuistry  of  politi- 
cal passion  could  color  even  for  a  moment  so  extravagant  a  proposition. 
The  controversy  to  which  this  affair  gave  rise  was  unnecessarily  complicated 
by  the  question  of  whether  the  letters  deserved  to  be  regarded  as  private  or 
official  communications,  —  a  point,  comparatively  speaking,  of  very  little 
importance.  The  honor  of  the  means  by  which  they  were  procured,  and 
""  >  See  Note  XXXIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


CtlAP.  HI]  DISCLOSURE  OF  HUTCHINSON'S  LETTERS.  477 

the  worth  and  honor  of  the  ends  to  which  they  were  applied,  are  the  only 
questions  deserving  of  regard. 

Shortly  after  the  letters  were  received  in  Boston,  some  expressions  un- 
guardedly or  artfully  dropped  by  one  or  two  of  the  persons  to  whom  they 
were  imparted  caused  a  rumor  to  arise  of  matters  deeply  interesting  to  the 
public  weal  which  it  was  in  the  power  of  certain  individuals  to  disclose. 
The  real  truth  was  distorted  by  mystery  and  alarm  ;  the  public  mind  be- 
came exceedingly  agitated  ;  and  at  length  the  assembly,  interposing,  de- 
manded a  disclosure  of  the  letters,  which  were  accordingly  delivered  up  to 
them  by  the  custodiers.^  Possessed  now  of  the  testimony  of  Hutchinson's 
perfidy  (for  such  was  the  light  in  which  they  viewed  his  conduct)^  they  de- 
sired him  to  inform  them  if  he  acknowledged  the  authorship  of  the  letters 
which  purported  to  be  his.  He  requested  that  they  might  be  sent  to  him 
for  examination  ;  but  the  assembly  declined  to  comply  with  his  request, 
and  deputed  a  committee  of  their  own  body  to  exhibit  the  letters  to  him  ; 
and  to  this  deputation  he  acknowledged  that  he  had  written  them.  The 
assembly  thereupon  caused  the  letters  to.be  made  public,  and,  having  passed 
resolutions  [June  15]  strongly  condemnatory  of  Hutchinson  and  Oliver, 
transmitted  a  petition  to  the  king  complaining  of  these  individuals  for  calumni- 
ating his  subjects  to  his  ministers,  and  praying  him  to  remove  them  from  their 
official  situations  in  the  province.  This  petition  was  presented  by  Franklin, 
as  the  provincial  agent  ;  and  the  cause  was  appointed  to  be  tried  before  the 
privy  council.  Franklin  assured  the  ministers  that  they  were  now  presented 
with  an  opportunity  of  reestabhshing  harmony  between  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica, by  a  gracious  reception  of  the  complaints  of  the  colonists,  and  sacri- 
ficing to  their  indignation  the  insidious  counsellors  by  whom  the  international 
quarrel  had  been  fomented  ;  and  from  the  language  of  the  Earl  of  Dart- 
mouth, successor  of  Lord  Hillsborough,  he  was  led  for  a  while  to  hope 
that  this  conciliatory  experiment  would  be  attempted. 

But  Franklin  had  become  the  object  of  strong  suspicion  and  dislike  to  the 
prevailing  party  in  the  British  court  and  cabinet,  who  highly  resented  his 
sarcastic  strictures  in  the  newspapers  upon  their  colonial  policy,  and  were 
informed  by  their  partisans  in  America  that  his  letters  to  the  popular  leaders 
were  replete  with  the  most  treasonable  counsels  and  malicious  instigations. 
Besides,  the  line  of  conduct  which  he  recommended  to  the  ministry  on 
the  present  occasion  was  such  as  honor  and  shame  alike  forbade  them 
to  embrace.  It  was  impossible  that  they  should  consent  to  punish  two  of 
their  partisans  for  communications  which  they  themselves  had  encouraged 
them  to  make,  and  had  sanctioned  by  the  corresponding  measures  they 
adopted.  In  truth,  Hutchinson  and  OHver  had  rather  flattered  than  inspired 
the  imperious  disposition  of  the  British  court.  After  some  delay,  the  pe- 
tition of  the  Massachusetts  assembly  was  discussed  before  the  privy  council 
[January  29,  1774]  ;  when  Wedderburn,  the  solicitor-general  (afterwards 
Lord  Loughborough),  attending  as  the  counsel  for  Hutchinson,  discharged 
a  torrent  of  insulting  sarcasm  and  outrageous  invective  and  ribaldry  ^  against 

'  Some  of  the  expressions  in  the  letters  were  peculiarly  calculated  to  create  offence  and  irri- 
tation in  America.  Hutchinson  expressed  the  most  arrogant  contempt  for  the  popular  leaders, 
and  declared  that  the  people  in  general,  when  not  deluded  by  false  alarms,  equally  despised 
them.  Oliver,  in  suggesting  a  particular  measure  to  the  ministry,  observed  of  it,  that,  "  By 
such  a  step,  the  game  will  be  up  with  my  countrymen." 

2  "  This  wily^American,"  said  Wedderburn,  "  has  forfeited  all  the  respect  of  societies  and 
men.     Into  wnat  companies  will  he  hereafter  go  with  an  unembarrassed  face,  or  the  honest 


478  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

the  character  and  conduct  of  Franklin,  whose  venerable  appearance  and 
illustrious  reputation  could  neither  check  the  flow  of  the  pleader's  witty- 
malice,  nor  deter  the  lords  of  the  council  from  testifying  by  laughter  and  ap- 
plause the  entertainment  which  this  unworthy  and  indecent  scene  afforded 
them.  A  more  decorous  and  temperate  harangue  would  have  proved  far 
more  injurious  to  the  cause  and  character  of  Frankhn.  But,  as  usual,  in- 
temperate attack  produced  indiscriminate  vindication  ;  and  the  partisans  of 
American  liberty  were  provoked  to  extol  Franklin's  conduct  with  unmerited 
encomium,  because  their  antagonists  had  assailed  it  with  disproportioned  rep- 
robation.' The  discussion  terminated  by  a  judgment  of  the  privy  council 
acquitting  Hutchinson  and  Ohver  from  blame  and  rejecting  the  petition  of 
Massachusetts.  On  the  following  day,  Franklin  was  dismissed  by  the  Brit- 
ish government  from  the  office  of  postmaster-general  of  America.  These 
proceedings,  and  especially  the  elaborate  malignity  of  insult  heaped  upon  a 
man  whom  they  so  highly  admired  and  respected,  sank  deeply  into  the  minds 
of  the  Americans.  Another  act  of  British  power,  that  was  directed  with  the 
most  childish  absurdity  against  the  scientific  repute  of  Franklin,  awakened  the 
liveliest  derision  and  disdain  in  America.  For  the  king  shortly  after,  trans- 
ported by  the  blindest  abhorrence  of  the  American  philosopher  for  whom  he 
had  once  professed  esteem,  actually  caused  the  electrical  conductors  invented 
by  Franklin  to  be  removed  from  the  palace  of  Buckingham  House,  and  re- 
placed by  instruments  of  far  less  skilful  construction  and  efficient  capacity.^ 
But  the  triumph  of  Hutchinson  was  short.  He  had  now  become  so 
generally  hateful  to  his  countrymen,  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  British 
government,  with  the  slightest  regard  to  the  interest  of  its  own  service,  to 
retain  him  any  longer  as  the  representative  of  the  king  in  Massachusetts. 
The  strong  measures,  besides,  which  the  government  was  provoked  to  em- 
brace by  the  intelligence  of  the  destruction  of  the  East  India  Company's 
tea  at  Boston,  required  that  a  more  vigorous  and  less  odious  hand  should 
be  employed  in  their  execution.  Hutchinson  accordingly  was  commanded 
soon  after  to  repair  to  England,  professedly  to  communicate  information  to 
the  ministers  with  regard  to  the  state  of  the  colonies.  Along  with  Tryon, 
who  was  afterwards  recalled  from  New  York,  and  Carleton,  the  governor  of 
Canada,  he  was  desired  by  the  cabinet  to  declare  his  opinion  whether  the 
Americans,  in  the  last  extremity,  would  venture  to  resist  the  arms  of  Britain. 
Hutchinson  confidently  predicted  that  they  would  either  not  fight  at  all,  or 
at  most  offer  no  farther  opposition  than  what  a  few  troops  could  easily  quell. 
Carleton  protested  that  America  might  certainly  be  conquered,  but  that 
a  considerable  army   would  be  necessary  for  this  purpose  ;  and  that,  for 

intrepidity  of  virtue  ?  Men  will  watch  him  with  a  jealous  eye,  and  hide  their  papers  from 
him.  He  will  henceforth  esteem  it  a  libel  to  be  called  a  man  of  letters^  —  homo  trium  lite- 
rarum.'^ 

'  Some  persons  have  even  ventured  to  defend  Franklin's  conduct  by  assimilating  his  posi- 
tion to  that  of  the  minister  of  one  of  two  belligerent  states.  But  war  had  not  yet  arisen 
between  Britain  and  America ;  and  Franklin  himself  was  a  British  officer  as  well  as  an  Amer- 
ican agent.  If  Athens  had  been  at  war  with  the  other  states  of  Greece,  the  virtue  of  Aristides 
would  not  have  condemned  nor  Athenian  wisdom  rejected  the  project  of  Themistocles  for 
surprising  and  capturing  the  Grecian  fleet.  Franklin's  conduct  will  recall  to  some  readers 
a  remarkable  passage  in  the  life  of  Sir  Henry  Vane. 

'  Franklin's  Memoirs.  Annual  Register  for  1774.  Gordon.  Stuart's  Three  Years  in  North 
America.  About  a  year  after  the  insulting  treatment  of  Franklin  in  England,  Don  Gabriel,  one 
of  the  princes  of  the  royal  family  of  Spain,  sent  him  a  present  of  a  version  of  Sallust  which 
he  had  produced.  Franklin,  in  acknowledging  this  mark  of  respect,  took  occasion  to  inform 
the  prince  that  there  was  rising  in  America  a  powerful  state,  whose  interest,  he  judged,  would 
dictate  a  close  and  friendly  connection  with  Spain.     Franklin's  Private  Correspondence. 


CHAP,   m.]  QUESTION  OF  CONQUERING  AMERICA.  479 

himself,  he  would  not  venture  to  march  against  New  York  or  Boston  with 
a  smaller  force  than  ten  thousand  men.  Tryon  declared  that  Britain  would 
require  large  armies  and  long  efforts  to  bring  America  to  her  feet  ;  that  her 
power  was  equal  to  any  thing  ;  but  that  all  that  power  must  be  exerted  in 
order  to  put  the  monster  in  chains.  The  representations  of  Hutchinson 
were  the  most  congenial  to  the  sentiments  and  the  temper  of  the  British 
government ;  and,  unfortunately  for  England,  they  were  corroborated  by 
the  kindred  folly  and  ignorance  of  many  British  statesmen  and  officers. 
"  The  Americans  are  a  degenerate  race  of  Europeans,  —  they  have  nothing 
of  the  soldier  in  them,"  was  the  customary  language  of  men  who  were 
destined  by  their  own  defeats  to  illustrate  the  valor  which  they  depreciated, 
and  who  learned  too  late  to  consider  the  Americans  as  a  regenerated  race 
of  Europeans,  in  whom  the  energy  of  freemen  more  than  supplied  the  me- 
chanical expertness  of  severely  disciplined  slaves.  General  Clarke,  with  an 
impudence  equalled  only  by  the  absurdity  of  his  language,  declared  in  a 
company  of  learned  men  at  London,  and  in  the  hearing  of  Dr.  Franklin,  that, 
with  a  thousand  British  grenadiers,  he  would  undertake  to  march  from  one 
end  of  America  to  the  other,  and  shamefully  mutilate  all  the  male  inhabit- 
ants, partly  by  force  and  partly  by  a  little  persuasion.  Another  general 
officer  asserted,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  *'  The  Yankees  (a  foohsh 
nickname  which  now  began  to  be  applied  to  the  Americans)  never  felt  hold.'*^ 
The  speeches  of  other  military  officers  in  parliament,  and  of  the  prime 
minister.  Lord  North,  conveyed  ideas  equally  calculated  to  delude  their 
countrymen  and  to  inflame  by  contumely  all  the  rage  and  courage  which 
injustice  and  injury  had  already  kindled  in  the  Americans.  '-'Believe  we, 
my  lords,"  said  the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  first  lord  of  the  admiralty,  in  the 
House  of  Peers,  ''the  first  sound  of  a  cannon  will  send  the  Americans  a 
running  as  fast  as  their  feet  can  carry  them."  Unfortunately  for  his  country, 
he  was  believed.  The  extraordinary  and  injudicious  delay  and  hesitation, 
which  contributed  to  defeat  the  subsequent  mihtary  operations  of  Britain  in 
America,  have  been  ascribed  to  these  representations,  and  to  the  convic- 
tion they  promoted,  that  only  a  distinct  and  certain  view  of  their  own  danger 
was  requisite  to  obtain  from  the  Americans  an  abandonment  of  every  pre- 
tension that  could  possibly  induce  a  conflict  with  the  force  of  Britain.  The 
British  government,  and  the  nation  in  general,  deluded  by  ignorance,  preju- 
dice, offended  pride,  and  false  views  of  interest,  were  now  fully  animated 
with  that  haughty  spirit  which  precedes  and  produces  disappointment  and 
calamity  ;  and  the  evil  genius  of  England  seemed  to  rise  in  almost  every 
breast.  1  While  the  delusion  lasted,  Hutchinson  was  caressed  by  the  court, 
and  rendered  so  giddy  by  vain  expectation,  that,  in  letters  to  America,  he 
announced  his  approaching  elevation  to  a  British  peerage.  A  short  time, 
however,  sufficed  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  ministry  and  the  nation,  so  far  at 

'  Even  the  administrators  of  British  authority  were  constrained  to  acknowledge  this,  long 
before  the  termination  of  the  contest.  In  1778,  Lord  Carlisle,  William  Eden,  and  George 
Johnstone  were  appointed  commissioners  of  the  British  crown  for  the  pacification  of  revolted 
America.  To  this  end,  they  (vainly)  offered  larger  concessions  than  America  prior  to  her  re- 
volt had  ever  demanded  ;  and  Johnstone,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Laurens,  the  president  of  the 
American  Congress,  urged  him  not  to  "  follow  ike  example  of  Britain  in  the  hour  of  her  inso- 
lence.'^    Jinnual  Register  for  1778. 

Not  less  insolent  and  absurd  were  the  language  and  conduct  of  the  Spanish  Cortes  in  1810. 
"  /  know  not  to  what  class  of  beasts  the  Americans  belong :  such  were  the  expressions  heard 
and  applauded  in  the  Cortes,  when  the  rights  of  the  colonists  were  agitated  in  that  assembly." 
Napier's  History  of  the  Peninsular  War. 


480  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

least  as  to  render  the  folly  and  mischief  of  his  counsels  glaringly  apparent. 
He  was  permitted  thenceforward  to  hide  his  disgrace  and  the  misery  that 
preyed  on  his  closing  life  in  a  retirement  near  London,  undisturbed  by  am- 
bitious prospect,  and  uncheered  by  a  single  ray  of  court  favor.  He  lived 
to  see  Britain,  to  whose  predominance  he  was  so  much  devoted,  involved  in 
disgrace  and  disaster,  and  his  native  America  irrecoverably  ahenated  from 
her  and  wasted  with  fire  and  sword,  by  the  conduct  and  policy  which  he 
had  abetted  ;  and  died  before  the  conclusion  of  the  struggle, .  oppressed 
with  a  load  of  mortification,  and  heart-broken  by  the  deaths  of  children 
whom  he  tenderly  loved. ^ 

Some  attempts  were  made,  about  this  period,  to  encourage  the  produc- 
tion of  silk,  and  to  promote  the  cultivation  of  the  grape  and  the  manufac- 
ture of  wine  in  the  Southern  States  of  Anierica.  In  the  year  1772,  a 
considerable  quantity  of  fine  silk  was  exported  from  Purysburg,  in  South 
Carolina,  to  England  ;  and  in  the  same  year,  St.  Pierre,  a  Frenchman  in- 
habiting that  province,  obtained  from  the  society  established  at  London  for 
encouragement  of  the  arts  a  gold  medal  for  wine,  the  produce  of  his  planta- 
tion, and  from  the  Board  of  Trade  a  recommendation  to  the  patronage  of 
the  Lords  of  the  Treasury  for  his  successful  culture  of  silk  and  vines. ^ 

In  the  year  1773,  William  Bartram,  son  of  the  great  American  botanist, 
who  has  already  engaged  our  notice,^  undertook,  at  the  request  of  Dr. 
Fothergill,  a  Quaker  and  distinguished  physician  in  London,  an  exploratory 
tour  in  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Florida  ;  directed  chiefly,  though  not  exclu- 
sively, to  the  extension  of  botanical  science.  He  afterwards  pubhshed  the 
details  of  his  travels  and  observations,  in  a  very  interesting  work."*  It  de- 
scribes accurately  and  eloquently  the  scenery  and  natural  productions  of 
the  regions  visited  by  the  author,  and  relates  his  personal  adventures  with 
much  simplicity  and  elegance.  It  is  copiously  interspersed  with  fine  and 
ardent  expressions  of  devotional  sentiment,  derived  from  what  is  called  nat- 
ural (not  revealed)  rehgion,  and  of  benevolent  regard  and  even  tender  con- 
cern for  the  happiness  of  all  living  creatures.  It  contains,  however,  some 
passages  in  which  thoughts  and  actions  little  redolent  of  piety  or  virtue  are 
recorded  with  serene  satisfaction  or  uncompunctious  indifference.  And  yet 
the  author  professed  the  tenets  and  was  (like  his  father)  a  member  of 
the  society  of  Quakers. 

In  the  course  of  this  year,  there  was  extended  to  America  the  ramifica- 
tion of  a  singular  religious  sect,  engendered  by  a  coalition  between  some 
French  fanatics  who  called  themselves  prophets,  and  a  portion  of  the  Quaker 
community  of  England.  The  separate  association  that  ensued  topk  the  name 
of  The  Shakers  ;  because  they  conceived  themselves  the  depositaries  of 
truths  fitted  by  their  awful  grandeur  and  solemn  importance  to  shake  the  hu- 
man soul.  A  woman  named  Anne  Lee,  who  was  recognized  as  the  spiritual 
mother  of  the  society  in  England,  and  had  been  immured  for  some  time  as 
a  lunatic  in  an  English  madhouse,  escaping  from  her  confinement,  set  sail 
now  with  some  associates  for  America.     The  deliverance  of  the  vessel  that 

'  Eliot.  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence.  Dwight.  The  only  dignity  which  Hutchin- 
son obtained  in  England  was  conferred  by  the  University  of  Oxford,  which,  on  the  3d  of 
July,  1776  (the  day  preceding  the  declaration  of  American  independence),  bestowed  upon 
him,  and  upon  Peter  Oliver,  the  title  of  Doctor  in  Civil  Law.  Catalogue  of  Graduates  in 
the  University  of  Oxford,  1659  -  1782. 

2  Annual  Register  for  1772.  ^  -Qq^^]^  x.,  Chap.  II.,  ante.  :  , 

*  TraceZs,  &c.,  by  William  Bartram.  ,  ^    . 


CHAP.  III.]  EMIGRATION  TO  AMERICA.  43| 

conveyed  her  from  the  violence  of  a  storm  was  ascribed  by  her  followers 
to  the  exertion  of  her  miraculous  power  ;  and  when  she  died,  some  years 
after,  she  was  declared  by  the  American  Shakers  to  have  been  "  taken  up 
out  of  the  sight  of  the  true  believers."  Of  this  society,  which  rapidly  and 
extensively  diffused  its  influence  and  multiphed  its  votaries,  the  principles 
seem  to  have  been  borrowed  by  derivation  or  exaggeration  from  the  pecuhar 
notions  of  the  Quakers  and  the  Methodists.  One  of  the  most  respectable  of 
their  distinctive  tenets  was,  that  a  dirty,  slovenly,  careless,  or  indolent  per- 
son could  not  possibly  be  a  true  Christian.  Hence,  a  regulation  arose,  that 
every  member,  male  and  female,  of  the  society,  must  be  invariably  neat 
and  clean,  and  constantly  employed  in  some  description  of  honest  and 
moderate  labor. ^ 

A  new  college  was  founded,  in  the  present  year,  in  Virginia.  This  insti- 
tution, though  supported  by  several  eminent  scholars  and  philosophers, 
never  attained  a  flourishing  state,  and  chiefly  claims  our  notice  from  the 
significant  name  it  assumed  of  Hampden- Sidney  College.^ 

Dr.  John  Ewing,  a  native  of  Maryland,  who  had  acquired  a  high  reputa- 
tion by  his  lectures  on  natural  philosophy  in  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  received  the  most  flattering  testimonies  of  honor  and  esteem 
from  the  University  of  Edinburgh  and  the  corporations  of  the  principal 
towns  in  Scotland,  visiting  Britain  in  1773,  was  introduced  to  Lord  North, 
to  whom  he  predicted,  with  characteristic  frankness,  sagacity,  and  patriotism, 
the  issue  of  the  dispute  with  America,  if  the  British  persisted  in  their  scheme 
of  taxation.^ 

During  the  whole  period  of  her  controversy  with  Britain,  America  de- 
rived a  continual  increase  of  strength  from  domestic  growth*  and  from  the 
flow  of  European  emigration.  Her  territories  presented  varieties  of  human 
condition  and  diversified  attractions  adapted  to  almost  every  imaginable 
peculiarity  of  human  taste,  —  from  scenes  of  peace  and  repose,  to  circum- 
stances of  romantic  adventure  and  interesting  danger,  —  from  the  rudeness, 
the  silence,  and  solitude  of  the  forest,  to  the  refinements  of  cultivated  hfe, 
and  the  busy  hum  of  men  in  flourishing,  populous,  and  improved  societies, 
—  from  the  lawless  liberty  of  the  back  settlements,  to  the  dominion  of  the 
most  austerely  moral  legislation  that  ever  prevailed  among  mankind.  No 
complete  memorial  has  been  transmitted  of  the  particulars  of  the  emigrations 
that  took  place  from  Europe  to  America  at  this  period  ;  but  (from  the  few 
illustrative  facts  that  are  actually  preserved)  they  seem  to  have  been  amaz- 
ingly copious.  In  the  years  1771  and  1772,  the  number  of  emigrants  to 
America  from  the  North  of  Ireland  alone  amounted  to  17,350,  almost  all  of 
whom  emigrated  at  their  own  charge  ;  a  great  majority  consisting  of  persons 
employed  in  the  Hnen  manufacture,  or  farmers,  and  possessed  of  some  prop- 
erty which  they  converted  into  money  and  carried  with  them.  Within  the 
first  fortnight  of  August,  1773,  there  arrived  at  Philadelphia  three  thousand 
five  hundred  emigrants  from  Ireland  ;  and  from  the  same  document  which  has 
recorded  this  circumstance  it  appears  that  vessels  were  arriving  every  month, 
freighted  with  emigrants  from  Holland,  Germany,  and  especially  from  Ire- 

1  Dwight's  Travels.  *  Miller's  Retrospect.  '  .American  Quarterly  Review. 

*  The  population  of  Connecticut,  according  to  a  census  published  by  its  provincial  assembly, 
amounted  this  year  to  191,392  white  persons,  and  6,464  blacks,  — .Annual  Register  for  1774, — 
an  increase  of  about  50,000  souls,  since  the  year  1763  (Appendix  III.,  ante),  in  a  provirce 
which  received  but  few  emigrants,  and  supplied  a  considerable  emigration  to  other  quarters  )f 
America. 

VOL.    II.  61  00 


482  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

land  and  the  Highlands  of  Scotland.  About  seven  hundred  Irish  settlers 
repaired  to  the  Carolinas  in  the  autumn  of  1773  ;  and,  in  the  course  of  the 
same  season,  no  fewer  than  ten  vessels  sailed  from  Britain  with  Scottish 
Highlanders  emigrating  to  the  American  States.  As  most  of  the  emigrants, 
and  particularly  those  from  Ireland  and  Scotland,  were  persons  discontented 
with  their  condition  or  treatment  in  Europe,^  their  accession  to  the  colonial 
population,  it  might  reasonably  be  supposed,  had  no  tendency  to  diminish 
or  counteract  the  hostile  sentiments  towards  Britain  which  were  daily  gath- 
ering force  in  America.  And  yet  these  persons,  especially  the  Scotch, 
were  in  general  extremely  averse  to  an  entire  and  abrupt  rejection  of  British 
authority.  Their  patriotic  attachment,  enhanced«as  usual  by  distance  from 
its  object,  always  resisted  and  sometimes  prevailed  over  their  more  rational 
and  prudent  convictions  ;  and  more  than  once,  in  the  final  struggle,  were  the 
interests  of  British  prerogative  espoused  and  supported  by  men  who  had  been 
originally  driven  by  hardship  and  ill  usage  from  Britain  to  America.  Among 
other  emigrants  doubtless  cherishing  little  reverence  for  their  native  coun- 
try, whom  Britain  continued  to  discharge  upon  her  colonies,  were  numbers  of 
convicted  felons,  who  were  conveyed  in  general  to  the  States  in  which  to- 
bacco was  cultivated,  and  labored  during  the  allotted  period  of  their  exile 
with  the  negro  slaves.  Of  these  persons,  the  most  abandoned  characters 
generally  found  their  way  back  to  England  ;  but  many  contracted  improved 
habits,  and  remained  in  America.  All  enlightened  and  patriotic  Americans 
resented  as  an  indignity,  and  all  the  wealthy  slave-owners  detested  as  a  po- 
litical mischief,  this  practice  of  the  parent  state,  —  of  which  the  last  instance 
seems  to  have  occurred  in  the  course  of  the  present  year.^  In  England, 
many  persons  were  so  unjust  and  unreasonable  as  to  make  the  conduct  of 
their  government  in  this  respect  a  matter  of  insult  and  reproach  to  the  Amer- 
icans, —  as  if  the  production  of  crime  were  not  a  circumstance  more  truly 
disgraceful  to  a  people  than  their  casual  and  involuntary  association  with 
criminals. 

A  convention  was  held  this  year  in  Georgia,  by  Sir  James  Wright,  the 
governor  of  the  colony,  with  a  numerous  deputation  of  the  chiefs  of  the 
Creek  and  Cherokee  tribes,  who  willingly  ceded  to  the  British  king  several 
millions  of  acres  of  valuable  land,  in  the  most  fertile  and  salubrious  part  of 
the  country,  for  the  payment  of  debts  which  they  owed  to  European  mer- 
chants who  had  traded  with  them.  A  transaction  of  very  different  charac- 
ter occurred  at  the  same  time  in  Virginia,  where  a  war  broke  out  with  the 
Ohio  Indians,  in  consequence  of  a  series  of  reciprocal  injuries,  wherein  the 
European  colonists,  if  not  the  aggressors  (which,  however,  there  is  reason 
to  suppose  they  were),  at  least  merited  the  reproach  of  exceeding  their 
savage  antagonists  in  the  infliction  of  summary,  indiscriminate,  and  dispro- 
portioned  revenge.  The  Virginian  government  despatched  a  strong  body 
of  militia,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Lewis,  to  oppose  the  enemy  ;  and 
after  a  bloody  engagement  in  the  woods,  in  which  the  colonial  troops  re- 
pulsed the  Indians,  but  with  great  difficulty,  and  the  loss  of  several  hundred 
men  on  their  own  side,  the  quarrel  was  adjusted  and  peace  again  restored.^ 

'  "  September  23,  1775.  The  ship  Jupiter,  from  Dunstaffnage  Bay,  with  two  hundred  emi- 
grants on  board,  chiefly  from  Argyleshire,  set  sail  for  North  Carolina ;  the  men  declaring  that 
the  oppressions  of  their  landlords  were  such  as  they  could  no  longer  submit  to."  Annual 
Register  for  1775.  Many  passages  of  similar  import  occur  in  the  British  journals  at  this  epoch. 
•     ^  Holmes.     Annual  Register  for  1772,  for  1773,  and  for  1774.     Franklin's  Works. 

*  Jefferson.     Burk.     Holmes      Jefferson's  account  (by  no  means  creditable  to  his  own 

I 


CHAP.  IV.  BOSTON  PORT  BILL.  433 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Boston  Port  Bill  —  and  other  British  Measures  —  their  Effects  in  America.  —  Proposition  of  a 
General  Congress.  —  Suffolk  Resolutions.  —  Meeting  of  the  first  American  Congress  —  its 
Proceedings.  —  Transactions  in  New  England. —  Proceedings  of  the  British  Ministrj^  and 
Parliament.  —  Defensive  Preparations  in  America.  —  Affair  of  Lexington.  —  The  Americans 
surprise  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point.  —  Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill.  —  Second  American 
Congress  —  prepares  for  War  —  elects  a  Commander-in-chief  —  George  Washington. — 
Transactions  in  Virginia. —  Progress  of  Hostilities.  —  American  Invasion  of  Canada. 

The  dispute  between  the  mother  country  and  her  colonies  had  now  at- 
tracted so  much  interest  and  attention  in  Europe,  and  the  national  spirit 
and  pride  of  the  English  people  were  so  much  provoked  by  the  undisguised 
defiance  of  an  inferior  and  dependent  state,  that,  even  if  it  had  been  the 
wish,  it  was  no  longer  in  the  power,  of  the  king's  ministers  to  overlook  an 
open  contravention  of  the  sovereign  authority,  or  to  refrain  from  vindicating 
this  prerogative  with  a  rigor  and  energy  proportioned  to  the  affront  it  had 
received.  In  this  position  of  the  ministry  and  temper  of  the  nation,  the  in- 
telligence which  was  received  of  the  recent  events  in  America,  and  especial- 
ly of  the  destruction  of  the  tea  at  Boston,  was  communicated  to  both  houses 
of  parliament  by  a  message  from  the  king  [March  7,  1774],  in  which  the 
American  colonists  were  reproached  with  attempting  at  once  to  injure  the 
commerce  and  subvert  the  constitution  of  Great  Britain.  Although  it  was 
manifest,  from  the  documents  which  accompanied  the  royal  message,  that 
the  opposition  by  which  the  sale  of  the  tea  in  America  had  been  defeated 
was  common  to  all  the  colonies,  yet  the  ministers  and  a  great  majority 
of  the  parliament,  exasperated  at  the  peculiar  violence  displayed  at  Boston, 
determined  to  select  this  town  as  the  sole  or  at  least  the  primary  object  of 
legislative  vengeance.  It  was  reckoned  that  a  partial  blow  might  be  dealt 
to  America  with  much  greater  severity  than  could  be  prudently  exerted  in 
more  extensive  punishment  ;  and  it  was,  doubtless,  expected  that  the  Amer- 
icans in  general,  without  being  irritated  by  personal  suffering,  would  be 
struck  with  terror  by  the  rigor  inflicted  on  a  town  so  long  renowned  as  the 
bulwark  of  their  liberties.  Without  even  the  decent  formality  of  requiring 
the  inhabitants  of  Boston  to  exculpate  themselves,  but  definitively  assuming 
their  guilt,  in  conformity  with  the  despatches  of  a  governor  who  was  notori- 
ously at  enmity  with  them,  the  ministers  introduced  into  parliament  a  bill 
for  suspending  the  trade  and  closing  the  harbour  of  Boston  during  the  pleasure 
of  the  king.  [March  14,  1774.]  They  declared  that  the  duration  of  this 
severity  would  depend  on  the  conduct  of  those  on  whom  it  was  inflicted  ;  for 
it  would  assuredly  be  relaxed,  as  soon  as  the  people  of  Boston  should  make 
compensation  for  the  tea  that  was  destroyed,  and  otherwise  satisfy  the  king 
of  their  sincere  purpose  to  render  due  submission  to  his  government.  The 
bill,  on  its  first  introduction  to  the  House  of  Commons,  encountered  little 
opposition  ;  only  a  few  members  vaguely  remarking  that  America  was  alto- 
gether in  a  very  distempered  condition,  and  that  a  malady  so  general  and 
formidable  demanded  remedial  applications,  not  partial  and  violent,  but  deli- 

countrvmen)  of  this  Indian  war  in  Virginia  is  rendered  particularly  interesting  by  the  gran  \ 
and  solemn,  yet  touching  and  tender,  harangue  which  he  has  preserved  of  Logan,  an  Indian 
chief,  to  Lord  Dunmore,  the  governor  of  Virginia.  Logan  seems  to  have  been  the  original 
whence  Campbell  derived  the  fine  conception  of  .Outalissi. 


484  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK   XI. 

cate,  temperate,  and  of  diffusive  efficacy  ;  and  though  a  more  special  and 
forcible  opposition,  exerted  in  long  debates,  attended  the  progress  of  the 
measure,  yet  was  it  carried  in  both  houses  of  parHament  without  a  single 
division  in  either.^  It  was  deemed  inexpedient  by  obstinate  resistance  to 
weaken  a  blow  which  the  government,  supported  by  a  majority,  w^as  deter- 
mined to  inflict.  Several  Americans  resident  at  London  presented  ineffect- 
ual petitions  to  both  houses  against  the  bill.  Bollan,  the  agent  for  the  coun- 
cil of  Massachusetts,  tendered  a  petition  desiring  to  be  heard  at  the  bar  of 
the  House  of  Commons  in  behalf  of  the  council,  as  well  as  of  himself  and 
other  inhabitants  of  Boston,  against  a  measure  so  injurious  to  their  native 
country  and  its  commerce.  But  the  house  refused  even  to  permit  his  pe- 
tition to  be  read  ;  assigning  a  nice  and  subtle  technical  objection  to  the  rep- 
resentative functions  which  he  claimed,  and  which  yet  had  been  recently 
recognized  in  other  parliamentary  transactions.  This  proceeding  gave  an 
air  of  insolent  injustice  and  of  vindictive  precipitation  to  the  policy  of  the 
British  government,  and  was  heavily  censured,  not  only  by  the  partisans  of 
America,  but  by  all  prudent  and  impartial  men.  It  was  rendered  the  more 
irritating  to  the  people  of  Massachusetts  by  the  recollection,  that  the  same 
governor,  whose  charges  they  were  now  precluded  from  gainsaying,  had 
been  indulged  in  the  utmost  latitude  of  defence,  when  his  conduct  was 
arraigned  and  they  w^ere  his  accusers. 

The  Boston  Port  Bill  was  but  the  first  step  in  the  march  of  coercive 
policy  which  the  British  ministry  were  now  determined  to  pursue.  It  was 
followed  shortly  after  [April,  1774]  by  an  act  which  introduced  the  most 
important  alterations  into  the  structure  of  the  provincial  government  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  bereaved  this  people  of  the  most  valued  and  considerable 
of  the  privileges  which  were  assured  to  them  by  the  charter  granted  after 
the  Revolution  of  1688.  By  this  second  legislative  measure,  it  was  enacted 
that  the  provincial  council,  heretofore  elected  by  the  representative  assem- 
bly, should  henceforth  be  appointed  by  the  crown  ;  that  the  royal  governor 
should  enjoy  the  power  of  nominating  and  removing  judges,  sheriffs,  and 
all  other  executive  officers  whose  functions  possessed  the  slightest  impor- 
tance ;  that  jurymen,  hitherto  elected  by  the  freeholders  and  citizens  of 
the  several  towns,  should  in  future  be  nominated  and  summoned  by  the  sher- 
iffs ;  and  that  no  town-meetings  of  the  people  should  be  convoked  without  a 
permission  in  writing  from  the  royal  governor,  and  no  business  or  matter 
be  discussed  at  those  meetings  beyond  the  topics  specified  and  approved  in 
the  governor's  license.  The  town-meetings  (as  they  were  called),  against 
which  the  latter  provision  was  directed,  were  not  less  valued  by  the  Ameri- 
cans than  dreaded  by  the  British  government,  which  regarded  them  as  the 
nurseries  of  sedition  and  rebellion.  Their  institution  was  coeval  with  the 
first  foundation  of  civilized  society  in  New  England,  and  their  endurance 
had  sustained  only  a  short  interruption  during  the  reign  of  James  the  Sec- 
ond, and  the  tyrannical  administration  of  his  minister,  Sir  Edmund  Andros  ; 
and  while  they  presented  the  image,  they  partly  supplied  the  place,  of  that 
pure  democratical  constitution  which  was  originally  planted  in  Massachu- 

^  Shortly  after  the  bill  was  passed,  there  appeared  in  the  English  newspapers  the  following 
epigram  •  — 

"  TO    THE    MINISTRY. 

"  You  've  sent  a  rod  to  Massachuset, 
-v^    -    '  Thinking  the  Americans  will  buss  it ;  •   .'     . 

-  *■         But  much  I  fear,  for  Britain's  sake, 

That  this  same  rod  will  prove  a  snake."  "  '  „_      ...' 


CHAP.  IV.]        INNOVATIONS  ON  MASSACHUSETTS  CHARTER.  435 

setts,  and  the  modification  of  which  by  the  second  provincial  charter  that 
followed  the  British  Revolution  had  always  been  to  a  numerous  party  among 
the  colonists  the  subject  of  regretful  or  indignant  remembrance.  In  losing 
this  privilege,  the  people  of  New  England  beheld  themselves  stripped  of  the 
last  remaining  vestige  of  those  peculiar  advantages  which  were  gained  by 
the  courage  and  virtue  of  their  forefathers  ;  and,  in  invading  it,  the  Brit- 
ish government  palpably  assimilated  its  own  policy  to  that  of  a  reign  which 
had  provoked  successful  revolt,  and  which  was  now  universally  reproached 
as  tyrannical. 

It  was  anticipated  by  the  British  ministers  that  tumults  and  bloodshed 
might  probably  ensue  on  the  first  attempt  to  carry  the  new  measures  into 
execution  ;  and,  not  satisfied  with  the  control  which  by  the  second  statute 
they  usurped  over  the  administration  of  justice,  they  proceeded  still  farther 
to  insure  impunity  to  their  functionaries  by  framing  a  third  act  of  parliament 
[April  21,  J  774],  which  provided,  that,  if  any  person  were  indicted  for 
murder  or  for  any  other  capital  offence  committed  in  aiding  the  magistracy 
of  Massachusetts,  it  should  be  competent  to  the  governor  of  this  province 
to  remit  the  accused  party  for  trial  either  to  another  colony  or  to  Great 
Britain.  It  was  in  vain  that  Edmund  Burke,  Colonel  Barre,^  and  other  lib- 
eral politicians  (who  had  also  ineffectually  opposed  the  second  statute)  raised 
their  warning  voices  against  this  measure  of  superfluous  insult  and  severity, 
and  appealed  to  the  recent  issue  of  Captain  Preston's  trial  as  a  refutation 
of  the  suspicions  by  which  American  justice  was  impeached.  "  I  regret 
your  error,"  said  an  aged  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  his  col- 
leagues, "  and  I  regret  to  see  that  it  is  partaken  by  the  people.  But  you 
will  soon  be  undeceived.  If  there  ever  was  a  nation  running  headlong  to 
its  ruin,  it  is  this."  Again  were  the  ministers  seconded,  as  before,  by  large 
majorities  in  both  houses  of  parhament.  Among  other  active  supporters 
of  the  measure  was  Lord  George  Sackville  Germaine,  who,  for  his  conduct 
at  the  battle  of  Minden  in  the  preceding  reign,  was  by  the  sentence  of  a 
court-martial  branded  with  cowardice  and  incapacity  and  disabled  from  ever 
again  exercising  military  command,  but  who  had  now  become  a  favorite 
and  minister  of  George  the  Third.  The  three  acts  were  proposed  and 
carried  in  such  rapid  succession  as  contributed  greatly  to  enhance  their 
inflammatory  operation  in  America,  where  they  were  regarded  as  forming  a 
complete  system  of  tyranny.  By  the  first  (exclaimed  the  organs  of  popular 
opinion  in  all  the  American  Slates),  thousands  of  innocent  persons  are  robbed 
of  their  livelihood  for  the  act  of  a  few  individuals  ;  by  the  second^  our 
chartered  liberties  are  annihilated  ;  and  by  the  third^  our  lives  may  be  de- 
stroyed with  impunity.  The  Boston  Port  Bill,  says  an  American  writer,^ 
distinguished  no  less  by  the  personal  aid  than  by  the  literary  celebrity  which 
he  conferred  on  the  independence  of  his  country,  might  rather  have  pro- 
voked rage  than  promoted  union  among  the  provinces  ;  but  the  arbitrary 
mutilation  of  important  privileges  recognized  by  a  solemn  charter,  decreed 
without  a  trial,  and  by  the   mere  despotic  will  of  the  British  parliament, 

*  "  The  Americans,"  said  Colonel  Barre,  "  may  be  flattered  into  any  thing ;  but  they  are  too 
much  like  yourselves  to  be  driven.  Have  some  indulgence  for  your  own  likeness;  respect 
their  sturdy  English  virtue."  Yet  Barre  had  voted  for  the  Boston  Port  Bill.  About  a  yeai 
after,  Burk'e  indignantly  protested  in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  "  the  faults  which  gmw 
out  of  the  luxuriance  of  freedom  appear  much  more  shocking  to  us  than  the  base  vie*  s 
which  are  generated  in  the  ranknessof  servitude." 

*  Ramsay. 

00  * 


486  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI 

convinced  every  political  thinker  in  America  that  the  cause  of  Massachusetts 
was  substantially  the  cause  of  all  the  American  commonwealths. 

Towards  the  close  of  this  memorable  session  of  the  British  parliament, 
an  act  was  passed  with  relation  to  the  province  of  Canada,  which  merits 
our  notice  both  on  account  of  the  policy  and  apprehensions  which  it  discloses 
on  the  part  of  the  royal  cabinet,  and  of  the  effect  which  it  produced  in 
America,  where  now  it  was  hardly  possible  for  any  measure  of  the  su- 
preme government  to  inspire  confidence  or  afford  satisfaction.  It  was  com- 
monly called  The  Quebec  Billj  and  the  object  of  its  enactments  was  at  once 
greatly  to  enlarge,  at  the  expense  of  the  original  American  possessions  of 
England,  the  territory  of  Canada,  and  totally  to  alter  the  civil  and  ecclesi- 
astical constitution  of  this  province.  Both  these  changes,  it  was  supposed, 
would  be  agreeable  to  the  Canadians,  and  contribute  to  attach  them  to  the 
British  crown,  or  at  least  disincline  them  to  any  participation  in  the  senti- 
ments, councils,  and  enterprises  of  the  ancient  colonies  of  England.  After 
the  conquest  of  Canada,  Britain,  with  the  hope  of  consoHdating  all  her 
American  possessions  by  assimilation  of  their  municipal  systems,  introduced 
into  that  province  a  representative  assembly,  trial  by  jury,  and  various  other 
portions  of  the  framework  of  English  pohty  and  jurisprudence.  The  church 
of  England,  too,  was  proclaimed  the  supreme  ecclesiastical  establishment, 
and  invested  with  privileges  which  encroached  on  the  prior  possessions  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  clergy.  It  was  now  declared  by  the  British  ministry 
(and  was  certainly  true)  that  these  measures  were  neither  equitable  in  them- 
selves nor  congenial  to  the  tastes  and  habits  of  the  Canadians  ;  and  by  the 
Quebec  Bill,  a  legislative  council,  of  which  the  members  were  nominated 
by  the  king  and  held  their  offices  during  his  pleasure,  was  substituted  in 
place  of  a  representative  assembly  ;  trial  by  jury  (except  in  criminal  cases) 
was  abolished  ;  all  the  previously  superseded  laws  of  France  were  reestab- 
lished ;  and  the  Catholic  hierarchy  restored  to  all  its  pristine  wealth,  dignity, 
and  privileges.  It  was  generally  conceived  by  the  people  of  America  that 
the  chief  object  of  this  measure  was  to  convert  the  Canadians  into  proper 
instruments  in  the  hands  of  British  power  for  reducing  them  to  a  state  of 
slavery.  As  Britain  had  new-modelled  the  chartered  government  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  claimed  equal  authority  over  all  the  other  provinces,  the 
Americans  were  apprehensive,  that,  in  the  plenitude  of  her  imagined  power, 
she  would  impose  on  them  all,  in  their  turns,  a  political  constitution  similar 
to  that  which  she  introduced  into  Canada.^ 

If  intimidation  was  the  effect  which  the  cabinet  of  London  hoped  to  pro- 
duce by  its  new  measures,  either  particularly  in  Massachusetts  or  generally 
in  America,  it  reaped  from  them  as  much  disappointment  as  had  attended 
all  its  previous  operations.  It  has  been  conjecturally  maintained  by  some 
writers,^  that  a  powerful  army,  despatched  from  England  to  Boston  at  this 
period,  would  have  either  completely  overawed  the  people  of  New  England, 
or  provoked  them  to  plunge  abruptly  into  a  revolt  which  the  other  prov- 
inces were  not  yet  prepared  to  second.  The  effect  of  the  measures  that 
were  actually  embraced  was,  to  produce  an  increase  of  irritation,  union, 
and  resolution  throughout  all  America.  That  the  new  measures  might  be 
executed  with  suitable  vigor,  the  government  of  Massachusetts,  withdrawn 

*  Annual  Begister  for  4774.    Gordon.    Franklin.    Ramsay.    Holmes.    Pitkin. 
3  Botia,  ^nd  other*. 


CHAP.  IV.]        EFFECTS  OF  THE  RECENT  ACTS.  437 

from  Hutchinson,  was  conferred  on  General  Gage,  the  commander-in-chief 
of  the  .royal  forces  in  North  America,  who,  arriving  at  Boston  [May  13, 
1774],  obtained  from  the  citizens  a  reception  of  which  the  courtesy  was 
a  tribute  partly  to  his  plausible  but  insincere  professions  and  deportment, 
and  partly  to  the  demerits  and  unpopularity  of  his  predecessor.  He  ad- 
dressed the  provincial  council  in  terms  which  led  them  to  believe  that  he 
credited  their  assurance,  that  the  accounts  of  the  disorders  in  Massachu- 
setts, conveyed  by  Hutchinson  to  England,  were  greatly  exaggerated  ;  and 
yet,  at  the  same  time,  he  himself  transmitted  to  the  British  government  a 
bitter  invective  against  all  the  inhabitants  and  local  authorities  of  the  prov- 
ince. In  the  same  vessel  which  brought  the  new  governor,  there  arrived  the 
first  copy  that  was  received  of  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  of  which  the  provisions 
were  discussed  in  a  numerous  town-meeting  on  the  following  day.  It  was 
recommended  by  this  civic  convocation,  as  the  most  certain  means  of  rescu- 
ing the  liberties  of  America  from  destruction,  that  all  commercial  intercourse 
whatever  with  Britain  and  the  West  Indies  should  be  renounced  by  the 
American  States  till  the  repeal  of  the  act.  "  The  impolicy,  injustice,  inhu- 
manity, and  cruelty  of  this  act,"  they  declared,  "  exceed  all  our  powers 
of  expression.  We  therefore  leave  it  to  the  just  censure  of  others,  and 
appeal  to  God  and  the  world."*^  Authenticated  reports  of  this  proceeding 
were  instantly  conveyed  to  all  the  American  assemblies. 

At  each  successive  arrival  of  the  recent  parhamentary  statutes  from  Brit- 
ain, innumerable  copies  of  them  were  printed  and  circulated  with  amazing 
despatch  in  every  quarter  of  America ;  and,  as  the  great  bulk  of  the  people 
were  struck  with  a  warm  and  resentful  sense  of  the  injuries  inflicted  on  the 
inhabitants  of  Massachusetts,  their  indignation  was  progressively  wound  up 
to  a  most  formidable  pitch  by  the  variety  and  repetition  of  provocation. 
The  most  diligent  exertions,  meanwhile,  were  employed  by  the  leading  politi- 
cians of  America,  from  dissimilar  motives,  to  cherish  the  general  ardor,  and 
yet  restrain  every  partial  and  irregular  ebullition  of  revolt.  Timid  and 
temporizing  politicians,  who  either  hoped  or  were  determined  never  to 
embrace  the  extremity  of  a  conflict  with  the  arms  of  Britain,  sought  to 
recommend  their  pacific  counsels  without  forfeiting  their  popularity,  by  freely 
condemning  the  conduct  of  the  British  government  ;  while  the  more  resolved 
and  ardent  patriots,  clearly  perceiving  that  the  extremity  of  war  was  inevi- 
table, sought  to  increase  the  zeal  and  number  of  their  adherents  by  pro- 
tracting an  irritating  controversy,  and  to  consolidate  the  strength  of  the 
American  communities  by  rendering  the  common  sentiments  with  which 
they  were  inspired  subservient  to  a  federal  union.  At  Philadelphia,  a  lib- 
eral contribution  was  made  for  the  relief  of  such  of  the  poorer  inhabitants 
of  Boston  as  might  be  deprived  of  their  hvelihood  by  the  consequences 
of  the  Port  Bill.  In  Virginia,  a  strong  impression  was  produced  by  a  pam- 
phlet, composed  and  published  by  Thomas  Jefferson,  entitled  A  Summary 
View  of  the  Rights  of  British  America.  This  performance  its  author  de- 
signed as  an  exposition  to  the  British  monarch  of.  the  wrongs  inflicted  on 
America  and  the  sort  of  redress  she  would  demand.  "  Open  your  breast, 
Sire,"  he  says,  addressing  the  king,  "  to  liberal  and  expanded  thought.  It 
behooves  you  to  think  and  act  for  your  people.  The  great  principles  of 
right  and  wrong  are  legible  to  every  reader  ;  to  peruse  them  requires  not 
the  aid  of  many  counsellors.  The  whole  art  of  government  consists  in  the 
art  of  being  honest."     The  Virginian  House  of  Burgesses  resolved  that  the 


488  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

first  of  June,  the  day  on  which  the  operation  of  the  Port  Bill  was  to  com- 
mence, should  be  set  apart  by  the  members  as  a  day  of  fasting,  humiliation, 
and  prayer,  in  order  devoutly  to  implore  the  divine  interposition  to  avert  the 
heavy  calamity  which  threatened  destruction  to  their  civil  rights^  and  the 
evils  of  a  civil  war  ;  and  to  give  them  one  heart  and  one  mind  firmly  to 
oppost^  by  all  just  and  proper  means,  every  injury  to  American  rights.^  The 
Earl  of  Dunmore,  a  man  whose  rashness,  arrogance,  and  incapacity  ren- 
dered him  a  very  unfit  guardian  of  the  interests  of  Britain  in  circumstances 
so  arduous  and  perplexing,  had  been  removed  from  the  government  of  New 
York,  which  he  held  for  a  while,  and  was  appointed  governor  of  Virginia, 
where  he  succeeded  the  popular  and  lamented  Lord  Botetourt.  On  the 
publication  of  the  foregoing  resolution,  he  dissolved  the  provincial  assembly  ; 
but  previous  to  their  separation,  eighty-nine  of  the  members  signed  a  declara- 
tion, in  which  they  protested,  "  that  an  attack  made  upon  one  of  our  sister 
colonies  to  compel  submission  to  arbitrary  taxes  is  an  attack  made  on  all 
British  America,  and  threatens  ruin  to  the  rights  of  all,  unless  the  united 
wisdom  of  the  whole  be  applied."  They  also  recommended  to  the  com- 
mittee of  correspondence,  already  established  in  Virginia,  to  propose  to 
the  respective  committees  in  the  other  colonies  the  appointment  of  deputies 
from  all  the  American  States  to  meet  annually  in  general  congress,  in 
order  to  watch  over  the  united  interest  of  America,  and  to  deliberate  upon 
and  ascertain  the  measures  best  calculated  to  promote  it.  ''A  tender 
regard,"  they  significantly  added,  "for  the  interests  of  our  fellow-subjects, 
the  merchants  and  manufacturers  of  Great  Britain,  prevents  us  from  going 
farther  at  this  time  ;  most  earnestly  hoping  that  the  unconstitutional  principle 
of  taxing  the  colonies  without  their  consent  will  not  be  persisted  in,  thereby 
to  compel  us,  against  our  will,  to  avoid  all  commercial  intercourse  with 
Britain."  At  New  York,  the  numbers  and  activity  of  the  Tory  party  re- 
strained the  assembly  and  the  people  at  large  from  publicly  expressing 
their  sentiments  with  regard  to  the  treatment  of  Massachusetts  ;  but  Sears, 
M'Dougall,  and  other  popular  leaders,  transmitted  to  their  friends  at  Boston 
the  strongest  assurances  of  sympathy  and  support. 

On  the  day  when  the  operation  of  the  Boston  Port  Bill  was  appointed  to 
commence  [June  1],  all  the  commercial  business  of  the  capital  of  Massa- 
chusetts was  concluded  at  noon,  and  the  harbour  of  this  flourishing  town 
was  closed,  — till  the  gathering  storm  of  the  Revolution  was  to  reopen  it. 
At  Williamsburg,  In  Virginia,  the  day  was  devoutly  consecrated  to  the  re- 
ligious exercises  recommended  by  the  assembly.  At  Philadelphia  it  was 
solemnized  by  a  great  majority  of  the  population  with  every  testimonial  of 
public  grief  ;  all  the  inhabitants,  except  the  Quakers,  shut  up  their  houses  ; 
and  after  divine  service,  a  deep  and  ominous  stillness  reigned  in  the  city. 
In  other  parts  of  America  it  was  also  observed  as  a  day  of  mourning  ;  and 
the  sentiments  thus  widely  awakened  were  kept  alive  and  exasperated  by 
the  distress  to  which  the  inhabitants  of  Boston  were  reduced  by  the  contin- 
ued operation  of  the  Port  Bill,  and  by  the  fortitude  with  w^hich  they  en- 
dured it.  The  rents  of  the  landholders  in  and  around  Boston  now  ceased 
or  were  greatly  diminished  ;  all  the  wealth  vested  in  warehouses  and  wharves 
was  rendered  unproductive  ;    from  the  merchants  was  wrested   the  com- 

'  "With  the  help  of  Rushworth  [meaning,  doubtless,  Rushworth's  Collection  of  Documents 
rrJativc  to  the  Civil  War  bettoeen  Charles  the  First  and  his  People],  whom  we  rummaged  for 
the  revohilionary  precedents  of  the  Puritans  of  that  day,  we  cooked  up  a  resolution, — 
somewhat  modernizing  their  ohrases."     Jefferson  apud  Tucker 


CHAP.  I  v.]  OPERATION  OF  THE   BOSTON  PORT  BILL.  43^ 

merce  they  had  reared,  and  the  means  alike  of  providing  for  their  families 
and  paying  their  debts  ;  the  artificers  employed  in  the  numerous  crafts  nour- 
ished by  an  extensive  commerce  shared  the  general  hardship  ;  and  a  great 
majority  of  that  class  of  the  community  who  earned  daily  bread  by  their  daily 
labor  were  deprived  of  the  means  of  support.  But,  animated  still  by  that 
enduring  and  dauntless  spirit  of  freedom  which  had  been  the  parent  principle 
of  the  New  England  communities,  the  inhabitants  of  Boston  sustained  the 
pressure  of  this  calamity  with  inflexible  fortitude.  Their  virtue  was  cheered 
by  the  sympathy,  and  their  sufferings  were  mitigated  by  the  generosity,  of  the 
sister  colonies.  In  all  the  American  States  contributions  were  made  for  their 
rehef.  Corporate  bodies,  town-meetings,  and  provincial  conventions,  from 
all  quarters,  transmitted  to  them  letters  and  addresses,  applauding  their  con- 
duct and  exhorting  them  to  perseverance.^ 

Although  republican  government  was  neither  established  nor  even  as  yet 
openly  affected  in  America,  the  prospect  of  it  was  beginning  to  dawn  on  the 
minds  of  men,  and  to  educe  that  public  spirit  which  no  other  form  of  civil 
polity  is  equally  qualified  to  inspire.  Among  other  erroneous  calculations 
of  the  British  ministers,  they  had  expected  that  the  Boston  Port  Bill  would 
prove  a  source  of  jealousy  and  disunion  within  the  province  of  Massachu- 
setts, by  scattering  among  the  neighbouring  towns  the  benefits  of  all  the  com-, 
merce  that  was  previously  confined  to  the  metropolis.  But  this  policy  was 
regarded  with  a  generous  disdain  in  Massachusetts,  and  produced  only  in- 
creased union  and  firmness  of  purpose  among  her  people.  The  inhabitants 
of  Marblehead  offered  to  the  Boston  merchants  the  use  of  their  harbour, 
wharves,  and  warehouses,  together  with  their  personal  services  in  lading  and 
unlading  goods,  free  of  all  expense.  The  citizens  of  Salem  concluded  a 
remonstrance  against  the  British  measures,  addressed  to  General  Gage,  in 
this  honorable  and  patriotic  strain  :  —  "  By  shutting  up  the  port  of  Boston, 
some  imagine  that  the  course  of  trade  might  be  turned  hither,  and  to  our 
benefit ;  but  nature,  in  the  formation  of  our  harbour,  forbids  our  becoming 
rivals  in  commerce  with  that  convenient  mart  ;  and  even  were  it  otherwise, 
we  must  be  lost  to  every  idea  of  justice,  and  dead  to  all  the  feelings  of 
humanity,  could  we  indulge  one  thought  of  raising  our  fortunes  on  the  ruins' 
of  our  suffering  neighbours.''  A  great,  though  hitherto  dependent  country, 
of  which  the  inhabitants  thus  resolutely  withstood  the  power  of  the  parent 
state,  and  approved  themselves  incapable  ahke  of  being  intimidated  by  dan- 
ger, impelled  by  distress,  or  seduced  by  interest,  to  a  desertion  of  the 
cause  of  liberty,  was  ripe  for  national  independence.  The  public  agitation 
was  not  a  httle  increased  by  the  publication  of  another  pamphlet  written 
by  Jefferson,  in  which  sentiments,  approaching,  if  not  amounting,  to  asser- 
tion of  independence,  were  expressed  with  a  fearless  vigor  and  distinctness 
that  greatly  endeared  the  author  to  his  countrymen,  and  caused  him  to  be 
included  in  an  act  of  attainder  against  certain  of  the  leading  patriots  of 
America,  which  was  introduced  into  one  of  the  houses  of  the  British 
parliament,  but  suppressed  by  the  course  of  events,  which  recommended 
more  cautious  policy. 

In  the  midst  of  the  ferment  thus  renewed  in  America,  the  assembly  of 
Massachusetts,  which  had  been  adjourned  from  Boston  to  Salem  by  General 

'  Both  on  this  and  on  other  occasions,  expressions  of  sympathy  and  encouragement,  and 
even  more  substantial  marks  of  friendship,  were  conveyed  to  the  Americans  from  their  friend.* 
in  Britain.     See  Note  XXXIV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volurne. 

VOL.  II.  62 


490  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

Gage  [June  7],  revived  a  project  which  formerly  emanated  from  its  coun- 
cils, and  the  resumption  of  which  we  have  seen  recently  suggested  by  the 
assembly  of  Virginia.  It  was  resolved,  that  a  general  congress,  or  conven- 
tion of  committees  delegated  by  all  the  North  American  States,  was  highly 
expedient,  and,  indeed,  urgently  necessary,  for  the  purpose  of  concerting 
proper  measures  for  the  recovery  and  establishment  of  the  just  rights  and 
liberties  of  the  Americans,  and  for  "the  restoration  of  that  union  and  har- 
mony between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  most  ardently  desired  by  all 
good  men."  In  prosecution  of  this  resolve,  a  committee  of  five  of  the  most 
distinguished  patriots  of  Massachusetts  was  appointed,  to  meet  with  the  com- 
mittees that  might  be  delegated  by  other  provinces,  at  Philadelphia,  in  the 
month  of  September ;  and  authenticated  reports  of  these  proceedings  were 
transmitted  from  Salem  to  all  the  representative  assemblies  in  America. 
The  necessity,  or  at  least  the  advantage,  of  the  proposed  congress  was 
universally  acknowledged  by  the  friends,  more  or  less  ardent  and  determined, 
of  American  liberty  ;  and  as  these  formed  everywhere  the  great  bulk  of 
the  population,  the  measure  originated  by  Massachusetts  was  gradually 
adopted  by  every  colony  from  New  Hampshire  to  South  Carolina  ;  —  that 
IS,  by  twelve  of  the  existing  North  American  States  ;  Georgia,  the  thirteenth 
and  youngest,  not  yet  taking  an  active  part  in  the  political  transactions, 
which,  nevertheless,  she  watched  with  no  indifferent  eye.  In  several  of  the 
States,  the  royal  governors  endeavoured  to  prevent  the  election  of  deputies 
to  the  congress,  by  refusing  to  convoke  the  assemblies  ;  but  in  all  these 
cases  the  inhabitants  formed  provincial  congresses,  by  which  deputies  to  the 
Continental  Congress  were  elected.  When  the  resolve  to  appoint  deputies 
was  carried  in  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina,  a  proposition  was  introduced 
immediately  after  by  some  of  the  members,  for  instructing  the  delegates  to 
what  point  it  was  admissible  for  them  to  pledge  the  concurrence  of  the 
province  in  the  general  measures  to  which  its  accession  might  be  invited. 
John  Rutledge  warmly  combated  this  proposition,  insisting,  that,  unless  the 
delegates  were  unshackled  by  restraint,  and  suffered  to  exercise  their 
judgments  with  manly  freedom,  their  power  of  serving  the  country  would 
be  inadequate  to  the  exigencies  of  the  pending ,  crisis  ;  and  when  the  mem- 
bers around  him,  rather  subdued  by  his  energy  than  aroused  to  partake  it, 
anxiously  inquired,  "  What  ought  we  to  do,  then,  with  these  delegates,  if  they 
make  a  bad  use  of  their  power  ?  "  he  replied,  with  his  usual  decision  and 
impetuosity,  "  Hang  them.''^  The  commissions  or  instructions,  however, 
which  were  communicated  to  the  respective  committees  of  delegates  by  the 
provinces  which  they  severally  represented,  directed  their  attention  merely 
to  the  reestablishment  of  the  rights  and  liberties  of  America  as  a  colonial 
possession  of  Britain,  and  invested  them  ostensibly  with  no  other  function 
but  that  of  deliberating,  and  reporting  the  counsels  matured  by  their  united 
deliberations.  But  all  the  ardent  friends  of  America,  all  the  partisans  of 
Britain,  and  all,  in  short,  except  those  whose  penetration  was  obstructed  by 
divided  hope  and  purpose,  plainly  perceived  that  the  formation  of  a  general 
deliberative  council  for  America  at  a  crisis  like  the  present,  as  it  was  an 
essential  requisite,  was  also  a  bold  and  deliberate  approximation,  to  united 
revolt. 

General  Gage  had  now,  by  an  imprudently  overstrained  exertion  of  the 
high  powers  intrusted  to  him  by  the  British  government,  rendered  himself 
nearly  as  odious  to  the  people  of  Massachusetts  as  any  of  the  preceding 


CHAP.  IV.]  DETERMINED  OBSTRUCTION  OF  THE  BRITISH  MEASURES.   49 1, 

governors  of  this  province.  Soon  after  his  arrival,  two  regiments  of  infantry, 
with  a  park  of  artillery,  were  landed  at  Boston,  and  encamped  on  the  com- 
mon ;  and  this  armament  was  gradually  reinforced  by  sundry  regiments  from 
Ireland,  New  York,  Halifax,  and  Quebec.  Gage  was  desirous  of  having 
barracks  erected  for  the  accommodation  of  his  troops  ;  but  even  among  the 
numerous  laborers  who  were  deprived  of  the  means  of  support  by  the  op- 
eration of  the  Port  Bill,  not  one  could  be  found  willing  to  accept  the  gov- 
ernor's offers  of  employment.  Resenting  the  popular  odium  to  which  they 
found  themselves  exposed,  the  soldiers  retorted  by  insolence  of  behaviour, 
and  even  by  acts  of  violence,  against  various  individuals  who  had  signalized 
themselves  by  the  warmth  or  steadiness  of  their  opposition  to  British  poHcy; 
and  Isaiah  Thomas,  a  patriotic  printer,  whom  Hutchinson  had  ineffectually 
prosecuted,  was  now  constrained  to  remove  by  night  his  printing-press  from 
Boston  by  the  threats  and  preparations  of  the  soldiers  to  destroy  it.  The 
provincial  committee  of  correspondence,  having  revived  and  extended  the 
ancient  non-importation  agreement,^  bestowed  on  their  association  the  title 
of  Jl  Solemn  League  and  Covenant^  —  a  name  of  evil  omen  to  British 
monarchy,  and  which  provoked  Gage  to  issue  a  proclamation  reprobating  the 
compact  as  illegal  and  even  treasonable.  He  took  occasion  at  the  same 
time  to  warn  the  people  against  religious  hypocrisy,  —  an  insinuation  which 
was  resented  as  an  insult  to  the  whole  province.  Daily  some  additional  in- 
stance occurred  of  the  determined  purpose  of  the  inhabitants  to  obstruct 
the  views  and  recent  arrangements  of  the  British  government.  The  grand 
and  petty  juries,  summoned  to  attend  the  courts  of  law  and  perform  their  im- 
portant functions,  firmly  refused  to  serve  under  a  constitution  which  they 
denounced  as  a  tyrannical  violation  of  the  provincial  charter  ;  and  the  judges, 
who  dared  not  venture  to  fine  or  even  censure  them,  assumed  the  right  of 
deciding  causes  without  the  intervention  of  a  jury,  —  a  proceeding  which 
served  only  to  increase  the  general  aversion  and  impatience  at  the  existing 
condition  of  things.  In  some  places,  the  people  assembled  in  numerous 
throngs,  and  so  completely  filled  the  court-houses  and  blocked  up  every 
avenue  to  them,  that  neither  the  judges  nor  their  attendants  could  obtain  ad- 
mission ;  and  when  the  sheriffs  commanded  them  to  make  way  for  the  court, 
they  answered,  ''  that  they  knew  no  court  independent  of  the  ancient  laws 
of  their  country,  and  none  other  would  they  acknowledge."  They  would 
submit  to  a  suspension  of  regular  government,  rather  than  permit  the  streams 
of  justice  to  flow  in  the  new  channel  prescribed  by  the  recent  acts  of  parlia- 
ment, or  reconduct  them  forcibly  in  the  old  one  sanctioned  by  their  charter. 
The  jealousy  excited  by  successive  arrivals  of  British  troops  at  Boston 
was  increased  by  the  position  of  a  British  guard  on  the  peninsular  avenue 
called  Boston  Neck,  and  by  the  diligence  with  which  the  troops  were  em- 
ployed in  repairing  and  manning  the  fortifications  at  that  entrance  of  the 
town.  It  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  the  popular  leaders  restrained 
the  explosion  of  an  immediate  revolt  throughout  the  province,  on  the  dis- 
covery  that  Gage  had  despatched  a  body  of  the  troops  during  the  night  to 

•  Botta  asserts,  that  among  the  most  eager  promoters  of  the  non-importation  agreement  in 
America  were  some  hypocritical  knaves,  who  monopolized  the  profits  arising  from  a  clandes- 
jne  importation  of  the  commodities  thus  excluded  from  open  and  general  commerce.  But  he 
has  not  thought  fit  to  support  his  statement  by  citing  any  proof  either  of  the  reality  of  such 
practices  or  of  the  extent  to  which  they  were  carried.  It  is  undeniable,  indeed,  that  among 
the  Americans  (as  doubtless  among  every  people  that  has  undergone  the  ordeal  of  a  revolu- 
tion), some  persons,  who  before  the  sword  was  drawn  were  the  most  hot-brained  and  hot- 
moulhed  partisans  of  their  <roun  try's  cause,  proved  in  the  hour  of  trial  men  of  faint  hearts  and 
mean  souls. 


492  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

Cbarlestown  [September  1],  near  Boston,  and  had  seized  all  the  gunpowder 
in  the  arsenal  at  that  place.  To  gratify  and  yet  regulate  the  popular  senti- 
ment, and  to  prevent  the  inhabitants  of  this  province  from  breaking  the  gen- 
eral line  of  Jlmerican  opposition  by  rushing  forward  precipitately  to  prema- 
ture conflict  (such  was  the  language  and  the  counsel  of  the  more  cautious 
pohticians  of  Pennsylvania) ,  town-meetings  in  utter  disregard  of  British  law 
were  held  in  various  parts  of  Massachusetts,  and  from  them  the  counsels  of 
a  vigorous  and  yet  prudent  preparation  for  the  extremity  of  civil  war  were 
with  more  or  less  disguise  addressed  to  the  people.  Gage  threatened  to 
disperse  these  meetings  with  his  troops  ;  but  his  threats  were  contemned 
and  his  power  defied.  The  selectmen  of  the  towns  assured  him  that  he 
mistook  the  meaning  of  the  act  of  parliament  with  regard  to  town-meetings  ; 
that  it  prohibited  only  the  fresh  convocation  of  such  assemblies  ;  and  that 
those  which  he  now  threatened  to  disperse  had  not  been  so  convoked,  but 
were  held  in  virtue  of  adjournments  decreed  by  meetings  which  had  been 
legally  convoked  prior  to  the  parliamentary  prohibition. 

The  most  remarkable  demonstration  at  this  period  occurred  in  an  assem- 
bly of  the  inhabitants  of  the  county  of  Suffolk  [September  6],  by  which, 
among  many  other  spirited  resolutions,  it  was  declared,^  "  that  no  obedience 
is  due  from  this  province  to  either  or  any  part  of  the  recent  acts  of  parlia- 
ment^ but  that  they  should  be  rejected  as  the  attempts  of  a  wicked  adminis- 
tration to  enslave  America."  This  assembly  farther  declared,  that  the 
decrees  of  judges  acting  in  submissive  conformity  to  the  recent  violation  of 
the  provincial  constitution  were  entitled  to  no  respect  whatever  ;  and  that, 
to  obviate  the  inconvenience  attending  a  suspension  of  justice,  it  was  now  the 
patriotic  duty  of  creditors  to  exercise  forbearance,  and  of  debtors  to  fulfil 
their  engagements  with  all  possible  diligence.  They  recommended  to  all 
collectors  of  taxes,  and  other  officers  having  public  money  in  their  hands, 
to  retain  it  until  the  government  of  the  province  should  be  placed  on  a  con- 
stitutional basis,  and  to  their  countrymen  at  large  a  prompt  and  strict  at- 
tention to  their  duties  as  militia-men,  —  adding,  that,  for  themselves,  they 
were  determined  to  act  merely  on  the  defensive,  so  long  as  such  conduct 
could  be  justified  by  reason  and  the  principles  of  self-preservation,  but  not 
a  moment  longer.  They  concluded  by  exhorting  the  people  to  avoid  all 
riot  and  disorder,  and,  by  a  steady,  manly,  uniform,  and  persevering  op- 
position, to  convince  their  enemies,  that,  in  a  contest  so  important,  in  a  cause 
so  solemn,  the  conduct  of  the  Americans  should  be  "  such  as  to  merit  the 
approbation  of  the  wise,  and  the  admiration  of  the  brave  and  free,  of  every 
age  and  of  every  country."  These  resolves,  which  in  deliberate  boldness 
exceeded  any  that  had  yet  been  embraced  in  America,  were  immediately 
forwarded  to  the  Continental  Congress  now  assembled,  and  were  exphcitly 
sanctioned  by  this  great  American  council.^ 

On  the  5th  of  September,  the  general  congress,  elected  by  the  twelve 

*  These  resolutions  were  composed  by  Dr.  Joseph  Warren,  who  afterwards  fell  at  Bunker's 
Hill.  They  commenced  with  the  following  preamble  :  —  "  Whereas  the  power,  but  not  the 
justice,  the  vengeance,  but  not  the  wisdom,  of  Great  Britain,  which  of  old  persecuted,  scourged, 
and  exiled  our  fugitive  parents  from  their  native  shores,  now  pursues  us,  their  guiltless  children, 
with  unrelenting  severity;  and  whereas  this  then  savage  and  uncultivated  desert  was  pur- 
chased by  the  toil  and  treasure,  or  acquired  by  the  valor  and  blood,  of  those  our  venerable  pro- 
genitors; to  us  they  bequeathed  the  dear-bought  inheritance  ;  to  our  care  and  protection  they 
consigned  it;  and  the  most  sacred  obligations  are  upon  us  to  transmit  the  glorious  purchase, 
unfettered  by  power,  unclogged  with  shackles,  to  an  innocent  and  beloved  offspring. 

^  Annual  Register  for  1774  and  ffrr  1775.  Gordon.  Burk.  Eliot.  Bradford.  Garden's 
Anatdolps.  Ramsay.  Belknap.  Pitkin.  Holmes.  Memoir  of  Isaiah  Thvmas /m  the  Jrchcco- 
logia  Americana.     Tucker's  Life  of  Jefferson. 


CHAP.  IV.J  FIRST  CONTINENTAL  CONGRESS.  493 

oldest  and  most  powerful  States  of  America,  assembled  at  Philadelphia. 
''  Such,"  said  the  British  statesman,  Edmund  Burke,  at  the  time,  '^  has 
been  the  unhappy  effect  of  the  measures  pursued,  perhaps  somewhat  too 
avowedly,  and  for  that  reason  the  less  wisely,  for  reducing  America  by  di- 
vision, that  those  twelve  colonies,  clashing  in  interests,  frequently  quarrelling 
about  boundaries  and  many  other  subjects,  differing  in  manners,  customs, 
religion,  and  forms  of  government,  with  all  the  local  prejudices,  jealousies, 
and  aversions  incident  to  neighbouring  states,  are  now  led  to  assemble  by 
their  delegates  in  a  general  diet,  and  taught  to  feel  their  weight  and  impor- 
tance in  a  common  union."  Peyton  Randolph,  of  Virginia,  was  chosen 
president  of  the  assembly,  which  was  forthwith  organized  for  the  transaction 
of  business  with  all  the  formalities  of  a  regular  legislature.  In  this  assem- 
bly, which  consisted  of  fifty-five  members,  the  wealth,  the  talent,  the  spirit 
of  the  Americans,  —  all  the  particulars,  in  short,  that  command  the  respect 
and  constitute  the  character  and  force  of  a  nation,  —  were  justly  and  fully 
represented.  In  point  of  the  number  of  their  deputies,  the  States  were 
not  equally  represented  ;  and  as  their  relative  importance  was  not  accurately 
known,  it  was  arranged  that  the  representatives  of  each  province  should  give 
one  single  vote  upon  every  question  discussed  by  the  congress.^  It  was  far- 
ther determined  that  the  meetings  of  the  congress  should  be  held  with 
closed  doors,  and  that  not  a  syllable  of  its  transactions  should  be  published 
except  by  order  of  a  majority  of  the  States.  This  judicious  regulation, 
among  other  advantageous  results,  withheld  from  public  view  every  symp- 
tom of  doubt  or  divided  purpose  and  opinion  among  the  members  of  the 
congress.  The  most  eminent  and  respected  citizens  of  the  various  colonies 
were  now  for  the  first  time  assembled  together.  Known  to  each  other  by 
reputation  and  correspondence,  but  personally  unacquainted  ;  conscious  that 
the  eyes  of  their  agitated  countrymen,  together  with  the  rising  expectation 
and  interest  of  Europe,  w^ere  earnestly  fixed  upon  them,  and  that  the  lib- 
erties of  three  millions  of  people  and  the  destiny  of  the  greatest  common- 
wealth in  the  world  were  staked  on  the  wisdom  and  vigor  of  their  conduct, 
—  they  were  deeply  and  even  painfully  impressed  with  the  solemn  responsi- 
bility that  attached  to  the  functions  they  had  undertaken.  A  long  and  em- 
barrassing silence  that  followed  the  organization  of  the  assembly  was  broken 
by  Patrick  Henry,  who,  with  calm  yet  earnest  and  majestic  eloquence, 
depicted  his  country's  wrongs,  and  rekindled  in  his  colleagues  the  ardor 
and  emulation  which  had  been  for  a  while  suspended,  not  by  mean  timidity, 
but  by  a  generous  awe  and  profound  conception  of  the  grand  and  swelling 
scene,  of  which  the  conduct  and  issue  reposed  on  their  present  dehberations. 
The  debates  and  other  transactions  of  the  congress  were  now  conducted 
with  a  happy  mixture  of  firmness,  prudence,  talent,  and  despatch.  The 
utmost  credit  and  respect  were  imparted  to  their  resolves  by  a  unanimity 
chiefly  the  fruit  of  concessions  made  with  profound  policy  by  the  more  ar- 
dent and  (in  principle)  uncompromising  partisans  of  liberty,  who  already 
cleaved  to  the  purpose  of  American  independence  with  fixed  and  undi- 
verted aim.^     Nevertheless,  some  concessions  were  extorted  or  dexterously 

^  Tke  States  United  and  the  States  Separate  was  a  favorite  expression  of  Samuel  Adams, 
and  often  delivered  by  him  as  a  toast  at  public  and  private  entertainments. 

*  The  conduct  of  Samuel  Adams  on  the  present  occasion  was  thus  described  by  Galloway, 
an  American,  who  at  first  espoused  the  cause  of  his  country,  and  was  one  of  the  representatives 
of  Pennsylvania  in  this  congress,  but,  after  the  disasters  which  befell  the  American  arms  in  the 
close  of  the  year  1776,  fell  off  to  the  cause  of  Britain.    "  Samuel  Adams  eats  little,  drinks  little, 

PP 


494  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

obtained  from  the  other  party  in  the  assembly  ;  and  in  certain  of  their  pro- 
ceedings we  recognize  an  industrious  zeal  to  inflame  the  spirits  and  aug- 
ment the  numbers  of  the  opponents  of  British  prerogative,  exerted  at  the 
expense  of  a  departure  from  the  strict  line  of  candor  and  integrity.  But 
when  was  it  seen  that  even  the  most  meritorious  party,  in  a  great  political 
quarrel,  uniformly  bounded  its  exertions  within  the  limits  of  honor  and  mod- 
eration ;  accounted  truth  and  virtue  dearer  than  success,  or  even  equally 
dear  ;  or  refrained  from  indulging  and  fomenting  that  propensity,  peculiarly 
incident  to  political  strife,  which  prompts  its  partakers  to  impute  every  pos- 
sible and  imaginable  depravity  to  their  adversaries  ?  So  equally  were  the 
talents  requisite  to  the  discharge  of  their  functions  distributed  among  the 
members  of  this  congress,  that  the  leading  orators  invariably  proved,  and 
indeed  acknowledged  themselves,  inferior  in  the  arts  of  written  composition 
to  their  less  eloquent  colleagues.^ 

The  congress  having  determined,  in  opposition  to  the  wishes  of  the  more 
ardent  party,  to  restrict  their  attention  to  such  American  grievances  as  had 
been  inflicted  subsequently  to  the  year  1763,  proceeded  to  frame  and  pub- 
lish a  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  America  ;  a  memorial  to  all  their 
American  countrymen  ;  an  address  to  the  king,  and  one  to  the  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain  :  a  letter  to  the  people  of  Canada  ;  and  a  variety  of  other 
declarations,  resolves,  counsels,  and  remonstrances, — in  the  composition 
of  which  Richard  Henry  Lee,  John  Jay  (who  espoused  the  cause  of  his 
country  with  all  the  ardor  of  youth,  while  the  dignity  and  gravity  of  his  de- 
portment gave  him  the  influence  of  riper  years),  and  Philip  Livingston  par- 
ticularly distinguished  themselves.  Livingston  was  the  inheritor  of  a  name 
highly  renowned  in  the  church  of  Scotland,  and  which  was  destined  to 
heighten  and  enlarge  its  honorable  lustre  in  America.  The  congress  as- 
serted in  those  writings  all  the  claims  and  rights  which  we  have  already 
so  frequently  particularized,  and  demanded  the  repeal  of  every  statute  by 
which  those  rights  were  invaded.  To  the  king  they  appealed  as  a  sovereign 
whose  true  interest  and  glory  were  inseparable  from  the  hberty  and  hap- 
piness of  which  his  ministers  were  attempting  to  bereave  them.  To  the 
people  of  Britain  ^  they  earnestly  vindicated  the  noble  value  which  they 
attached  to  a  full  share  in  the  system  of  the  British  constitution,  and  rep- 
resented the  danger  portended  to  the  whole  system  by  the  extinction  of 

sleeps  little,  thinks  much,  and  is  most  indefatigable  in  the  pursuit  of  his  object.  It  was  this 
man,  who,  by  his  superior  application,  managed  at  once  the  factions  in  congress  at  Philadelphia 
and  the  factions  of  New  England."     Galloway's  Historical  and  Political  Reflections  on  the  Rise 


and  Progress  of  the  American  Rebellion^  published  in  England  in  1780.  Of  Samuel  Adams 
says  Hutchinson,  "  such  is  the  obstinacy  and  inflexible  disposition  of  the  man,  that  he  can  nev- 
er be  conciliated  by  any  office  or  gifl  whatever."  A  writer  in  the  American  Qmirterly  Review 
thus  panegyrically  characterizes  Samuel  Chase,  of  Maryland,  the  contemporary  and  political 
associate  of  Adams  :  —  "  He  was  the  Samuel  Adams  of  Maryland,  irnpiger,  inezorabilis." 
While  Hancock  and  others,  with  mixed  sentiment,  aspired  to  the  character  of  leaders  of  the 
congress,  Samuel  Adams,  with  single  eye,  studied  and  was  content  to  be  its  soul. 

'  Patrick  Henry,  in  particular,  was  obliged  to  resign  to  others  the  task  of  composing  the 
resolves  and  declarations  which  his  own  eloquence  had  elicited.  When  he  was  asked,  on  his 
return  to  Virginia,  whom  he  thought  the  greatest  man  in  congress,  he  answered,  "  If  you  speak 
of  eloquence,  Mr.  Rutledge,  of  South  Carolina,  is  by  far  the  greatest  orator  ;  but  if  you  speak 
of  solid  information  and  sound  judgment,  Washington  is,  unquestionably,  the  greatest  man  on 
that  floor." 

'  The  address  to  the  British  people  thus  commenced  : — "Friends  and  fellow-subjects : 
When  a  nation,  led  to  greatness  by  the  hand  of  liberty,  and  possessed  of  all  the  glory  that  he- 
roism, munificence,  and  humanity  can  bestow,  descends  to  the  ungrateful  task  of  forging  chains 
for  her  friends  and  children,  and,  instead  of  giving  support  to  freedom,  turns  advocate  for 
slavery  and  oppression,  there  is  reason  to  suspect  she  has  either  ceased  to  be  virtuous,  or  been 
extremely  negligent  in  the  appointment  of  her  rulers." 


CHAP.  IV.]  PROCEEDINGS  OF  CONGRESS.  495 

liberty,  its  vital  principle,  in  so  large  and  flourishing  a  department  of  the 
empire.  ''  Place  us,"  they  declared,  "in  the  situation  in  which  we  were 
at  the  close  of  the  last  war,  and  our  former  harmony  will  be  restored." 
To  the  Americans,  among  other  grievances,  they  enumerated  the  late  Que- 
bec Bill,  which  they  denounced  as  a  wicked  attempt  to  estabhsh  the  Romish 
faith  and  a  model  of  tyranny  within  the  British  empire,  for  the  gratification 
of  a  French  colony  recently  conquered  at  the  expense  of  the  blood  and 
treasure  of  the  ancient  colonies  of  Britain.  Yet,  in  their  letter  to  the  Cana- 
dians, they  endeavoured  to  provoke  the  discontent  of  this  people  by  the 
most  plausible  and  ingenious  comments  on  the  Quebec  Bill  ;  assuring  them 
that  the  restored  system  of  French  law  to  which  they  were  attached  could 
not  possibly  be  administered  to  their  satisfaction  by  English  functionaries  ; 
and  urging  them  to  make  common  cause  with  the  British  Americans, 
and  elect  deputies  to  the  Continental  Congress.  Similar  invitations  were 
addressed  to  the  colonies  of  St.  John's,  Nova  Scotia,  Georgia,  and  the 
Floridas.  The  congress  also  framed  an  agreement  for  the  strictest  absti- 
nence from  all  commercial  intercourse  whatever  with  Britain,  which  they 
warmly  recommended  to  the  universal  adoption  of  their  countrymen  ;  with 
the  additional  advice,  that  the  names  of  all  persons  rejecting  or  violating  the 
agreement  should  be  proclaimed  in  the  newspapers,  as  enemies  to  the  rights 
of  America.  With  willing  conformity  to  the  instructions  of  many  of  their 
constituents,  they  reprobated  the  slave-trade  as  a  practice  equally  injurious 
and  dishonorable  to  America,  and  urged  an  instant  and  entire  dereliction 
of  farther  importation  or  purchase  of  slaves. 

During  the  whole  session  of  the  congress,  a  constant  communication  was 
maintained  by  expresses  between  Boston  and  Philadelphia.  Apprized,  by 
letters  from  the  Massachusetts  committee  of  correspondence,  of  the  op- 
erations of  General  Gage  in  surrounding  Boston  with  fortifications  and  inter- 
cepting its  intercourse  with  the  country,  the  congress  first  addressed  a  letter 
to  the  general,  requesting  him  to  desist  from  such  measures,  and  then  voted 
a  resolution,  approving  the  resistance  of  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  to 
the  late  acts  of  parliament,  and  declaring,  that,  if  a  forcible  execution  of 
these  acts  should  be  attempted,  "  in  such  case  all  America  ought  to  support 
Massachusetts  in  her  opposition.'*''  They  recommended,  notwithstanding,  to 
the  people  of  that  province  a  demeanour  guardedly  peaceable  towards  Gage 
and  his  troops,  and  a  firm  perseverance  in  the  line  they  had  adopted  of 
acting  on  the  defensive.  They  declared,  at  the  same  time,  that  all  persons 
accepting  or  obeying  authority  conferred  by  the  statutes  which  violated  the 
charter  of  Massachusetts  *' ought  to  be  held  in  abhorrence  by  all  good 
men,  and  considered  as  the  i^icked  tools  of  that  despotism  which  is  pre- 
paring to  destroy  those  rights  which  God,  nature,  and  compact  have  given 
to  America."  Yet,  in  this  and  all  the  other  compositions  which  issued  from 
the  congress,  an  extraordinary  loyalty  to  the  king,  and  a  vehement  solicitude 
for  the  restoration  of  ancient  harmony  with  Great  Britain,  were  repeated  in 
professions,  certainly  more  pohtic  than  sincere  on  the  part  of  many  of  the 
members,  who  had  long  regarded  a  peaceful  accommodation  of  the  quarrel 
as  impossible. 

Of  the  debates  which  occurred  within  the  walls  of  the  congress  no  com- 
plete or  authentic  report  was  preserved  ;  but,  from  some  detached  particu- 
lars that  have  been  transmitted,  it  appears  that  the  probability  and  the  con- 
sequences of  a  war  with  Britain  were  deliberately  discussed.     On  one  occa- 


496  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

sion,  when  some  of  the  more  scrupulous  and  temporizing  party  endeav- 
oured to  moderate  the  fervor  of  their  colleagues  by  reminding  ihem  that  the 
British  fleets  would  find  httle  difficulty  in  battering  and  destroying  all  the 
seaport  towns  of  America,  Christopher  Gadsden,  of  South  CaroHna,  thus 
replied  to  the  alarming  suggestion  :  — ''  Our  seaport  towns,  Mr.  President, 
are  composed  of  brick  and  wood.  If  they  are  destroyed,  we  have  clay  and 
timber  enough  to  rebuild  them.  But,  if  the  liberties  of  our  country  are 
destroyed,  where  shall  we  find  the  materials  to  replace  them  ?  "  An  esti- 
mate was  made  by  the  congress  of  the  total  population  of  the  twelve  prov- 
inces which  its  members  represented,  and  which,  on  a  very  moderate  com- 
putation, were  reckoned  to  contain  3,026,678  free  inhabitants.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  peruse  the  recorded  transactions  of  this  congress,  without  being 
impressed  with  the  highest  admiration  both  of  the  firm  and  elevated  tone, 
and  of  the  energetic  and  elegant  diction,  in  which  the  rights  and  the  pur- 
poses of  America  are  expressed.  Lord  Chatham  declared,  that,  notwith- 
standing his  ardent  admiration  of  the  free  states  of  antiquity,  the  master- 
spirits of  the  world,  he  was  constrained  to  acknowledge,  that,  in  solidity  of 
reasoning,  force  of  sagacity,  and  wisdom  of  conduct,  the  American  congress 
was  second  to  no  human  assembly  of  which  history  has  preserved  a  me- 
morial. After  a  session  of  eight  weeks,  the  congress  decreed  its  own  dis- 
solution [October]  ;  but  not  without  bequeathing  the  advice  that  another 
congress  should  be  held  on  the  10th  of  May  in  the  ensuing  year,  at  Phila- 
delphia, unless  the  redress  of  American  grievances  were  previously  ob- 
tained ;  and  that  all  the  colonies  should  elect  deputies  as  soon  as  possible, 
to  be  in  readiness  to  form  the  new  congress,  if  events  should  render  its 
convocation  necessary  or  expedient. 

The  counsels  and  resolves  of  the  Continental  Congress  obtained  the  cor- 
dial sanction  and  acquiescence  of  the  provincial  congresses  and  legislative 
assemblies  of  all  the  States  except  New  York,  whose  assembly,  unexpect- 
edly, declined  to  recognize  them.  In  this  province,  the  unequal  distribution 
of  property  tended  to  foster  an  aristocratic  spirit  very  remote  from  the  gen- 
eral taste  and  temper  elsewhere  prevalent  in  North  America.  The  city  of 
New  York  had  long  been  the  head-quarters  of  the  British  troops  maintained 
in  this  quarter  of  the  empire  ;  and  many  of  the  oldest  and  wealthiest  famihes 
in  the  province  were  connected  with  persons  of  rank,  influence,  and  Tory 
principles  in  Great  Britain.  Hence,  the  party  attached  there  to  the  royal 
government  was  peculiarly  distinguished  by  its  numbers  and  other  elements 
of  social  consideration.  Yet  the  apparent  secession  of  this  province  from 
the  American  cause  on  the  present  occasion  was  much  more  prejudicial 
to  the  British  government,  by  which  its  imp(|rtance  was  greatly  overrated,^ 
than  to  the  other  American  States,  which,  though  displeased,  were  no  way 
daunted  or  spirit-stricken  by  the  occurrence.  The  British  government  was 
continually  deluded  by  its  Tory  friends  in  America.  The  most  stanch  and 
zealous  of  these  partisans  customarily  exaggerated  every  trifling  instance  of 
success,  in  order  to  illustrate  the  value  of  their  own  services  ;  while  others 
of  them,  in  whom  patriotic  attachment  was  at  bottom  much  stronger  than 
Tory  predilections,  long  continued  to  oppose  and  reprobate  every  approach 
of  their  countrymen  to  that  revolt,  which,  when  no  longer  avoidable,  they 

'  The  Briiish  ministers,  says  Ramsay,  were  confirmed  in  their  haughtiest  purposes  by  the 
seeming  defection  of  New  York  from  the  cause  of  her  sister  colonies.  "They  flattered  them- 
selves, that,  when  one  link  of  the  continental  chain  gave  way,  it  would  be  easy  to  make  an 
impression  on  the  disjointed  extremities."  •  >    ^> 


CHAP.   IV.]        DEFENSIVE  MEASURES  OF  MASSACHUSETTS.  497 

themselves  partook.  In  all  the  other  provinces  there  was  demonstrated  for 
the  congress  a  degree  of  respect  and  deference  which  seemed  to  invest  it 
wiih  the  character  more  of  a  legislative  body  than  a  council ;  and  its  rec- 
ommendations were  as  generally  and  punctually  carried  into  effect  as  the 
laws  of  the  most  respected  government  and  best  regulated  state  have  ever 
been.  Every  particular  in  its  language  and  tone  that  savored  of  deter- 
mined resistance  was  copied  and  reechoed  with  zealous  homage,  and  even 
enhanced  by  the  exaggeration  which  is  incident  to  imitators.  Shortly  after 
its  recommendation  of  abstinence  from  all  commercial  intercourse  with  Brit- 
ain was  published,  a  brig,  laden  with  tea,  arrived  from  London  at  Annapolis, 
in  Maryland.  Alarmed  by  the  rage  and  menaces  of  the  people,  the  ship- 
master implored  the  counsel  and  protection  of  Charles  Carroll  of  Carroll- 
ton,  an  eminent  lawyer,  fast  rising  into  a  patriotic  distinction  which  every 
added  year  of  his  long  life  deservedly  enhanced,  who  advised  him  to  burn 
the  vessel  and  cargo,  as  the  surest  means  of  allaying  the  popular  excitement. 
This  counsel  was  followed  ;  the  sails  were  set,  the  colors  displayed,  and 
the  brig  burned  amidst  the  acclamations  of  the  multitude. 

In  Massachusetts,  the  aspect  of  public  affairs  became  daily  more  inau- 
spicious to  peace  and  reconcilement.  The  semblance,  indeed,  of  subordi- 
nation to  the  British  crown  was  maintained  ;  but  so  hollow  and  unsubstantial 
was  this  semblance,  that  every  attempt  of  the  governor  to  exert  his  authority 
served  only  to  show  how  withered  and  decayed  were  the  bands  which  yet 
in  theory  connected  the  colonists  and  their  domestic  institutions  with  the 
royal  prerogative.  Gage  had  issued  writs  for  the  convocation  of  an  assem- 
bly at  Salem,  on  the  5th  of  October  ;  but,  alarmed  by  the  temper  of  the 
people  and  the  increasing  spread  of  discontent,  he  judged  it  expedient  to 
countermand  the  writs  by  a  proclamation  suspending  the  meeting  of  the 
assembly.  The  legality  of  this  proclamation,  however,  was  generally  denied 
in  Massachusetts  ;  and  the  new  representatives,  to  the  number  of  ninety, 
assembUng  on  the  day  originally  appointed,  and  neither  the  governor  nor 
any  substitute  attending,  they  resolved  themselves  into  a  provincial  congress, 
and  soon  adjourned  to  Concord.  Here  they  made  choice  of  Hancock  to 
be  their  president,  and  appointed  a  committee  to  present  to  the  governor  a 
remonstrance  against  all  his  recent  measures,  concluding  with  an  earnest 
request  that  he  would  desist  from  the  construction  of  the  fortress  which  he 
was  erecting  at  the  entrance  of  Boston,  ''and  restore  that  place  to  its 
neutral  state.''-  Gage,  who,  though  capable  of  dissimulation,  possessed  a 
hotter  temper  than  befitted  his  elevated  station  and  difficult  predicament, 
took  fire  at  this  language  ;  he  expressed  the  warmest  displeasure  at  the 
supposition  of  danger  from  English  troops  to  any  but  the  enemies  of  Eng- 
land ;  and  desired  the  committee  to  convey  to  the  congress  his  warning 
counsel  that  they  should  hasten  to  desist  from  their  illegal  proceedings.  Dis- 
regarding his  admonition  and  defying  his  power,  the  provincial  congress 
adjourned  to  Cambridge,  where,  relieved  from  all  doubts  of  the  general 
support  of  America,  they  embraced  and  pursued  measures  of  unexampled 
boldness  and  vigor.  They  appointed  a  committee  to  prepare  a  plan  for 
the  immediate  defence  of  the  province  ;  gave  orders  for  the  enhstment  of 
a  number  of  the  inhabitants  to  be  in  readiness,  at  a  minute^s  learnings  to 
appear  in  arms  ;  elected  three  general  officers  (Preble,  Ward,  and  Pomroy) 
to  command  these  minute-men  and  the  provincial  militia,  in  case  of  their 
being  called  to   active    service  ;  and  appointed  a  council   of  safety  and  a 

VOL.   II.  63  pp  * 


498  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

committee  of  supplies.  One  of  the  secretaries  whom  they  elected  was 
Benjamin  Lincoln,  afterwards  a  general  in  the  American  service,  and  highly- 
distinguished  as  a  gallant  and  indefatigable  partisan  of  his  country's  cause. 
Reassembling  after  an  adjournment  of  a  few  weeks  [November] ,  the  same 
congress,  sensible  that  their  countrymen  applauded  their  measures,  and  that 
their  constituents  were  prepared  to  yield  imphcit  obedience  to  their  de- 
crees, passed  an  ordinance  for  the  equipment  of  twelve  thousand  men  to  act 
on  any  emergency,  and  for  the  enhstment  of  a  fourth  part  of  the  militia  as 
minute-men ;  appointed  two  additional  general  officers,  Thomas  and  Heath  ; 
and  sent  delegates  to  New  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island,  and  Connecticut,  to 
request  the  cooperation  of  these  provinces  in  completing  an  army  of  twenty 
thousand  men.  A  committee  was  likewise  appointed  to  correspond  with  the 
inhabitants  of  Canada  ;  and  circular  letters  were  addressed  to  all  the  clergy- 
men of  Massachusetts,  requesting  their  assistance  to  avert  impending  slavery. 

And  now  all  America  was  aroused  by  expectation  of  awful  conflict  and 
mighty  change.^  New  England,  upon  which  the  first  violence  of  the  storm 
seemed  likely  to  descend,  was  agitated  by  rumors  and  alarms,  of  which  the 
import  and  the  influence  strikingly  portrayed  the  sentiments  and  temper  of 
the  people.  Reports,  that  Gage  had  commanded  his  troops  to  attack  the 
Massachusetts  miHtia,  or  to  fire  upon  the  town  of  Boston,  were  swallowed 
with  the  avidity  of  rage  and  hatred,  and  instantly  covered  the  highways 
with  thousands  of  armed  men,  mustering  in  hot  haste,  and  eager  to  rush  for- 
ward to  death  or  revenge.  Every  thing  betokened  the  explosion  of  a  tem- 
pest ;  and  some  partial  gusts  announced  its  near  approach,  and  proved  the 
harbingers  of  its  fury.  In  the  close  of  the  year,  there  reached  America  a 
proclamation  issued  by  the  king,  prohibiting  the  exportation  of  military 
stores  from  Great  Britain.  The  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island  no  sooner 
received  intelligence  of  this  mandate,  than  they  removed  from  the  public 
battery  about  forty  pieces  of  cannon  ;  and  the  assembly  of  the  province 
gave  orders  for  procuring  arms  and  martial  stores,  and  for  the  immediate 
equipment  of  a  mihtary  force.  In  New  Hampshire,  a  band  of  four  hundred 
men,  suddenly  assembling  in  arms,  and  conducted  by  John  Sullivan,^  an 
eminent  lawyer  and  a  man  of  great  ambition  and  intrepidity,  gained  posses- 
sion by  surprise  of  the  castle  of  Portsmouth,  and  confined  the  royal  garrison 
till  the  powder-magazine  was  ransacked  and  its  contents  carried  away.^ 

The  accounts  received  in  Britain  of  these  transactions  produced  no  dis- 
position on  the  part  of  the  British  government  to  relax  the  system  of  co- 
ercive measures  which  it  had  recently  undertaken.  In  a  speech  from  the 
throne  [November  30] ,  the  king  acquainted  the  parliament  that  a  most  daring 
spirit  of  resistance  and  disobedience  to  the  laws  unhappily  prevailed  in  the 
province  of  Massachusetts,  and  had  broken  forth  in  fresh  violences  of  a 
highly  criminal  nature  ;  that  these  proceedings  were  countenanced  and  en- 
couraged in  his  other  colonies,  and  unwarrantable  attempts  were  made  to 
obstruct  the  commerce  of  his  kingdom  by  unlawful  combinations  ;  and  that 
he  had  taken  such  measures  and  given  such  orders  as  he  judged  most  proper 
and  effectual  for  carrying  into  execution  the  acts  passed  in  the  commence- 
ment of  the  year  with  regard  to  Massachusetts.     Addresses  which  approved 

^  "  The  events  of  this  time  may  be  transmitted  to  posterity;  but  the  agitation  of  the  public 
mind  can  never  be  fully  comprehended  but  by  those  who  were  witnesses  of  it."     Ramsay. 

*  Afterwards  major-general  in  the  American  army. 

3  Annual  Register  for  1774  and  for  1775.  Gordon.  Belknap.  Wirt.  Pitkin.  Holmes. 
Rogers's  American  Biographical  Dictionary.     Eliot.    American  National  Gallery. 


CHAP.  IV.]  PROCEEDINGS  IN  PARLIAMENT.  499 

and  reechoed  this  speech  were  proposed  in  both  houses  ;  and,  though 
they  produced  warm  debates,  they  were  carried  by  large  majorities.  In 
spite  of  this  apparent  firmness  of  purpose,  the  British  cabinet  could  not 
contemplate  without  some  hesitation  and  perplexity  the  extension  to  the 
other  provinces  of  America  of  those  rigorous  measures  which  had  been  in- 
flicted with  so  litde  of  beneficial  effect  upon  Massachusetts  ;  and  the  par- 
liament was  adjourned  for  the  Christmas  holydays,  without  having  taken  any 
farther  step  in  relation  to  colonial  affairs.  But  the  intelligence,  received 
during  this  interval,  of  the  meeting  and  transactions  of  the  American  con- 
gress precluded  farther  indecision,  and  imperatively  demanded  either  an 
instant  retractation  of  the  resisted  prerogative  of  Britain,  or  a  vigorous  and 
decisive  retort  of  the  blow  which  her  authority  had  received.  The  consid- 
eration of  American  affairs  was  accordingly  the  first  business  to  which  the 
attention  of  the  reassembled  parliament  was  directed.  [January  20,  1775.] 
At  this  critical  juncture,  Lord  Chatham,  after  a  long  retirement  from  public 
life,  resumed  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords  ;  and,  venerable  alike  from  age, 
achievement,  and  renown,  endeavoured,  with  all  the  remaining  energy  of  his 
commanding  spirit  and  impressive  eloquence,  to  dissuade  his  countrymen 
from  attempting  to  subdue  the  Americans  by  military  force.  He  enlarged 
on  the  ruinous  events  that  were  impending  on  the  nation  in  consequence  of 
the  project,  equally  unjust  and  impracticable,  of  taxing  America  ;  he  pro- 
nounced a  glowing  panegyric  on  the  American  congress  and  its  transactions  ; 
arraigned  the  whole  ministerial  system  of  American  politics  ;  and  moved 
that  an  address  should  be  presented  to  the  king,  to  advise  and  beseech  him, 
that,  in  order  to  open  a  happy  way  to  the  settlement  of  the  dangerous 
troubles  in  America,  by  beginning  to  allay  ferments  and  soften  animosities 
in  that  country,  and  preventing,  above  all,  some  sudden  and  fatal  catastro- 
phe at  Boston,  he  should  command  General  Gage  to  remove  the  troops  from 
that  town  as  speedily  as  the  rigor  of  the  season  would  permit.  This  motion 
was  supported  by  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham  and  Lords  Camden  and 
Shelburne,  but  rejected  by  a  great  majority  of  the  peers.  Yet  a  respect- 
able minority,  in  both  houses  of  parliament,  was  warmly,  though  ineffectually, 
seconded  in  their  efforts  for  conciliation,  by  petitions  from  many  of  the  Eng- 
lish merchants  and  manufacturers,  and  particularly  from  the  towns  of  Lon- 
don and  Bristol. 

A  few  days  after  [January  26],  a  petition  was  tendered  to  the  House 
of  Commons  from  Bollan,  Franklin,  and  Lee,  as  the  agents  for  the  provinces 
of  America,  stating  that  they  were  directed  by  the  American  Continental 
Congress  to  present  a  memorial  from  it,  the  contents  of  which  it  was  in 
their  power  to  illustrate  by  much  important  information  ;  and  praying  to 
be  heard  at  the  bar  in  support  of  the  memorial.  A  violent  debate  ensued. 
The  adherents  of  the  ministry,  while  they  refused  to  hear  and  discuss  the 
complaints  of  America,  insultingly  censured  them  as  containing  nothing 
but  pretended  grievances  ;  and  a  large  majority  united  in  rejecting  the  ap- 
plication. Lord  Chatham  still  persisted  in  indulging  hopes  of  conciliation  ; 
and  to  this  end,  with  a  very  unwarrantable  reliance  on  the  moderation  and 
placability  both  of  the  British  government  and  of  the  Americans,  presented 
to  the  House  of  Lords  [February  1]  the  outlines  of  a  bill,  which  he  entitled 
A  provisional  Act  for  settling  the  Troubles  in  America,  and  for  asserting  the 
supreme  legislative  Authority  and  superintending  Power  of  Great  Britain 
over  the  Colonies.     He  proposed,  on  the  one  hand,  to  legalize  the  codvo- 


500  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

cation  of  a  new  American  congress,  which  should  first  acknowledge  the  su- 
preme legislatorial  power  of  the  British  parliament,  and  then  allot  to  the  crown 
a  certain  and  perpetual  revenue,  applicable,  under  parliamentary  direction,  to 
the  alleviation  of  the  national  debt,  —  and  on  the  other,  to  restrict  the  juris- 
diction of  admiralty  courts  in  America  within  its  ancient  limits,  and  to  sus- 
pend all  the  British  statutes  of  which  the  Americans  had  latterly  complained. 
This  distinguished  statesman  had  recently  cultivated  the  acquaintance,  which 
in  the  plenitude  of  his  power  he  formerly  slighted,  of  Dr.  Franklin  ;  who, 
less  affected  by  the  eclipse  of  Lord  Chatham's  official  grandeur  than  the 
fallen  minister  himself  was,  regarded  him  with  undiminished  admiration,  and 
willingly  met  his  advances  to  intimacy.  He  imparted  the  outlines  of  his 
bill  to  Franklin,  whose  opinion  was,  that,  although  inadequate  to  the  wishes 
of  the  Americans,  it  would  conduce  to  tranquillize  them,  and  serve  as  the 
basis  of  further  treaty.  When  the  measure  was  broached  in  the  House  of 
Peers,  Lord  Sandwich,  one  of  the  ministers,  assailed  it  with  violent  and  dis- 
dainful abuse ;  refused  to  believe  it  the  genuine  production  of  any  British 
nobleman  ;  and,  turning  with  a  significant  look  to  Franklin,  who  was  pres- 
ent, declared  it  was  doubtless  the  production  of  an  American,  and  of  one 
well  known  as  the  most  bitter  and  mischievous  enemy  of  Great  Britain. 
Lord  Chatham  in  reply  vindicated  his  project,  and  claimed  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility attached  to  its  composition  ;  but  added,  withal,  that,  if  he  were 
the  first  minister  of  Britain,  he  would  not  be  ashamed  to  seek  the  counsel  and 
assistance  of  one  so  well  versed  in  American  affairs  as  Franklin,  whom  he  eu- 
logized as  the  just  object  of  the  world's  admiration,  and  an  ornament  not 
merely  to  the  British  empire  but  to  human  nature.  We  have  seen,  indeed, 
that  these  were  not  the  views  he  entertained  and  was  governed  by  when  he 
actually  was  the  first  minister  of  Britain.  The  issue  of  the  debate  was,  that 
the  bill  was  rejected  without  even  being  allowed  to  lie  on  the  table  of  the 
house.  1  This  result,  together  with  the  subsequent  conduct  of  the  British 
government,  induced  Franklin  to  think  that  his  farther  tarriance  at  London 
was  not  likely  to  prove  useful  to  his  constituents.  After  a  last  vain  en- 
deavour, in  conjunction  with  Lord  Howe,  with  David  Barclay,  a  Quaker 
and  descendant  of  the  celebrated  Barclay  of  Urie,  and  with  Dr.  Fothergill, 
to  promote  an  adjustment  of  the  differences  between  Britain  and  her  colo- 
nies,^ he  returned,  in  the  spring  of  the  present  year,  to  America,  where  his 

*  The  following  striking  reflections  were  elicited  from  Dr.  Franklin  on  this  occasion  :  — 
"  To  hear  so  many  of  these  hereditary  legislators  declaiming  so  vehemently  against,  not  the 
adopting  merely,  but  even  the  consideration  of  a  proposal  so  important  in  its  nature,  offered  by 
a  person  of  so  weighty  a  character,  one  of  the  first  statesmen  of  the  age,  who  had  taken  up  this 
country  when  in  the  lowest  despondency  and  conducted  it  to  victory  and  glory  through  a  war 
with  two  of  the  mightiest  kitigdoms  in  Europe  ;  to  hear  them  censuring  his  plan,  not  only 
for  their  own  misunderstandings  of  what  was  in  it,  but  for  their  imaginations  of  what  was  not 
in  it,  which  they  would  not  give  themselves  an  opportunity  of  rectifying  by  a  second  reading  ; 
to  perceive  the  total  ignorance  of  the  subject  in  some,  the  prejudice  and  passion  of  others,  and 
the'wilf  il  perversion  of  plain  truth  in  several  of  the  ministers  ;  and  upon  the  whole,  to  see 
it  so  ignominicjoly  rejected  by  so  great  a  majority,  and  so  hastily  too,  in  breach  of  all  decency 
and  prudent  regard  to  the  character  and  dignity  of  their  body,  as  a  third  part  of  the  national 
legislature,  gave  me  an  exceeding  mean  opinion  of  their  abilities,  and  made  their  claim  of 
sovereignty  over  three  millions  of  virtuous,  sensible  people  in  America  seem  the  greatest  of 
absurdities,  since  they  appeared  to  have  scarce  discretion  enough  to  govern  a  herd  of  swine. 
Hereditary  Jevislutors !  thought  I.  There  would  be  more  propriety,  because  less  hazard  of 
mischief,  in  having  (as  in  some  university  of  Germany)  hereditary  professors  of  mathematics !  " 
We  have  seen  the  language  of  Lord  Sandwich  and  the  conduct  of  his  colleagues  copied  with 
much  fidelity  in  1836  by  the  British  peers,  who,  in  seeking  to  vilify  the  liberal  policy  they  op- 
posed by  ascribing  it  to  the  suggestion  of  the  Irish  politician,  OConnell,  established  most  sat- 
isfactorily the  claim  of  that  illustrious  body  to  the  enjoyment  o^  hereditary  wisdom. 

»  It  was  happy  for  Franklin's  credit  with  his  countrymen,  that  the  very  moderate  terms 


CHAP.  IV]  QUlNCy  URGES  RESISTANCE.  50 J 

fellow-citizens  of  Pennsylvania  straightway  elected  him  a  member  of  the 
second  Continental  Congress. 

During  the  latter  part  of  Franklin's  agency  at  the  British  court,  he  had 
enjoyed  the  society  and  zealous  cooperation  of  his  countryman,  Josiah 
Quincy,  Jr.,  who,  thoug;h  hovering  on  the  brink  of  an  early  grave,  yet 
burning  with  unquenchable  patriotism,  was  attracted  to  England  rather  by- 
vast  impetuous  desire  than  by  reasonable  probability  of  serving  the  interest 
of  America.  This  accomphshed  and  most  enthusiastic  man,  who  now  be- 
held Europe  for  the  first  time,  was  struck  with  admiration  amounting  to  as- 
tonishment, but  unmingled  with  dread,  at  the  strength  and  extent  of  Britain's 
military  resources  and  estabhshments.  His  zeal  for  the  extreme  of  Ameri- 
can resistance  and  his  confidence  in  its  efficacy,  so  far  from  being  daunted, 
were  inflamed  by  his  residence  at  London  ;  and  that  sentiment  and  con- 
viction he  labored,  with  more  of  fiery  energy  and  daring  than  of  sound  judg- 
ment and  prudence,  to  impart  to  his  friends  at  Boston,  to  whom  the  state- 
ments and  counsels  conveyed  in  his  letters  were  as  dangerous  and  might 
have  proved  as  pernicious  as  the  opposite  errors  inculcated  by  Hutchinson 
on  the  British  ministers.  Transported  by  generous  but  deluding  passion 
beyond  the  bounds  of  sober  reason,  he  hearkened  too  readily  to  the  ve- 
hement and  indeliberate  language  of  Englishmen  whom  sincere  liberality  or 
mere  party  spirit  induced  to  espouse  the  claims  of  America,  and,  thus  mis- 
led, did  not  hesitate  to  assure  his  countrymen  that  the  only  danger  they  were 
exposed  to  arose  from  the  opinion  entertained  of  them  both  by  friends  and 
foes  in  Europe,  that  they  were  an  abject  and  cowardly  race  of  men  ;  that 
this  injurious  opinion  had  been  recently  confirmed  by  their  forbearance 
(which  he  had  always  blamed)  to  inflict  vengeance  by  their  own  hands  on 
the  person  of  Hutchinson  ;  and  that  they  possessed  a  numerous  and  power- 
ful band  of  friends  in  England,  who  were  only  deterred  from  openly  declar- 
ing themselves  by  distrust  of  American  firmness,  but  who,  if  they  saw  the 
Americans  brave  the  shock  of  but  one  single  encounter  with  the  British 
troops,  would  instantly  wrest  the  helm  of  government  from  the  present  min- 
isters, and  not  only  redress  every  grievance  of  America,  but  even  concede 
her  political  independence.  He  continually  reminded  the  Americans,  that 
no  nation  had  ever  achieved  its  deliverance  from  oppression  and  depend- 
ence by  a  bloodless  contest ;  and  protested  that  now,  when  they  were  united 
together  in  an  extraordinary  degree,  was  the  fit  time  for  attempting  an  inevi- 
table appeal  to  the  sword.  To  all  British  overtures  of  conciliation  he  urgently 
counselled  them  to  answer  that  they  would  treat  only  with  arms  in  their 
hands,  and  not  begin  to  treat  till  Britain  had  retracted  every  measure  they 
complained  of,  and  practically  avowed  their  independence  by  withdrawing 
all  her  land  and  naval  forces  from  America.  The  amiable,  magnanimous, 
and  enlightened,  though  intemperate  author  of  these  rash  counsels  and  sug- 
gestions left  Britain  to  return  to  his  country  about  the  same  time  with  Dr. 
Frankhn,  but  breathed  his  last  just  as  he  came  within  sight  of  the  American 
coast.  His  name,  once  high  in  the  rolls  of  European  chivalry,  is  now  one 
of  the  glories  of  New  England. 

which  he  proposed  were  rejected  by  Britain, —  for  certainly  they  would  not,  at  present,  have 
given  satisfaction  to  America.  In  the  commencement  of  great  and  dangerous  contests,  it  is 
not  uncommon  for  political  leaders  to  make  proffers  of  accommodation  which  they  have  no 
serious  intention,  or  at  least  not  the  power,  to  fulfil,  but  of  which  the  expected  rejection  is 
counted  on  as  affording  a  politic  imputation  against  the  opposite  party.  On  the  very  night  be 
fore  Franklin's  departure  from  London,  Fothergill,  in  a  confidential  billet  to  him,  avowed  hia 
conviction  that  all  the  overtures  of  the  British  cabinet  were  specious,  hollow,  insincere,  and  ut- 
terly unworthy  of  American  attention. 


502  HISTORY  OF   NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

Notwithstanding  the  urgency  of  the  crisis,  some  days  elapsed  before  the 
British  ministers  followed  up  their  triumph  over  Lord  Chatham's  policy 
by  suggesting  any  proposition  of  their  own.  The  system  which  in  the  in- 
terim was  digested  in  the  cabinet  reflected  little  credit  on  the  wisdom  or 
consistency  of  the  counsels  from  which  it  emanated.  A  joint  address  was 
finally  [February  9]  moved  and  voted  from  the  Lords  and  Commons  to  the 
king  ;  returning  thanks  for  the  communication  of  documents  relative  to  the 
state  of  the  British  colonies  in  America  ;  declaring  their  opinion  that  a  rebel- 
lion actually  existed  in  the  province  of  Massachusetts ;  beseeching  the  king 
to  pursue  the  most  effectual  measures  for  assuring  due  obedience  to  the  laws 
and  authority  of  the  supreme  legislature  ;  and  solemnly  pledging  themselves 
with  their  hves  and  fortunes  to  support  his  Majesty  in  the  maintenance  of 
the  just  rights  of  his  crown,  and  of  those  of  the  two  houses  of  parliament, 
against  all  rebellious  attempts  to  infringe  them.  In  the  course  of  the  de- 
bates that  arose  on  this  occasion,  three  noblemen,  who  had  been  members 
of  the  cabinet  by  which,  in  1767,  the  taxation  of  America  was  resumed, 
protested  openly,  and  to  the  amazement  of  the  whole  nation,  that  they  had 
neither  shared  nor  approved  that  measure,  and  that  they  regarded  it  as  the 
cause  of  all  the  actual  and  impending  calamities  of  the  empire. 

On  the  day  after  the  address  was  voted.  Lord  North,  the  prime  minister, 
introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons  a  bill  for  restraining  the  trade  and 
commerce  of  the  provinces  of  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island,  and  Connecticut,  with  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  and  the  British  West 
India  Islands,  and  prohibiting  those  provinces  from  pursuing  any  fishery  on 
the  banks  of  Newfoundland.  He  observed  that  the  penal  acts  of  the  pre- 
ceding year  were  confined  to  Massachusetts  alone ;  but  declared  that  the 
other  New  England  States  had  subsequently  aided  and  abetted  their  offend- 
ing neighbours,  and  were,  besides,  so  near  to  them,  that  the  intentions  of 
parliament  would  be  frustrated,  unless  the  restraints  he  now  proposed  were 
extended  to  the  whole  of  New  England.  This  measure  was  opposed  with 
great  w^armth  of  zeal  and  vigor  of  argument,  as  alike  inhuman  and  impolitic. 
"You  are  provoking  a  rebellion,"  it  was  urged,  "by  one  class  of  stat- 
utes ;  and  then  recruiting  the  rebel  army  by  another."  Many  petitions  were 
presented  from  various  parts  of  Britain  against  the  bill  ;  and  the  English 
Quakers  particularly,  in  an  earnest  remonstrance  against  its  cruelty,  depre- 
cated the  attempt  to  destroy  by  famine  a  body  of  people  whom  they  pro- 
nounced to  be  as  loyal  and  meritorious  as  any  of  the  subjects  of  the  British 
crown.  1  The  most  urgent  petitioners  against  the  measure  were  those  Eng- 
lish merchants  who  had  lent  money  to  American  planters  on  the  security  of 
mortgages  of  their  landed  estates,  and  who  looked  forward  with  equal  alarm 
to  the  independence  and  to  the  impoverishment  of  America.  After  much 
opposition  in  both  houses,  the  bill  was  passed  into  a  law.  [March  30.] 
But  while  it  was  yet  in  dependence,  Lord  North  suddenly  announced,  and 
prevailed  with  the  parliament  to  sanction,  an  overture  which  he  termed  a 
conciliatory  proposition,  by  which  it  was  proclaimed  that  parliament  would 
forbear  to  tax  any  colony  which  should  make  provision  for  contributing  its 
proportion  of  the  expenses  attending  the  common  defence  of  the  empire, 
and  for  the  support  of  civil  government  and  the  administration  of  justice 
within   its   own   confines.      This    was   a  concession    somewhat  vague  and 

'  The  British  fisheries  proving  shortly  after  remarkably  unproductive,  a  great  outcry  was 
raised,  both  in  Britain  and  America,  that  this  was  a  judgment  of  Heaven  on  those  who  at- 
tempted to  bereave  a  whole  people  of  the  gifts  of  nature. 


CHAP.  IV.]  ACTS  RESTRAINING  TRADE.  503 

equivocal  in  its  import ;  for  it  neither  recognized  nor  denied  the  distinction 
between  internal  and  external  or  commercial  taxation.  Yet,  tendered  but 
a  (ew  years  before,  it  might  have  prevented  or  retarded  the  American 
Revolution.  Introduced  as  it  was,  at  this  late  stage  of  the  controversy, 
when  passion  had  controlled  speculation  and  effaced  nice  distinctions,  and 
incorporated  as  it  was  with  a  system  of  increased  rigor  towards  America, 
it  neither  could  nor  was  seriously  intended  to  produce  reconcilement.  In- 
deed, the  minister,  while  he  actually  weakened  the  force  of  his  menaces 
by  this  show  of  hesitation,  was  so  much  afraid  of  seeming  to  yield,  that  he 
rendered  the  present  overture  worse  than  powerless  by  openly  acknowledging 
that  it  was  designed  to  divide  America  and  to  unite  all  domestic  parties  in 
Great  Britain.  This  impolitic  sincerity  was  calculated  to  affront  the  Amer- 
icans, who  needed  not  its  assistance  to  see  clearly  through  so  palpable  a  de- 
vice. The  proposition  was  conveyed  to  the  several  colonial  governors  in 
a  circular  letter  from  Lord  Dartmouth  ;  but  it  was  treated  with  contempt  by 
a  people  too  much  impressed  with  the  expediency  of  union,  and  too  well 
aware  of  the  nature  and  state  of  the  contest  in  which  they  were  embarked, 
to  be  deceived  by  an  overture  that  was  conciliatory  only  in  name. 

Scarcely  had  the  bill  been  passed  for  restraining  the  trade  of  New  Eng- 
land, when  intelligence  was  received  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  Middle  and 
Southern  States  of  America  were  supporting  their  Northern  brethren  in 
every  measure  of  resistance.  This  produced  an  additional  edict  for  ex- 
tending the  restraints  of  the  former  one  to  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
Maryland,  Virginia,  and  South  Carolina.  Whatever  were  the  views  that 
prompted  the  discrimination  thus  exercised  by  the  British  government, 
—  the  exemption  of  New  York,  Delaware,  and  North  CaroHna  from  this 
penal  enactment  was  considered  in  America  as  calculated  to  promote  dis- 
union :  and  the  three  exempted  colonies,  spurning  the  proffered  grace,  vo- 
luntarily declared  their  participation  in  the  restraints  imposed  on  their 
neighbours.  So  mfelicitous  were  the  rulers  of  Britain  in  all  their  measures, 
and  so  little  acquainted  with  the  disposition  and  temper  of  the  people  of 
America.  There  are  seasons,  as  it  has  been  often  and  justly  remarked,  when 
all  circumstances  seem  to  conspire  towards  the  nourishment  and  increase 
of  maladies,  whether  physical  or  political.  At  the  very  time  when  the  par- 
hament  was  enacting  the  restraining  laws,  the  assembly  of  New  York  was 
preparing  a  petition  to  parliament  for  redress  of  grievances  ;  and  it  both 
enraged  and  astonished  those  who  had  recently  vaunted  the  submissive  loy- 
alty and  moderation  of  this  province,  to  find  its  assembly  peremptorily  de- 
clare, "that  exemption  from  internal  taxation,  and  the  exclusive  power 
of  providing  for  their  own  civil  government  and  the  administration  of  justice 
in  the  colony,  are  esteemed  by  them  their  undoubted  and  unalienable 
rights."^     The  body  politic,  composed  of  the  parent  state  and  her  colonial 

^  Jinnnal  Register  for  1775.  GJordon.  Franklins  Memoirs.  Holmes.  Ramsay.  Pitkin, 
duincy's  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.  The  British  government  and  the  American  Tories 
(blinded  by  insolence,  ignorance,  and  rage)  grossly  deceived  each  other,  each  relying  a  great 
deal  too  far  on  the  other's  force  and  activity. 

It  is  likewise  true  that  the  partisans  of  liberty  in  America  were  dangerously  deceived  by  the 
effect  of  the  violence  and  intolerance  exerted  for  the  promotion  of  this  cause  in  several  of 
the  provinces.  A  delusive  appearance  of  unanimity  was  frequently  produced  in  communities 
where  a  strong  minority  were  in  their  hearts  dissenters  from  the  general  will,  and  ready,  on 
the  first  favorable  opportunity,  openly  to  range  themselves  against  the  predominant  domestic 
party  by  whose  violence  they  were  overawed.  Persecution,  whether  exerted  in  religious  or 
in  political  controversy,  naturally  tends  to  the  production  of  no  better  qualities  than  hypocriti- 


504  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

progeny,  was  now  so  gangrened  and  overcharged  with  evil  humors,  that  no 
imaginable  system  of  remedial  policy  could  have  arrested  or  even  consid- 
erably modified  the  headlong  pace  with  which  it  was  advancing  to  dissolu- 
tion ;  and  the  political  physicians  of  Britain  -to  whom  the  treatment  of  the 
case  was  confided  had  in  reahty  no  other  choice  than  to  suffer  that  great 
catastrophe  to  ensue  as  the  natural  issue  of  the  malady,  or  themselves  to 
accomplish  it  by  the  instrumentality  of  hopeless  operation. 

While  the  additional  restraining  act  was  in  progress  through  the  House 
of  Commons,  a  petition  and  memorial,  couched  in  very  strong  terms,  was 
transmitted  by  the  assembly  of  Jamaica  in  defence  of  the  claims  and  conduct 
of  the  Americans.  In  support  of  this  and  of  other  applications  of  a  similar 
tenor,  Glover  (the  author  of  Leonidas) ,  as  agent  for  the  West  India  planters 
and  merchants,  delivered  an  able  and  eloquent  speech  at  the  bar  of  the 
house  ;  but  wisdom  and  wit  were  exerted  in  vain  to  stem  the  swollen  current 
of  regal  ambition  and  national  pride.  A  project  of  conciliating  the  Amer- 
icans by  expressly  conceding  their  right  to  administer  their  own  domestic 
taxation,  proposed  to  the  House  of  Commons  by  Edmund  Burke  and  illus- 
trated by  the  richest  display  of  his  admirable  genius  and  unrivalled  oratory, 
was  rejected  by  a  great  majority  of  voices. 

It  was  an  unfortunate  circumstance  for  the  British  government,  and  a 
strong  reason  for  diseolving  its  colonial  dominion,  that  it  was  disabled  by 
distance  from  adapting  its  measures  to  the  actual  and  immediate  posture 
of  affairs  in  America.  Months  elapsed  between  the  occurrence  of  events 
in  the  colonies,  and  the  arrival  of  the  relative  directions  from  England  ; 
and  every  symptom  of  the  political  exigence  had  frequently  undergone 
a  material  change,  before  the  concerted  prescription,  wise  or  unwise,  was 
applied.  Before  the  recent  proceedings  in  parliament  could  produce  any 
effect  or  were  even  known  in  America,  the  quarrel  had  made  a  fearful  stride  ; 
and  the  odious  rigor  and  despised  pretences  of  conciliation  which  those 
measures  disclosed  were  announced  to  a  people  already  roused  to  fury  by 
the  shock  of  war  and  the  effusion  of  blood. 

The  example  of  Massachusetts  in  preparing  for  defence  was  followed  by 
the  other  provinces  ;  and  warlike  counsels  were  boldly  broached  in  the 
provincial  assemblies  and  congresses.  When  [March  23]  some  members 
of  the  Virginian  assembly  urged  the  postponement  of  these  preparations, 
reminding  their  colleagues  of  the  power  of  Britain  and  the  comparative 
weakness  of  America,  and  insisting  that  it  would  be  time  enough  to  fly 
to  arms  when  every  well-founded  hope  of  peace  had  entirely  vanished,  — 
Patrick  Henry,  with  vehement  and  victorious  eloquence,  contended  that  that 
time  had  already  come.  "  It  is  natural,"  said  he,  "  to  man,  to  indulge  in 
the  illusions  of  hope.  We  are  prone  to  shut  our  eyes  against  a  painful 
truth,  and  listen  to  the  song  of  that  enchantress  till  she  transforms  us  into 

cal  zeal  or  timid  acquiescence.     Seeking  to  make  partisans,  it  makes  enemies  of  those  who 
might  otherwise  have  been  contented  with  a  passive  neutrality. 

The  best  political  estate  (perhaps)  ever  attained  by  any  commonwealth  is  that  wherein  the 
deliberate  will  of  the  majority  has  had  the  fullest  scope.  But,  as  a  better  is  imaginable,  so  I 
hope  it  is  also  attainable.  I  mean  one  in  which  the  power,  however  strong,  of  a  dominant 
majority  respects  and  gives  a  justly  proportioned  scope  to  the  sentiments  (not  directly  hostile  to 
the  general  safety)  of  the  minority  of  the  population.  This  social  consummation  so  devoutly 
desirable  must  be  the  product  of  some  machinery  calculated  to  spread  as  widely  as  possible 
the  light  of  intelligence  and  the  warmth  of  humanity.  There  are  doubtless  times  and  occa- 
sions, when  the  minority  of  the  citizens  have  as  little  right  to  exhibit  practical  dissent  from 
the  will  of  the  majority  as  could  be  claimed  by  the  minority  of  a  ship's  crew  in  relation  to 
the  conduct  of  the  vessel  during  a  storm  or  an  engagement. 


GHAP.  IV.]   ATTEMPTED  SEIZURE  OF  MILITARY  STORES  IN  SALEM.    5Q5 

beasts.  There  is  no  longer  any  room  for  hope.  We  must  fight.  I  repeat 
it,  Sir,  we  must  fight.  An  appeal  to  arms  and  to  the  God  of  Hosts  is  all 
that  is  left  us.  They  tell  us  that  we  are  weak,  and  unable  to  cope  with 
so  formidable  an  adversary.  But  when  shall  we  be  stronger  .'*  Will  it  be 
when  our  supineness  shall  have  enabled  our  enemies  to  bind  us  hand  and 
fpot  ?  Sir,  we  are  not  weak,^  if  we  make  use  of  those  means  which  the 
God  of  nature  has  placed  in  our  power.  Three  millions  of  people  armed 
in  the  holy  cause  of  liberty,  and  in  such  a  country  as  ours,  are  invincible 
by  any  force  which  our  enemy  can  send  against  us.  Nor  shall  we  fight 
our  battles  alone.  That  God  who  presides  over  the  destinies  of  nations 
will  raise  up  friends  to  aid  us.  The  batde  is  not  to  the  strong  alone  ;  but 
to  the  vigilant,  the  active,  the  brave.  Besides,  we  have  no  longer  a  choice. 
Jf  we  were  base  enough  to  desire  it,  it  is  now  too  late  to  retire  from  the 
contest.  There  is  no  retreat  but  in  submission  and  slavery.  Our  chains 
are  forged  ;  their  clanking  may  be  heard  on  the  plains  of  Boston.  The 
war  is  inevitable, —  and  let  it  come  !  Gentlemen  may  cry,  '  Peace  !  Peace  !  ^ 
— but  there  is  no  peace.  The  war  is  actually  begun.  The  next  gale  th^t 
sweeps  from  the  north  will  bring  to  our  ears  tlie  clash  of  resounding  arms." 
These  last  words  proved  prophetic. 

The  Provincial  Congress,  which  had  now  [1775]  superseded  the  Gener^ 
Court  of  Massachusetts,  assembling  in  the  beginning  of  February,  pubhshed 
an  address  acquainting  the  people,  that,  from  the  large  reinforcements  of 
troops  that  were  expected  at  Boston,  the  tenor  of  intelligence  from  Britain, 
and  other  indications,  they  had  reason  to  apprehend  that  the  sudden  destruc- 
tion of  the  colony  was  intended  ;  and  urging  in  the  strongest  terms  the 
militia  in  general,  and  the  minute-men  in  particular,  to  spare  neither  time, 
pains,  nor  expense  to  perfect  themselves  in  military  preparation.  They 
also  passed  resolutions  for  procuring  and  making  firearms  and  bayonets  ; 
and  decreed  an  issue  of  provincial  bills  of  credit  to  the  an)ount  of  fifty 
thousand  pounds.^  The  military  preparations  which  they  recommended 
were  diligently  pursued,  and  artillery  and  provisions  were  collected  at  va- 
rious places.  General  Gage  was  not  an  inattentive  sp^ctatpr  of  these 
proceedings.  Having  learned  that  some  military  stores  belonging  to  the 
colonists  were  deposited  in  Salem,  he  despatched  Colonel  LesHe  from 
Castle  William,  on  the  26th  of  February,  with  one  hundred  and  forty 
soldiers  in  a  transport  to  seize  them.  The  troops,  landing  at  Marblehead, 
proceeded  to  Salem  ;  but  not  finding  there  the  object  of  their  expedition, 
they  advanced  along  the  road  leading  to  Danvers,  whither  the  stores  had 
been  removed,  and  reached  the  drawbridge  laid  across  the  river.  Here  a 
number  of  the  country  people  were  assembled,  and  on  the  opposite  side  the 
American  Colonel  Pickering  had  mustered  thirty  or  forty  armed  men,  and, 
having  drawn  up  the  bridge,  stood  prepared  to  dispute  the  passage  of  the 
river.     Leslie  commanded  them  to  lower  the  bridge ;  but,  as  they  peremp- 

>  "  Thrice  is  he  armed  who  hath  his  quarrel  just,"  exclaimed  Richard  Henry  Lee,  in  his 
speech  on  the  same  occasion.  In  another  citation  from  Shakspeare,  Lee  shortly  after  foretold 
the  final  appeal  to  arms.  On  the  adjournment  of  the  assembly,  while  he  was  taking  leave  of 
two  of  his  colleagues  who  were  standing  with  him  in  the  porch  of  the  capitol,  he  inscribed 
with  a  pencil  these  lines  on  one  of  the  pillars :  — 

"  When  shall  we  three  meet  again  ? 
In  thunder,  lightning,  and  in  rain  ; 
When  the  hurly-burly  's  done. 
When  the  battle  s  lost  and  won." 
*  On  these  bills  of  credit  was  represented  an  American  grasping  a  sword,  and  pointing  to 
the  well  known  words  of  Algernon  Sydney :—  Ense  petit  placiaam  sub  Uhertate  quieUm. 
VOL.    II.  64  QQ 


506  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

torily  refused,  he  was  preparing  to  cross  the  river  in  some  boats  that  were 
moored  to  the  shore,  when  the  people,  who  had  gathered  around  him,  per- 
ceiving his  intention,  sprang  into  the  boats  and  scuttled  them  with  axes. 
The  day  of  this  occurrence  was  a  Sunday  ;  and,  as  most  of  the  neighbour- 
ing inhabitants  were  at  church,  this  circumstance  (as  Gage  was  supposed 
to  have  anticipated)  prevented  the  diffusion  of  alarm  and  diminished  the 
concourse  of  armed  Americans.  A  conflict,  nevertheless,  was  on  the  point 
of  ensuing,  when  it  was  averted  by  the  prudent  interposition  of  Barnard, 
one  of  the  Congregational  ministers  of  Salem,  who,  finding  Leslie  deter- 
mined to  cross  the  river,  but  willing,  if  this  point  were  yielded,  to  content 
himself  with  marching  thirty  paces  beyond  it  and  then  return  without  at- 
tempting farther  progress,  prevailed  with  his  countrymen  to  indulge  the 
British  with  this  empty  triumph,  which,  indeed,  could  have  been  pushed 
no  farther,  as  the  stores  were  already  removed,  during  the  delay  that  had 
been  created.  At  length  the  bridge  was  lowered  ;  and  Pickering  with 
his  men,  still  facing  the  British  troops,  retired  to  the  line  they  had  measured 
and  marked.  Leslie  and  his  soldiers,  after  advancing  to  the  stipulated 
point,  returned  and  embarked  for  Boston.  Thus  ended  the  first  military 
enterprise  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  —  without  effect  and  without  blood- 
shed ;  but  not  without  additionally  kindling  the  spirit,  the  vigilance,  and  the 
jealousy  of  the  Americans,  and  inflaming  the  bitter  animosity  progressively 
created  between  them  and  the  British  soldiery.  They  declared  that  Gage 
and  his  troops  (doubtless  encouraged  by  secret  orders  from  Britain)  had 
treated  them  as  rebels,  before  the  British  government  itself  dared  to  affix 
this  stigma  upon  them  ;  and  that  the  previous  seizures  of  arms  on  their 
own  part  in  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode  Island  were  merely  retaliatory 
measures  and  defensive  preparations.  In  such  circumstances,  an  expedition 
as  harmless  as  the  last  was  not  likely  again  to  occur ;  and  it  needed  less 
the  sagacity  of  Patrick  Henry  to  foresee,  than  his  spirit  and  intrepidity  firmly 
to  contemplate,  the  more  serious  trial  which  the  resolution  of  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  was  soon  to  undergo. 

A  magazine  of  military  stores  had  been  collected  with  silent  but  laborious 
assiduity  at  the  inland  town  of  Concord,  about  sixteen  miles  from  Boston, 
when  Gage,  apprized  of  this  circumstance,  resolved  to  destroy  the  hostile 
apparatus.  For  this  service  he  detached  at  night  [April  18]  Colonel  Smith 
and  Major  Pitcairn,  who,  at  the  head  of  eight  hundred  grenadiers  and  light- 
infantry,  commenced  a  secret  and  expeditious  march  for  Concord.  Al- 
though several  British  officers,  who  dined  at  Cambridge  on  the  preceding 
day,  had  taken  the  precaution  to  post  themselves  at  various  points  on  the 
road  leading  to  Concord,  in  order  to  intercept  any  expresses  that  might  be 
sent  from  Boston  to  alarm  the  country,  yet  sundry  messengers,  despatched 
for  this  very  purpose,  contrived  to  elude  their  vigilance  and  communicated 
an  alarm,  which  was  rapidly  spread  by  church-bells,  signal  guns,  and  volleys 
of  small  arms.  Reuben  Brown,  a  citizen  of  Concord,  actually  rode  a 
hundred  miles  in  the  space  of  twenty-four  hours  in  order  to  disseminate 
the  intelligence.  The  British  troops,  arriving  at  Lexington  on  the  following 
morning  at  five  o'clock,  found  about  seventy  of  the  minute-men  of  that 
town  assembled  in  arms  on  the  parade.  [April  19.]  Major  Pitcairn,  who 
commanded  the  British  van,  approaching  the  Americans,  exclaimed,  — 
'^Disperse,  you  rebels  ;  throw  down  your  arms  and  disperse  !  "  This  or- 
der, which   they  refused  to  obey,  was  followed  by  a  discharge  from  the 


CHAP.  IV.]  AFFAIR  OF  LEXINGTON.  5Q7 

British  troops,  whose  fire,  huzza,  and  rapid  advance  compelled  the  scanty- 
band  of  their  adversaries  to  an  instant  flight.  The  fire  continued  after  the 
dispersion,  whereupon  the  fugitives  stopped,  rallied,  and  returned  it.  Eight 
Americans  were  killed  and  several  were  wounded  in  this  affray.  The  Brit- 
ish detachment  now  pressed  forward  to  Concord.  Here  the  inhabitants, 
roused  by  the  signals  of  alarm,  were  drawn  up  in  order  of  defence  ;  but 
observing  the  number  of  the  regulars  to  be  more  than  they  could  prudently 
encounter,  they  retired  across  the  north  bridge  to  some  distance  from  the 
town,  and  waited  for  reinforcements.  A  party  of  British  light-infantry  fol- 
lowed them  and  took  possession  of  the  bridge,  while  the  main  body  of  the 
troops  entered  the  town  and  hastened  to  execute  their  commission.  They 
had  leisure  to  spike  two  cannons,  and  to  cast  into  the  river  five  hundred 
pounds  of  ball  and  sixty  barrels  of  flour  ;  and  this  paltry  result  was  all 
the  advantage  derived  from  a  violent  and  sanguinary  enterprise  that  was  to 
kindle  the  flames  of  war  between  two  nations.  Meanwhile  the  provincial 
militia  were  reinforced  ;  and  Major  Buttrick,  of  Concord,  assuming  the 
dhection  of  them,  advanced  towards  the  bridge.  Unaware  of  the  occur- 
rence at  Lexington,  and  anxious  that  the  Americans  should  not  be  the  ag- 
gressors, he  commanded  his  followers  to  refrain  from  giving  the  first  fire  ; 
and  this  mandate,  so  difficult  to  agitated  and  undisciplined  men,  he  enforced 
by  the  example  of  his  own  lively  yet  calm  and  collected  courage.  As  he 
advanced,  the  British  detachment  which  occupied  the  bridge  retired  to  the 
Concord  side  of  the  river  ;  and  on  his  nearer  approach,  they  fired  and 
killed  a  captain  and  one  of  the  privates  of  the  American  militia.  The 
Americans  instantly  returned  the  fire  ;  a  skirmish  ensued,  and  the  reg- 
ulars were  forced  to  give  ground  with  some  loss.  They  were  soon  joined 
by  their  main  body  ;  and  the  whole  force  commenced  a  precipitate  retreat. 
All  the  inhabitants  of  the  adjoining  country  w^ere  by  this  time  in  arms  ; 
and  they  attacked  the  retreating  troops  in  every  direction,  —  some  press- 
ing on  their  rear,  and  some  firing  upon  them  from  behind  stone  walls  and 
other  coverts.  Thus  harassed  during  a  retreat  of  six  miles,  the  British 
reentered  Lexington,  where,  most  opportunely  for  them,  they  were  joined 
by  Lord  Percy,  who  arrived  with  a  detachment  of  nine  hundred  men  and 
two  pieces  of  cannon.  After  halting  two  hours  at  Lexington,  the  troops, 
now  amounting  in  number  to  about  seventeen  hundred,  resumed  their  march  ; 
and  the  Americans,  instantly  renewing  their  attacks,  continued  to  pour  an 
irregular  but  galling  fire  upon  the  enemy's  front,  flanks,  and  rear.  The 
close  discharge  of  musketry  by  expert  marksmen  exposed  the  troops  to 
considerable  danger,  and  produced  a  good  deal  of  confusion  ;  but  though 
unable  to  repel  or  even  effectually  retort  the  assaults  they  sustained  from 
every  quarter,  the  British  kept  up  a  brisk  retreating  fire  on  their  assail- 
ants.^ A  Httle  after  sunset  they  reached  Bunker's  Hill,  where,  exhausted 
with  the  labors  of  this  disastrous  day,  they  remained  during  the  night, 
shielded  from  farther  attack  by  the  guns  of  the  Somerset  man-of-war,  and 
next  morning  reentered  Boston.  Of  the  Americans  engaged  in  this  affair, 
fifty  were  killed,  and  thirty-four  wounded.  Of  the  British,  sixty-five  were 
killed,  one  hundred  and  eighty  wounded,  and  twenty-eight  made  prisoners. 
To  their  wounded  prisoners  the  Americans  behaved  with  the  utmost  ten- 

'  Lord  Percy,  as  he  marched  through  the  country  in  the  morning,  with  taunting  derision 
of  the  Americans,  caused  his  band  to  play  that  beautiful  air  to  which  the  ridiculous  name  of 
Vankee- Doodle  has  been  given.  But  as  he  returned  in  the  afternoon,  the  Americans,  with 
sharper  scoff,  called  out  to  him  that  he  should  now  make  the  band  play  Chevy-Chase. 


50^  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AJVIERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

derness  and  humanity,  and  they  apprized  Gage  that  he  was  at  liberty  to 
send  the  surgeons  of  his  own  army  to  minister  to  them. 

The  Provincial  Congress  of  Massachusetts,  being  at  this  time  asseriibled, 
promptly  despatched  to  England  an  account  of  the  conflict  that  had  taken 
place,  with  depositions  intended  to  prove  that  the  British  were  the  aggressors. 
They  also  transmitted  an  address  to  the  inhabitants  of  Britain,  in  which  pro- 
fessions of  loyalty  to  the  king  were  united  with  assurances  of  a  determination 
not  tamely  to  submit  to  the  persecution  and  tyranny  of  his  evil  ministers. 
Appealing  to  Heaven  (they  warmly  protested)  for  the  justite  of  our  cause, 
we  determine  to  die  or  be  free. 

As  the  controversy  between  Britain  and  her  colonies  was  to  be  finally  de- 
cided by  an  appeal  to  arms,  it  was  a  circumstance  of  great  moment  to  the 
American  cause,  that  the  first  bloodshed  by  which  this  dire  prospect  was 
illustrated  occurred  in  New  England, — where  the  people  were  so  much 
connected  with  each  other  by  consanguinity  and  by  similarity  of  manners^ 
condition,  and  of  religious  and  political  sentiments,  that  the  slaughter  of 
a  single  individual  was  resented  with  wide-spread  concern  and  indignation. 

The  affair  of  Lexington  proved  accordingly  the  signal  of  war.  When 
the  tidings  reached  Connecticut,  the  young  men  of  this  province,  burning 
with  rage  and  valor,  flew  to  arms,  and  desired  to  be  conducted  to  the  as- 
sistance of  Massachusetts  ;  and  aged  parents,  sharing  the  zeal  of  their  sons, 
charged  them  to  behave  like  men  or  never  to  return.  Israel  Putnam,  one 
of  the  most  intrepid  of  mankind,  and  the  most  experienced  and  respected 
officer  in  Connecticut,  received  the  intelligence  as  he  was  ploughing  the 
fields  which  he  had  often  before  defended  against  French  and  Indian  foes. 
It  was  the  sentiment  of  all  who  ever  witnessed  the  achievements  or  par- 
took the  campaigns  of  this  gallant  veteran,  that  Putnam  dared  to  lead  where 
any  dared  to  follow.  He  instantly  unyoked  his  team  ;  and,  with  that 
prompt  but  inflexible  determination  which  invariably  characterized  his  life 
and  conduct,  cast  all  private  cares  and  concernments  behind  him,  and 
marched  at  the  head  of  a  numerous  body  of  his  countrymen  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Boston.  Thither  also  promptly  repaired  three  regiments  fur- 
nished by  New  Hampshire,  one  of  which  was  commanded  by  John  Stark, 
a  native  of  this  province,  who  afterwards  attained  the  rank  of  general  in 
the  American  army,  and  achieved  a  high  reputation  in  the  Revolutionary 
War.  There  was  now  assembled  an  insurgent  force  of  twenty  thousand 
men,  who  formed  a  hne  of  encampment  from  Roxbury  to  the  river  Mystic, 
and  kept  the  British  troops  blockaded  within  the  peninsula  of  Boston.  A 
kindred  spirit  of  courageous  preparation  broke  forth  in  others  of  the 
American  States.  Troops  were  raised,  and  funds  provided  for  their  sup- 
port ;  the  public  mohisy  in  the  provincial  treasuries  was  seized  ;  and  forts, 
magazines,  and  arSfenals  were  secured  by  the  provincial  militia.  At  New 
York,  the  precarious  ascendency  which  the  Tories  had  been  able  to  obtain 
was  instantly  and  entirely  swept  away  by  the  flow  of  popular  spirit  and 
sympathy  provoked  by  the  Lexington  conflict ;  and  the  public  voice  of  the 
province  now  proclaimed  the  determination  of  its  people  to  espouse  the 
quarrel  and  share  the  fate  of  their  American  countrymen.  Shortly  after 
that  conflict,  a  numerous  body  of  the  citizens  of  Baltimore  enrolled  them- 
selves voluntarily  in  the  x4merican  army  before  Boston,  and,  to  prevent 
the  minds  of  the  people  from  being  relaxed  or  dissipated,  the  provisional 
government  of  Maryland  prohibited  assemblages  lor  fairs,  cock-fighting,  and 


d^At.  tV.]    CAPTURE  OP  tiCONDEROGA  AND  CROWN  POINT.  599 

horsei-raclng.  Thefy  exerted,  at  the  same  time,  the  most  honorable  and  gen- 
erous efforts  to  protect  from  popular  rage  persons  known  or  supposed  to  be 
disaffected  to  the  American  cause.  General  Gage,  meanwhile,  cooped  up 
in  Bostdri,  expecting  an  attack  from  the  provincial  troops  by  which  he 
was  begirt,  and  dreading  the  cooperation  they  might  receive  from  their 
friends  in  the  city,  offered  to  all  persons  who  might  desire  it  a  free  egress 
from  Boston,  on  condition  of  an  entire  surrender  of  their  arms.  Though 
the  condition  was  fulfilled,  many  of  the  citizens  and  their  families  who  de- 
sired to  quit  the  place  were  detained  by  Gage,  who  pretended  that  some 
arms  were  still  concealed,  and  who  in  reality  was  overawed  by  the  vehe- 
mence with  which  the  American  Tories  protested  against  the  surrender  of 
hostages,  whose  presence  alone,  they  believed,  restrained  the  besiegers 
from  setting  fire  to  the  town. 

It  was  readily  perceived  by  all  who  now  reckoned  war  inevitable,  that 
the  possession  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point  would  confer  an  important 
advantage  on  America,  and,  indeed,  was  indispensable  to  her  security. 
Struck  with  this  consideration,  some  of  the  principal  inhabitants  of  Con- 
necticut conceived  the  bold  design  of  seizing  those  fortresses  by  surprise. 
About  forty  volunteers  (of  whom  the  most  notable  was  David  Wooster, 
afterwards  a  distinguished  general  in  the  American  service)  repaired  ac- 
cordingly from  Connecticut  to  Bennington,  in  the  territory  of  Vermont, 
where  the  projectors  of  the  expedition  had  arranged  to  meet  Colonel 
Ethan  Allen,  a  man  of  singularly  daring  spirit,  and  possessed  of  great  in- 
fluence in  that  district, ^  whom  they  intended  to  engage  to  conduct  the 
enterprise,  as  well  as  to  raise  among  the  hardy  mountaineers  around  him 
the  necessary  complement  of  force  for  its  execution.  Allen,  readily  en- 
tering into  their  views,  met  them  with  two  hundred  and  thirty  men  at 
Castleton,  where  they  were  unexpectedly  joined  by  Colonel  Benedict 
Arnold,  a  bold  and  active  American  officer,  who,  having  conceived  the 
same  project,  was  admitted  to  act  as  an  auxiliary  to  Allen,  with  whom  the 
chief  command  remained.  Proceeding  on  their  adventurous  expedition, 
Allen  and  his  followers  arrived  in  the  night  of  the  9th  of  May  on  the  banks 
of  Lake  Champlain  opposite  to  Ticonderoga.  Embarking  in  boats,  which 
were  procured  with  some  difficulty,  Allen  and  Arnold  crossed  the  lake  with 
eighty-three  of  their  men,  and  accomplished  a  landing  near  the  fortress 
without  being  discovered.  The  two  colonels,  after  contending  who  should 
enter  first,  advanced  together  abreast,  and  made  their  way  into  the  fort 
at  the  dawn  of  day.  [May  10.]  All  the  garrison  were  buried  in  sleep, 
except  a  sentry,  who  attempted  to  fire  upon  the  party  ;  but  his  piece  mis- 
sing fire,  he  retreated  through  the  covered  way  to  the  parade.  The 
Americans  rushed  after  him,  and,  having  formed  themselves  in  a  hollow 
square,  gave  three  huzzas  which  instantly  aroused  the  garrison.  A  slight 
and  brief  skirmish  with  cutlasses  or  bayonets  ensued.  De  la  Place,  the 
commander,  was  reqi^red  to  surrender  the  fort.  "  By  what  authority  ?  " 
he  asked,  with  no  unreasonable  surprise.  "  I  demand  it,"  replied  Allen, 
"in  the  name  of  the  great  Jehovah,  and  of  the  Continental  Congress." 
This  extraordinary  summons  was  instantly  obeyed  ;  and  the  fort,  with  its 
valuable  stores  and  forty-nine  soldiers,  was  surrendered  without  farther  re- 

^  He  was  formerly  outlawed  by  the  government  of  New  York  (see  Appendix  III.,  ante)  for 
encouraging  the  people  of  Vermont  to  resist  its  claim  of  jurisdiction  over  them  ;  but,  eluding  the 
doom  denounced  on  hitn  by  his  enemies  (like  Aicibiades),  he  made  them  painfully  sensible 
that  he  was  still  alive. 

QQ* 


510  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

sistance.  Colonel  Seth  Warner  was  then  despatched  with  a  party  of 
men  to  Crown  Point,  and  he  easily  succeeded  in  gaining  possession  of  this 
place,  in  which  a  sergeant  and  twelve  privates  formed  the  whole  of  the 
garrison.  The  important  pass  of  Skenesborough  was  surprised  and  occu- 
pied at  the  same  time  by  a  detachment  of  volunteers  from  Connecticut  ; 
and  here  a  number  of  soldiers  and  several  pieces  of  cannon  were  taken. 
A  British  sloop  of  war,  lying  off  St.  John's,  at  the  northern  extremity 
of  Lake  Champlain,  was  boarded  and  captured  by  Arnold, — who  com- 
menced in  this  manner  a  career  of  brilliant  but  short-lived  glory,  too  soon 
clouded  by  private  vice,  vanity,  and  prodigality,  and  finally  tarnished  by 
public  treachery  and  dishonor.  And  thus  the  Americans,  without  the  loss 
of  a  single  man,  acquired  by  a  bold  and  decisive  stroke  two  important  posts, 
a  great  quantity  of  artillery  and  ammunition,  and  the  command  of  Lake 
George  and  Lake  Champlain.  The  Continental  Congress  learned  this 
enterprise  with  mingled  sentiments  of  exultation  and  anxiety.  Dreading  the 
appearance  of  aggression  in  widening  the  breach  between  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica, they  recommended  to  the  provincial  committees  of  New  York  and 
Albany  to  cause  the  artillery  and  stores  to  be  removed  from  Ticonderoga 
to  the  south  end  of  Lake  George,  and  to  make  an  exact  inventory  of  them, 
"  in  order  that  they  may  be  safely  returned,  when  the  restoration  of  the  for- 
mer harmony  between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  so  ardently  wished 
for  on  our  part,  shall  render  it  prudent  and  consistent  with  the  overruhng 
law  of  self-preservation."^ 

The  councils  of  New  England  were  as  vigorous  as  her  military  opera- 
tions. On  the  5th  of  May,  the  Provincial  Congress  of  Massachusetts  pub- 
lished a  resolution  importing  "  that  General  Gage  has,  by  his  late  transac- 
tions, utterly  disqualified  himself  from  serving  this  colony,  either  as  its  gov- 
ernor, or  in  any  other  capacity  ;  and  that,  therefore,  no  obedience  is  in  fu- 
ture due  to  him  ;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  ought  to  be  considered  and 
guarded  against  as  an  unnatural  and  inveterate  enemy  to  the  country."  From 
this  period  the  authority  of  Gage  in  Massachusetts  reposed  on  the  bayonets  * 
of  his  soldiers,  and  was  confined  within  the  limits  of  the  lOwn  they  occupied. 
But  in  the  close  of  the  same  month  his  prospects  seemed  to  brighten  ;  and 
his  force  at  least  gained  an  increase  from  the  arrival  at  Boston  of  a  con- 
siderable accession  to  his  troops  from  Britain,  along  with  the  Generals 
Howe,  Burgoyne,  and  Clinton,  all  of  whom  had  acquired  high  military 
reputation  in  the  last  war.  Gage,  thus  reinforced,  prepared  to  act  with  more 
vigor  and  decision  than  he  had  latterly  displayed.  He  began  by  issuing  a 
proclamation,  which  ofl^ered,  in  the  king's  name,  a  free  pardon  to  all  the 
American  insurgents  who  should  forthwith  lay  down  their  arms,  and  return 
to  the  habits  and  duties  of  peaceable  subjects,  "  excepting  only  from  the 
benefit  of  such  pardon  Samuel  Adams  ^  and  John  Hancock, — whose  of- 
fences," it  was  added,  "  are  of  too  flagitious  a  nature  to  admit  of  any  other 
consideration  than  that  of  condign  punishment  "  ;  and  announced  the  do- 
minion of  martial  law  in  Massachusetts,  "  as  long  as  t^e  present  unhappy  oc- 
casion shall  require."     And  thus,  as  Edmund  Burke  remarked,  the  British 

^  Wirt.  Annual  Register  for  Vllb.  Gordon.  Rogers.  Eliot.  Bradford.  Holmes.  Pit- 
kin.    Dwight.     Ramsay.     Griffiths. 

^  Gage  some  time  before  had  privately  signified  to  Adams  that  a  high  reward  would  be  con- 
ferred on  him,  if  he  would  desert  the  American  cause  and  "make  his  peace  with  the  king." 
Adams  thus  answered  :  —  "I  trust  I  have  long  since  made  my  peace  with  the  King  of  kings. 
No  personal  consideration  shall  induce  me  to  abandon  the  righteous  cause  of  my  country." 
Rogers. 


CHAP.  IV.]  BATTLE  OF  BUNKER'S  HILL.  51] 

commander  offered  mercy  to  those  who  were  openly  in  arms  and  actually 
besieging  him  in  his  station,  while  he  excluded  from  mercy  two  men  who 
were  five  hundred  miles  from  him  and  actually  at  the  time  (as  members  of 
the  second  congress)  sitting  in  an  assembly  which  had  never  by  statute  been 
declared  illegal.  To  signahze  Adams  and  Hancock  in  this  manner  was  to 
employ  the  only  means  within  his  competence  of  endearing  these  men  and 
their  principles  to  the  Americans,  whom  the  proclamation,  instead  of  intimi- 
dating or  dividing,  served  but  additionally  to  unite  and  embolden. 

From  the  movements  visible  among  the  British  troops,  and  their  apparent 
preparations  for  some  active  enterprise,  the  Americans  were  led  to  believe 
that  Gage  designed  to  issue  from  Boston  and  penetrate  into  the  interior  of 
Massachusetts  ;  whereupon,  with  a  view  to  anticipate  or  derange  the  sup- 
posed project  of  attack,  the  Provincial  Congress  suggested  to  Putnam  and 
Thomas,  who  held  the  chief  command  in  the  army  which  blockaded  Bos- 
ton, that  measures  should  be  taken  for  the  defence  of  Dorchester  Neck, 
and  that  a  part  of  the  American  force  should  occupy  an  intrenched  position 
on  Bunker's  Hill,  which  ascends  from  and  commands  the  entrance  of  the 
peninsula  of  Charlestown.  Orders  were  accordingly  communicated  to 
Colonel  Prescott,  with  a  detachment  of  a  thousand  men,  to  take  possession 
of  that  eminence  ;  but,  through  some  misapprehension.  Breed's  Hill,  instead 
of  Bunker's  Hill,  was  made  the  site  of  the  projected  intrenchment.  By 
his  conduct  of  this  perilous  enterprise,  and  the  heroic  valor  he  displayed  in 
the  conflict  that  ensued,  Prescott  honorably  signahzed  a  name  which  his 
descendants  have  farther  adorned  with  the  highest  trophies  of  forensic  and 
literary  renown.  About  nine  o'clock  of  the  evening  [June  16],  the  de- 
tachment moved  from  Cambridge,  and,  silently  traversing  Charlestown  Neck, 
gained  the  summit  of  Breed's  Hill  unobserved.  This  eminence  is  situated 
at  the  extremity  of  the  peninsula  nearest  to  Boston  ;  and  is  so  elevated  as  to 
overlook  every  part  of  that  town,  and  so  near  it  as  to  be  within  the  reach  of 
cannon-shot.  The  American  troops,  who  were  provided  with  intrenching 
tools,  instantly  commenced  their  work,  which  they  pursued  with  such  dili- 
gence, that,  before  the  morning  arrived,  they  had  thrown  up  a  redoubt  of 
considerable  dimensions,  and  with  such  deep  silence,  that,  although  the  pen- 
insula was  nearly  surrounded  by  British  ships  of  war  and  transports,  their 
operations  were  only  first  disclosed  to  the  astonished  army  of  Britain  by 
the  dispersion  of  the  nocturnal  darkness  under  whose  shade  they  had  been 
conducted.  At  break  of  day  [June  17],  the  alarm  was  communicated  at 
Boston  by  a  cannonade  which  the  Lively  sloop  of  war  promptly  directed 
against  the  intrenchments  and  embatded  array  of  the  Americans.  A  battery 
of  six  guns  was  soon  after  opened  upon  them  from  Copp's  Hill,  at  the 
north  end  of  Boston.  Under  an  incessant  shower  of  bullets  and  bombs,  the 
Americans  firmly  and  indefatigably  persevered  in  their  labor,  until  they 
completed  a  small  breastwork,  extending  from  the  east  side  of  the  redoubt 
to  the  bottom  of  the  hill,  towards  the  river  Mystic.  We  have  remarked  the 
mistake  that  occasioned  a  departure  from  the  original  plan  of  the  American 
enterprise,  and  led  to  the  assumption  of  Breed's  Hill  instead  of  the  other  em- 
inence which  it  was  first  proposed  to  occupy.  By  a  corresponding  mis- 
take, the  memorable  engagement  which  ensued  has  received  the  name  of 
The  Battle  of  Bunker'' s  Hill^  —  a  name  which  only  vanity  or  pedantry  can 
now  hope  or  desire  to  divest  of  its  long-retained  celebrity,  and  its  animating 
influence  on  the  minds  of  men.     It   would  be  wiser,  perhaps,  to  change 


512  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI 

the  name  of  an  insignificant  hill  ihan  of  a  glorious  battle  in  which  the  prize 
contested  was  the  freedom  of  North  America. 

Gage,  perceiving  the  necessity  of  dislodging  the  Americans  from  the 
position  they  had  so  suddenly  and  daringly  assumed,  detached  about  noon 
on  this  service  the  Generals  Howe  and  Pigot,  with  ten  companies  of  gren- 
adiers, ten  of  light-infantry,  and  a  suitable  proportion  of  field-artillery.  These 
troops,  crossing  the  narrow  bay  interjected  between  Boston  and  the  Amer- 
ican position,  landed  at  Moreton's  Point,  and  immediately  formed  in  order 
of  batde  ;  but  perceiving  that  the  Americans,  undaunted  by  this  demonstra- 
tion, and  with  spirit  erected  to  the  utmost  height,  firmly  waited  the  attack, 
they  refrained  from  advancing  till  the  arrival  of  a  reinforcement  from  Boston. 
Meanwhile  the  Americans  were  also  reinforced  by  a  body  of  their  country- 
men, commanded  by  the  Generals  Warren  and  Pomroy  ;  and  the  troops 
on  the  open  ground,  tearing  up  some  adjoining  post  and  rail  fences,  and  fix- 
ing the  stakes  in  two  parallel  lines  before  them,  filled  up  the  space  between 
with  new-mown  grass,  and  formed  for  themselves  a  cover  from  the  musketry 
of  the  enemy.  Collecting  all  their  courage,  and  undepressed  by  the  ad- 
vantage which  their  adversaries  derived  from  the  audacity  of  assault,  they 
stood  prepared  for  an  effort  which  should  yield  their  countrymen,  if  not  vic- 
torious liberty,  at  least  a  memorable  example  of  what  the  brave  and  the  free 
can  do  to  achieve  it. 

The  British  troops,  strengthened  now  by  the  arrival  of  the  second  de- 
tachment, and  formed  in  two  lines,  moved  forward  to  the  conflict,  having 
the  light-infantry  on  the  right  wing  commanded  by  General  Howe,  and  the 
grenadiers  on  the  left  conducted  by  General  Pigot  ;  the  former  to  attack  the 
American  lines  in  flank,  and  the  latter  the  redoubt  in  front.  The  attack 
was  begun  by  a  heavy  discharge  of  field-pieces  and  howitzers  ;  the  troops 
advancing  slowly,  and  halting  at  short  intervals  to  allow  time  for  the  artil- 
lery to  produce  effect  on  the  works  and  on  the  spirits  of  their  defenders. 
During  their  advance,  General  Gage,  who  surveyed  the  field  of  battle  from 
Copp's  Hill,  caused  the  battery  at  this  place  to  bombard  and  set  fire  to 
the  village  of  Charlestown,  situated  beneath  the  position  of  the  Americans, 
whom,  from  the  direction  of  the  wind,  he  expected  to  annoy  by  the  confla- 
gration. Charlestown,  one  of  the  earliest  setdements  of  the  Puritans  in 
New  England,  a  handsome  and  flourishing  village,  containing  about  four  hun- 
dred houses,  built  chiefly  of  wood,  was  quickly  enveloped  in  a  blaze  of  de- 
struction ;  but  a  sudden  change  of  the  wind,  occurring  at  this  crisis,  carried 
the  smoke  to  a  quarter  which  neither  sheltered  the  approach  of  the  British 
nor  occasioned  inconvenience  to  the  Americans.  The  conflagration  added  a 
horrid  grandeur  to  the  interesting  scene  that  was  now  unfolding  to  the  eyes 
of  a  countless  multitude  of  spectators,  who,  thronging  all  the  heights  of 
Boston  and  its  neighbourhood,  awaited,  with  throbbing  hearts,  the  approach- 
ing battle.  The  American  troops,  having  permitted  Howe's  division  to  ap- 
proach unmolested  within  a  very  short  distance  of  their  works,  then  poured 
in  upon  them  such  a  deadly  and  confounding  fire  of  small  arms,  that  the 
British  line  was  broken  in  an  instant,  and  fell  precipitately  back  in  headlong 
rout  towards  the  landing-place.  This  disorder  was  repaired  by  the  vigor- 
ous exertions  of  the  officers,  who  again  brought  up  the  repulsed  troops  to 
the  attack  ;  but  the  Americans,  renewing  their  fire  with  a  precision  of  aim 
derived  from  their  habits  of  life,  and  unexampled,  perhaps,  in  the  conduct 
of  any  former  battle  fought  since  the  invention  of  gunpowder,  again  spread 


CHAP.  IV.]  BATTLE   OF  BUNKER'S  HILL.  513 

such  carnage  through  the  hostile  ranks,  that  the  British  were  a  second  time 
driven  back  in  complete  confusion.  At  this  critical  juncture,  General 
Clinton,  arriving  upon  the  field  from  Boston,  aided  the  efforts  of  Howe  and 
the  other  officers  in  rallying  the  disheartened  troops,  who  with  some  difficul- 
ty were  a  third  time  led  on  to  the  charge.  The  Americans  had  been  but 
scantily  supplied  with  cartridges,  partly  from  an  overstrained  attention  to 
economy  in  the  consumption  of  an  article  urgently  needed  and  sparingly 
possessed  by  their  countrymen,  and  partly  in  deference  to  the  counsels  of 
some  old  provincial  officers,  whose  ideas  of  battle  were  derived  from  their 
experience  in  hunting,  and  in  the  system  (very  similar  to  that  employment) 
of  Indian  warfare,  and  who  insisted,  that,  as  every  shot  ought  to  kill  a  man, 
so  to  give  the  troops  any  more  ammunition  than  was  absolutely  necessary 
to  inflict  on  the  enemy  a  loss  that  would  be  tantamount  to  defeat  was  to 
tempt  them  to  neglect  accuracy  of  aim  and  throw  their  fire  away.  To  the 
discredit  of  this  counsel,  the  powder  of  the  Americans  now  began  to  fail, 
and  consequently  their  fire  to  slacken.  The  British  at  the  same  time  brought 
some  of  their  cannons  to  bear  upon  the  position  of  the  Americans,  and  raked 
the  inside  of  the  breastwork  from  end  to  end  ;  the  fire  from  the  ships, 
batteries ,  and  field-artillery  was  redoubled;  and  the  redoubt,  attacked  on 
three  sides  at  once  with  impetuous  valor,  was  carried  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet.  Yet  so  desperate  was  the  resistance  of  its  defenders,  that,  even 
after  their  officers  had  commanded  a  retreat,  they  continued  to  fight  till 
the  redoubt  was  half  filled  with  the  assailants. 

During  these  operations,  Pigot's  division  was  attempting  to  force  the  left 
point  of  the  breastwork,  preparatory  to  an  attack  on  the  flank  of  the  Amer- 
ican line  ;  but  while  his  troops  advanced  with  signal  intrepidity,  they  were 
received  with  unyielding  firmness  and  determination.  The  Americans  in  this 
quarter,  as  well  as  at  the  redoubt,  reserved  their  fire  until  the  near  approach 
of  the  enemy,  and  then  poured  in  their  shot  with  such  well-directed  aim  as 
to  mow  down  the  advancing  troops  in  whole  ranks  at  every  volley.  But 
no  sooner  was  the  redoubt  lost,  than  the  breastwork  also  was  necessarily 
abandoned.  And  now  the  Americans,  beaten,  but  unsubdued,  had  to  per- 
form their  retreat  over  Charlestown  Neck,  which  was  completely  raked  by 
the  guns  of  the  Glasgow  man-of-war  and  of  two  floating  batteries  ;  but, 
great  as  was  the  apparent  danger,  the  retreat  was  accomplished  with  incon- 
siderable loss.  The  British  troops  were  too  much  exhausted,  and  had  suf- 
fered too  severely,  to  improve  their  dear-bought  victory  by  more  than  a 
mere  show  of  pursuit.  They  had  brought  into  action  about  three  thousand 
men,  and  their  killed  and  wounded  amounted  to  one  thousand  and  fifty-four. 
The  number  of  Americans  engaged  was  fifteen  hundred,  and  their  killed, 
wounded,  and  missing  amounted  to  four  hundred  and  fifty-three.  They  lost 
some  gallant  officers,  of  whom  the  most  generally  known  and  lamented  was 
Joseph  Warren,  a  young  physician  of  Boston,^  lately  promoted  to  the  rank 
of  general  in  the  American  army,  and  who,  having  ably  and  successfully 
animated  his  countrymen  to  resist  the  power  of  Britain,  now  gallantly  fell  in 
the  first  battle  that  their  resistance  produced.^  And  thus  ended  a  day  that 
showed  too  late  to  the  infatuated  politicians  of  Britain  how  greatly  they 

*  "  No  part  of  the  community,"  says  an  American  writer,  "  engaged  with  greater  ardor  in 
the  cause  of  the  country  than  the  members  of  the  medical  profession."  Among  others  who 
distinguished  themselves  by  deserving  this  remark  was  John  Brooks,  who  afterwards  became 
governor  of  Massachusetts. 

*  Annual  Register  for  Vnh.    Bradford!    Gordon.    Dwight.    . 
VOL.    II.  65 


514  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

had  underrated  the  arduous  difficulties  of  the  contest  they  provoked,  and 
how  egregiously  those  men  had  deceived  them  who  confidently  predicted 
that  the  Jimericans  would  not  fight. ^  No  other  imaginable  result  of  the 
conflict  could  have  been  more  unfavorable  to  the  prospects  of  Britain,  whose 
troops,  neither  exhilarated  by  briUiant  victory  nor  exasperated  by  disgraceful 
defeat,  were  depressed  by  a  success  of  which  it  was  evident  that  a  few 
more  such  instances  would  prove  their  ruin. 

The  second  Continental  Congress  of  America  had  assembled,  meanwhile, 
at  Philadelphia,  on  the  10th  of  May,  when  Peyton  Randolph  was  again 
elected  president  by  his  colleagues.  Hancock  produced  to  this  assembly  a 
collection  of  documentary  evidence,  tending  to  prove,  that,  in  the  skirmish 
of  Lexington,  the  king's  troops  were  the  aggressors  ;  together  with  a  report 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  Provincial  Congress  of  Massachusetts  on  that 
occasion.  The  time  was  now  arrived  when  the  other  provinces  of  America 
were  required  definitively  to  resolve,  and  unequivocally  to  declare,  whether 
they  would  make  common  cause  with  the  New  England  States  in  actual  war, 
or,  abandoning  them  and  the  object  for  which  they  had  all  so  long  jointly 
contended,  submit  to  the  absolute  supremacy  of  the  British  parhament. 
The  congress  did  not  hesitate  which  part  of  the  alternative  to  embrace,  but 
unanimously  determined  [May  26],^  that,  as  hostilities  had  actually  com- 
menced, and  large  reinforcements  to  the  British  army  were  expected,  the 
several  provinces  should  be  immediately  put  in  a  state  of  defence  ;  add- 
ing, however,  that,  as  they  ardently  wished  for  a  restoration  of  the  harmony 
formerly  subsisting  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies,  they  were 
resolved,  for  the  promotion  of  this  desirable  object,  to  present  once  more  a 
humble  and  dutiful  petition  to  the  king.  Yet  the  members  of  this  body 
perfectly  well  knew  that  the  king  and  his  ministers  and  parliament  not  only 
denied  the  legality  of  their  assemblage  and  their  right  to  represent  the  sen- 
timents of  America,  but  openly  denounced  them  as  a  seditious  and  traitor- 
ous association  ;  and  by  a  great  majority  of  the  American  people  the  senti- 
ments of  loyalty,  which  they  had  once  cherished  or  professed  for  the  British 
crown  and  empire,  were  now  extinguished,  and  either  lost  in  oblivion  or  re- 
membered with  disdain.  But  it  is  a  general  practice  of  mankind,  and  the 
peculiar  policy  of  governments,  to  veil  the  most  implacable  animosity  and 
the  most  decisive  martial  purpose  under  a  show  of  professions  more  than 
ordinarily  forbearing  and  pacific  ;  nor  can  any  proclamation  be  more  om- 
inous of  violence,  than  that  in  which  a  kingdom  or  commonwealth  judges 
it  expedient  to  vaunt  its  own  moderation.  Massachusetts,  having  informed 
the  congress  of  her  destitution  of  regular  government,  and  solicited  advice 
for  the  remedy  of  this  defect,  received  in  answer  the  counsel,  that  the  free- 
holders should  elect  the  members  of  a  representative  assembly  ;   that  these 

General  Burgoyne,  the  British  commander,  in  narrating  the  engagement  that  occurred 


between  his  own  army  and  the  American  troops  on  the  7th  of  October,  1777,  remarked, 
!  be  any  persons  who  continue  to  doubt 
iiy  oi'  fighting,  call  it  by  whatever  term   ' 
would  be  very  absurd  longer  to  contend  with 


If  there  be  any  persons  who  continue  to  doubt  that  the  Americans  possess  the  quality  and 

a  prejudice  that  it 


faculty  of  fighting,  call  it  by  whatever  term  they  please,  they  entertain 

3uld  be  very  absurd  longer  to  contend  with." 

One  of  Burgoyne's  officers.  Major  Ackland  (whose  wife.  Lady  Harriet  Ackland,  acquired  a 
;h  celebrity  by  her  fortitude  and  conjugal  tenderness),  having  been  severely  wounded 
lantly  fighting  with  the  American  troops,  returned  to  Britain,  where  he  was  killed  m 


high  celebrity  by  her  fortitude  and  conjugal  tenderness),  having  been  severely  wounded  while 
gallantly  fighting  with  the  American  troops,  returned  to  Britain,  where  he  was  killed  in  a 
duel  by  a  far  less  brave  man,  to  whom  he  gave  the  lie  for  reproaching  the  Americans  with 
cowardice. 

*  The  declaration,  which  they  embraced  and  published,  setting  forth  the  causes  and  ne- 
cessity of  taking  arms,  was  composed  by  Dickinson,  and  contains  this  remarkable  expression  : 
—  *■  We  have  counted  the  cost  of  the  contest,  and  find  nothing  so  dreadful  as  voluntary  slavery." 


CHAP.  IV.]    ADDRESS  OF  CONGRESS  TO  THE  BRITISH  PEOPLE.  5^5 

representatives  should  appoint  counsellors  ;  and  that  the  representatives  and 
counsellors  should  together  provisionally  exercise  the  powers  of  govern- 
ment. This  counsel  was  straightway  embraced.  Equal  efficacy  attended  a 
recommendation  addressed  to  all  the  colonies,  that  they  should  appoint  com- 
mittees of  general  safety  to  guard  and  administer  the  public  interest  during 
the  occasional  recess  of  the  provincial  assemblies. 

Besides  their  second  petition  to  the  king,  the  congress  renewed  their  ap- 
plications to  Canada  and  other  places,  and  published  an  admirable  address 
to  the  inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  In  this  last  composition, 
the  British  people  were  addressed  with  the  endearing  appellations  of 
''  Friends,  Countrymen,  and  Brethren  "  ;  and  entreated,  by  these  and  every 
other  of  the  ties  which  bound  the  two  nations  together,  seriously  to  receive 
and  consider  the  present  and  probably  final  attempt  to  prevent  their  disso- 
lution. After  again  recapitulating  former  injuries,  and  recounting  the  recent 
acts  of  hostility  in  the  w^anton  destruction  of  American  life  and  property, 
they  demanded  if  the  descendants  of  Britons  could  tamely  submit  to  this  9 
'M\o  !  "  they  added,  "  we  never  will  !  While  we  revere  the  memory  of 
our  gallant  and  virtuous  ancestors,  we  never  can  surrender  those  glorious 
privileges  for  which  they  fought,  bled,  and  conquered.  Admit  that  your 
fleets  and  armies  can  destroy  our  towns  and  ravage  our  coasts  ;  these  are 
inconsiderable  objects,  —  things  of  no  moment  to  men  whose  bosoms  glow 
with  the  ardor  of  liberty.  We  can  retire  beyond  the  reach  of  your  navy  ; 
and,  without  any  sensible  diminution  of  the  necessaries  of  life,  enjoy  a  lux- 
ury which,  from  that  period,  you  will  want,  —  the  luxury  of  being  free.  Our 
enemies  charge  us  with  sedition.  In  what  does  this  sedition  consist  }  In 
our  refusal  to  submit  to  unwarrantable  acts  of  injustice  and  cruelty  }  If 
so,  show  us  a  period  in  your  history  in  which  you  have  not  been  equally 
seditious.  We  are  reproached  with  harbouring  the  project  of  independ- 
ence ;  but  what  have  we  done  that  can  warrant  this  reproach  }  Abused, 
insulted,  and  contemned,  we  have  carried  our  dutiful  petitions  to  the  throne  ; 
and  we  have  applied  to  your  justice  for  relief.  What  has  been  the  suc- 
cess of  our  endeavours  ^  The  clemency  of  our  sovereign  is  unhappily  di- 
verted ;  our  petitions  are  treated  with  indignity  ;  our  prayers  answered  by 
insults.  Our  application  to  you  remains  unnoticed,  and  leaves  us  the  mel- 
ancholy apprehension  of  your  wanting  either  the  will  or  the  power  to  assist 
us.  Even  under  these  circumstances,  what  measures  have  we  taken  that 
betray  a  desire  of  independence  .''  Have  we  called  in  the  aid  of  those 
foreign  powers  who  are  the  rivals  of  your  grandeur  9  Have  we  taken  ad- 
vanta'^e  of  the  weakness  of  your  troops,  and  hastened  to  destroy  them  be- 
fore they  were  reinforced  .''  Have  not  we  permitted  them  to  receive  the 
succours  we  could  have  intercepted  .''  Let  not  your  enemies  and  ours  per- 
suade you  that  in  this  we  were  influenced  by  fear  or  any  other  unworthy  mo- 
tive !  The  lives  of  Britons  are  still  dear  to  us.  When  hostilities  were 
commenced, —when,  on  a  late  occasion,  we  were  wantonly  attacked  by 
your  troops,  though  we  repelled  their  assaults  and  returned  their  blows, 
yet  we  lamented  the  wounds  they  obliged  us  to  inflict ;  nor  have  we  yet 
learned  to  rejoice  at  a  victory  over  Englishmen."  After  reminding  the 
British  people  that  the  extinction  of  liberty  in  America  would  be  only  a 
prelude  to  its  eclipse  in  Britain,  they  concluded  in  these  terms  :  — "  A 
cloud  hangs  over  your  heads  and  ours.  Ere  this  reaches  you,  it  may  prob- 
ably burst  upon  us.     Let  us,  then  (before  the  remembrance  of  former  kind- 


516  HISTORY  OP  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

ness  be  obliterated),  once  more  repeat  these  appellations  which  are  ever 
grateful  to  our  ears,  —  let  us  entreat  Heaven  to  avert  our  ruin,  and  the 
destruction  that  threatens  our  friends,  brethren,  and  countrymen,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic." 

Aware  that  a  great  deal  of  discontent  existed  in  Ireland,  the  congress  con- 
ceived the  hope  of  rendering  this  sentiment  conducive  to  the  multipHcation 
of  their  own  partisans  and  the  embarrassment  of  the  British  court  ;  and  to 
this  end  in  their  address  to  Ireland  they  alluded  to  the  past  oppression  and 
present  opportunities  of  this  people  with  a  politic  show  of  sympathy  and 
friendship  calculated  at  once  to  foment  agitation  among  them,  and  to  at- 
tach to  themselves  the  numerous  bands  of  Irish  emigrants  who  had  resorted 
and  still  continued  to  resort  to  the  American  provinces.  "  The  innocent 
and  oppressed  Americans,"  they  declared,  "naturally  desire  the  sympathy 
and  good-will  of  a  humane  and  virtuous  people  who  themselves  have  suffered 
under  the  rod  of  the  same  oppressor."  i 

Having  thus  made  their  last  appeals  to  the  king  and  people  of  Great  Brit- 
ain, the  congress  proceeded  to  organize  their  military  force,  and  issued  bills 
of  credit  to  the  amount  of  three  millions  of  Spanish  milled  dollars  (for  the 
redemption  of  which  the  confederated  colonies  were  pledged)  to  defray 
the  expenses  of  the  military  establishments  and  operations.''^  Articles  of 
war  for  the  regulation  of  the  continental  army  were  framed  ;  measures 
were  pursued  for  the  enhstment  of  regiments  ;  and  a  declaration  or  manifesto 
was  pubhshed,  setting  forth  the  causes  and  necessity  of  recourse  to  arms, 
and  withal  protesting  that  American  resistance  w^ould  end  as  soon  as 
American  wrongs  were  redressed.  A  battahon  of  artillery  was  formed,  and 
the  command  of  it  intrusted  to  Henry  Knox,  a  native  of  Boston,  whom 
the  force  of  his  genius  and  the  peculiar  bent  of  his  taste  and  studies  had 
already  qualified  to  sustain  the  part  of  an  accomplished  master  of  the  art 
of  war,  and  whose  successful  exertions  in  the  sequel  to  improve  the  Ameri- 
can ordnance  and  artillery  excited  the  surprise  and  admiration  of  the  most 
accomplished  officers  of  Europe.  In  all  the  provinces  the  enlistment  of 
troops  was  promoted  by  the  operation  of  the  late  acts  of  parliament,  which 
deprived  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  America  of  their  usual  employments 
and  means  of  subsistence. 

The  nomination  of  a  commander-in-chief  of  the  American  forces  was 
the  next,  and  not  the  least  important,  measure  which  demanded  from  the 
congress  the  united  exercise  of  its  wisdom  and  authority.  Its  choice  (and 
never  was  choice  more  happily  directed)  fell  upon  George  Washington,  whom 
previous  scenes  have  already  introduced  to  our  acquaintance,^  and  whose 

'  Every  person  acquainted  with  British  history  is  aware  of  the  important  concessions  in 
favor  of  the  people  of  Ireland' that  were  extorted  from  Britain  by  the  progress  of  her  quarrel 
with  America. 

2  This  expedient  was-preferred  to.  direct  taxation,  which,  indeed,  the  congress  was  not  au- 
thorized to  impose.  TJie  Americans,  it  has  been  said,  during  the  whole  contest,  discovered  a 
much  greater  readiness  to  risk  their  lives  than  their  fortunes  in  defence  of  their  liberty.  Theif 
leaders,  accustomed'  to  dieolaim  against  all  taxation  but  that  which  emanated  from  the  pro- 
vincial assemblies,  were. afraid  to  claim  for  the  congress  a  power  which  was  denied  to  the  Brit- 
ish parliament.  "  The  contest  being,  on  the  very  question  of  taxation,  the  levying  of  im- 
posts, unless  from  the  last  necessity,  would  have  been  madness."  Instructions  of  Congress  to 
Franklin^  their  ambassador  at  the  French  court,  in  1778.  The  provincial  assemblies  and  con- 
gresses possessed  more  power  and  exerted  more  vigor  than  the  general  congress,  which  they 
always  preceded  in  demonstrations  of  resistance  and  approaches  to  independence.  Tyrants 
formerly  recruited  their  exchequers  by  debasing  the  current  coin  of  their  realms.  Infant  re- 
publics, in  modern  timesy  have  not  more  creditably  raised  supplies  by  the  expedient  of  paper 
money. 

3  Mte,  Book  X.,  Chap.  III.  and  IV. 


CHAP.  IV.]      WASHINGTON  CHOSEN  COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.  517 

services,  especially  in  Braddock's  campaign,  had  been  always  the  more 
fondly  appreciated  by  his  countrymen,  from  the  flattering  contrast  they  sug- 
gested between  British  rashness  and  misconduct,  and  American  skill,  fore- 
sight, and  energy.  The  deputies  of  the  New  England  States,  less  acquaint- 
ed with  the  achievements  and  character  of  Washington  than  the  people  of 
the  southern  provinces,  and  warmly  admiring  their  own  officers,  would  wil- 
lingly have  conferred  this  high  dignity  upon  one  of  them  ;  and  Putnam, 
Ward,  and  several  others  were  named  as  candidates  ;  but  the  partisans 
of  these  officers,  perceiving  that  Washington  possessed  a  majority  of  suf- 
frages, and  that  his  was  the  name  the  most  widely  spread  abroad  in  America, 
forbore  a  vain  opposition,  and  promoted  the  public  confidence  by  uniting  to 
render  the  election  unanimous.  [June  15.]  Of  the  other  officers  who  had 
been  proposed,  some,^  though  inhabitants,  were  not  natives  of  America  ; 
and  some  had  distinguished  themselves  by  undisguised  and  headlong  zeal  for 
American  independence.  None  of  them  possessed  the  ample  fortune  of 
Washington,  who,  in  addition  to  this  advantage  and  to  the  claim  arising 
from  previous  services,  was  a  native  American  ;  and  though  a  firm  friend 
of  American  liberty,  yet  moderate  in  his  relative  views  and  language,  and 
believed  still  to  cherish  the  hope,  or  at  least  the  wish,  of  reconcilement  with 
the  parent  state.  In  conferring  the  supreme  command  on  him,  the  partisans 
of  conciliation  meant  to  promote  a  friend,  and  the  partisans  of  independ- 
ence hoped  to  gain  one.  Nature  and  fortune  had  singularly  combined  to 
adapt  and  to  designate  this  individual  for  the  distinguished  situations  which 
he  now  and  afterwards  attained,  and  the  arduous  duties  they  involved.  A 
long  struggle  to  defend  the  frontiers  of  Virginia  against  continual  incursions 
of  the  French  and  Indians,  —  the  command  of  a  clumsy,  ill-organized  pro- 
vincial militia,  prouder  of  being  free  citizens  than  effective  soldiers,  and 
among  whom  he  had  to  introduce  and  establish  the  restraints  of  discipline, 
—  obliged  with  minute  labor  and  constant  activity  to  superintend  and  give 
impulsion  to  every  department  of  the  service  over  which  he  presided,  to  ex- 
ecute as  well  as  order,  to  negotiate,  conciliate,  project,  command,  and  en- 
dure ;  —  there  could  not  have  been  a  better  preparatory  education  for  the 
office  of  commander-in-chief  of  the  motley,  ardent,  and  untrained  levies 
that  constituted  at  present  the  army  of  America.  His  previous  functions 
and  exertions,  arduous  rather  than  splendid,  excited  respect  without  envy,^ 
and,  combined  with  the  influence  of  his  character  and  manners,  qualified 
him  to  exercise  command  and  prepared  his  countrymen  to  brook  his  as- 
cendency. The  language  and  deportment  of  this  truly  great  man  were  in 
general  remarkably  exempt  from  every  strain  of  irregular  vehemence  and 
every  symptom  of  indeliberate  thought  ;  disclosing  an  even  tenor  of  steadfast 
propriety,  an  austere  but  graceful  simplicity,  sound  considerate  sense  and 
prudence,  the  gravity  of  a  profound  understanding  and  habitual  reflection,  and 
the  tranquil  grandeur  of  an  elevated  soul.  Of  this  moral  superiority,  as 
01  all  human  virtue,  part  was  the  fruit  of  wise  discipline  and  resolute  self- 
control  ;  for  Washington  was  naturally  passionate  and  irritable,  and  had  in- 
creased the  vigor  and  authority  of  every  better  quality  of  his  mind  by  the 
conquest  and  subjection  of  those  rebellious  elements  of  its  composition. 
Calm,  modest,  and  reserved,  yet  dignified,  intrepid,  inflexibly  firm,  and 
persevering  ;   indefatigably  industrious   and  methodical ;  just,  yet  merciful 

*  Gates  and  Charles  Lee,  for  example. 

2  "  Whom  envy  dared  not  hate,"  says  a  great  English  bard,  in  allusion  to  Washington. 

RR 


518  HISTORY   OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

and  humane  ;  frugal  and  calculating,  yet  disinterfested  ;  circumspect,  yet  en- 
terprising ;  serious,  virtuous,  consistent,  temperate,  and  sincere,  — his  moral 
portraiture  displays  a  blended  variety  of  excellence,  in  which  it  is  difficult 
to  assign  a  predominant  lustre  to  any  particular  grace,  except  perhaps  a 
grave  majestic  composure.  Ever  superior  to  fortune,  he  enjoyed  her 
smiles  with  moderation,  endured  her  frowns  with  serenity,  and  showed  him- 
self alike  in  victory  forbearing,  and  in  defeat  undaunted.  No  danger  or 
difficulty  could  disturb  his  equanimity,  and  no  disaster  paralyze  his  energy 
or  dishearten  his  confidence.  The  same  adverse  vicissitude  that  would  have 
drained  an  ordinary  breast  of  all  its  spirit  served  but  to  call  forth  new 
streams  of  vigor  from  Washington's  generous  soul.  His  countenance  and 
general  aspect  corresponded  with  the  impression  produced  by  his  character. 
Fixed,  firm,  collected,  and  resolved,  yet  considerately  kind,  it  seemed  com- 
posed for  dignity  and  high  exploit.  A  sound  behever  in  the  divine  doctrines 
of  Christianity,  he  was  punctual  and  devout  in  discharging  every  public 
and  private  office  of  Christian  piety.  Perhaps  there  never  was  another 
man  who  trod  with  more  unsullied  honor  the  highest  ways  of  glory,  or  whose 
personal  character  and  conduct  exercised  an  influence  so  powerful  and  so 
beneficial  on  the  destiny  of  a  great  nation.  That  he  was  childless  was,  con- 
sidering his  situation,  a  fortunate  circumstance,  as  it  obstructed  the  jeal- 
ousies that  might  have  impaired  the  pubhc  confidence,  and  facilitated  the 
disinterested  purpose  of  declining  all  emolument  for  his  services,^  —  a  pur- 
pose declared  in  the  modest  yet  firm  and  resolute  speech  in  which  he  ac- 
cepted the  commission  now  conferred  on  him  by  his  colleagues  in  congress. 
This  assembly  assured  him  that  they  would  support  and  adhere  to  him 
with  their  lives  and  fortunes  ;  and,  with  a  studied  conformity  to  the  language 
of  the  Roman  senate  in  seasons  of  public  danger,  instructed  him,  in  the 
discharge  of  the  great  trust  he  had  received,  to  make  it  his  especial  care 
that  the  liberties  of  America  receive  no  detriment.  Departing  to  assume  the 
exercise  of  his  function  [July  2],  Washington  found,  on  his  arrival  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, that  the  British  army,  in  two  divisions,  had  intrenched  itself  on 
Bunker's  Hill  and  Dorchester  Neck,  adjoining  to  Boston,  where  it  was  still 
blockaded  by  the  American  forces  who  occupied  both  sides  of  the  river 
Charles.  About  two  months  afterwards.  General  Gage  embarked  for  Eng- 
land, and  the  command  of  the  British  forces  devolved  on  Sir  Wilham  How^e.^ 
The  partisans  of  the  American  cause  at  New  York  had  already  regained 
their  ascendency  in  the  councils  of  this  province,  which  sent  representatives 
to  the  present  congress,  and  desired  advice  relative  to  the  conduct  that 
should  be  pursued  on  the  arrival  of  an  additional  body  of  British  troops, 
which  was  daily  expected  at  the  provincial  metropolis.  The  congress  rec- 
ommended that  the  troops  should  be  permitted  to  remain  in  the  barracks 
at  New  York,  but  not  suffered  to  construct  fortifications  or  assume  a  position 
that  would  enable  them  to  intercept  the  intercourse  between  the  city  and 
the  country  ;  that,  as  long  as  the  soldiers  demeaned  themselves  peaceably, 
they  should  be  treated  with  civility  ;  but  that  the  inhabitants  should  be 
ready  to  repel  force  by  force.     The  British  ministers  entertained  a  high 

•  See  Note  XXXV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  It  has  been  said  that  this  command  was  first  offered  to  General  Oglethorpe,  rather  in  com- 
pliment to  his  seniority  in  the  British  Army  List,  than  with  the  expectation  of  his  accepting 
it;  that  he  actually,  and  to  the  surprise  of  the  British  ministers,  signified  his  willingness  to 
accept  the  proffered  command  ;  but  that,  instead  of  the  armaments  which  thoy  were  willing 
to  furnish,  he  demanded  powers  of  concession  and  conciliation,  which  they  refused  to  confer 
Ramsay's  American  Revolution. 


CHAP.  IV.]       GEORGIA  ACCEDES  TO  THE  UNION.  519 

opinion  of  the  address  and  abilities  of  Tryon,  the  governor  of  this  province, 
and  had  formed  expectations  of  his  services  with  which  his  conduct  was 
very  far  from  corresponding.  Struck  with  alarm  at  a  resolution  of  the  Con- 
tinental Congress  which  recommended  to  all  the  provincial  assemblies  and 
committees  the  arrest  of  suspected  persons,  of  whatever  rank  or  station,  he 
hastily  fled  from  New  York  and  took  shelter  on  board  of  a  British  ship  of 
war. 

This  congress  first  applied  to  its  constituents  the  title  of  The  Twelve  Con- 
federated Colonies  ;  a  numeration,  however,  which  they  were  soon  agreea- 
bly invited  to  alter  ;  for  on  the  20th  of  July,  a  day  which  they  had  sol- 
emnized by  the  appointment  of  a  fast  throughout  America,  they  received 
intelligence  that  Georgia  now  acceded  to  the  general  union  and  had  elected 
deputies  to  congress.  The  cause  of  American  liberty  had  been  actively 
espoused  in  this  province  (which  now  contained  fifty  thousand  white  inhabit- 
itants),  from  the  very  commencement  of  the  controversy  with  Britain,  by  a 
small  but  increasing  party,  of  which  the  principal  leader  was  Noble  Wim- 
berly  .Tones,  a  physician,  who  accompanied  Oglethorpe  in  his  first  voyage 
from  England,  and  who  distinguished  himself  by  a  warm  and  determined  op- 
position to  the  Stamp  Act.  Recent  proof  was  afforded  to  the  American 
people  of  the  inclination  of  the  Georgians  in  favor  of  the  common  cause. 
Captain  Maitland  having  arrived  at  a  Georgian  port  from  London  with  a  cargo 
of  gunpowder,  the  people  boarded  his  vessel  and  took  the  powder  into  their 
own  possession.  All  the  counteracting  efforts  and  policy  of  Sir  James 
Wright,  the  governor,  though  pursued  with  consummate  skill,  prudence, 
and  vigor,  and  supported  by  the  influence  of  his  well  deserved  popularity, 
were  insufficient  to  repress  the  rising  spirit  of  resistance  in  this  the  youngest 
and  weakest  of  the  provincial  commonwealths.  The  congress,  now  repre- 
senting The  Thirteen  States  of  North  America,  resolved  [July  25]  to 
maintain  a  body  of  forces,  not  exceeding  five  thousand  in  number,  within 
the  province  of  New  York  ;  and,  having  organized  a  post-office  establish- 
ment extending  from  Falmouth  in  New  England  to  Savannah  in  Georgia, 
unanimously  appointed  Franklin  the  postmaster-general.  [July  26.]  This 
eminent  philosopher  and  politician,  divided  between  his  attachment  to 
American  hberty  and  his  desire  of  preserving  the  integrity  of  the  British 
empire,  employed  much  of  his  time  in  projecting  alternately  plans  of  rec- 
oncilement with  Britain,  and  of  permanent  union  and  confederation  between 
the  States  of  America.^ 

The  national  congress,  having  made  provision  for  the  establishment  of 
hospitals  adapted  to  the  reception  of  twenty  thousand  sick  or  wounded 
men,  adjourned  for  a  month.  [August  1.]  On  their  reassembling  [Septem- 
ber 5],  the  principal  subject  of  their  deliberations  was  the  expediency  of  an 
invasion  of  Canada,  for  the  purpose  of  anticipating  the  expected  atiack  of 
a  British  force  from  that  quarter.  To  the  issue  of  these  deliberations  we 
shall  subsequently  advert.  During  the  present  session,  Peyton  Randolph, 
the  first  president  of  the  congress,  suddenly  died.  He  had  vacated  the 
chair  in  May  preceding,  and  John  Hancock  had  been  elected  his  successor.^ 

'  No  less  divided  were  the  sentiments  of  Franklin's  grand-nephew,  Jonathan  Williams, 
afterwards  a  general  in  the  American  service.  Writing  from  France  this  year,  Williams  says, 
"  Although  I  profess  myself  an  American,  I  am  still  an  Englishman  ;  I  only  wish  the  titles 
to  be  synonymous  "  ;  and  declares  his  conviction  that  the  favor  expressed  by  the  French  for 
the  American  cause  proceeded  entirely  from  hatred  of  England. 

*  Journals  of  Congress,  May  19  and  October  23,  1775. 


520  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

In  one  instance,  the  members  of  this  congress  overestimated,  or  at  least 
practically  outstripped,  the  general  pace  of  sentiment  and  opinion  in  Amer- 
ica, and  exposed  themselves  to  the  charge  of  incautious  precipitancy. 
They  composed  and  published  a  plan  of  federal  association  (similar  to  that 
which  was  ultimately  adopted)  between  all  the  provinces,  by  which  a  perma- 
nent congress  was  to  be  estabHshed,  and  vested  with  power  to  administer 
the  general  defence,  and  regulate  all  financial  operations  and  other  matters 
appertaining  to  this  function,  till  a  happy  reconcihation  with  Britain  should 
be  effected.  This  suggestion,  whether  premature  or  not  (for  it  was  per- 
haps intended  to  familiarize  the  minds  of  men  with  a  prospect  from  which 
they  might  be  expected  at  first  to  recoil),  excited  a  general  demur  and  hes- 
itation throughout  America ;  but  only  in  North  Carolina  did  it  meet  with  a 
distinct  and  positive  rejection.  The  provincial  assemblies  were  averse  to 
part  with  so  much  power  as  it  was  proposed  to  confer  on  the  general  con- 
gress ;  and  many  persons  shrunk  in  temporary  panic  from  a  measure  which 
they  justly  regarded  as  destructive  of  all  prospect  and  chance  of  pacific 
accommodation  with  Britain.  With  this  exception,  the  proceedings  of  the 
present  congress,  even  more  than  those  of  the  former,  were  the  theme  of 
grateful  applause  throughout  the  American  States,  who  imitated  its  language, 
and,  though  reluctant  to  invest  it  with  express  legislative  authority,  yet  wil- 
lingly gave  the  force  of  laws  to  its  counsels  and  recommendations.  The 
convention  of  South  Carolina,  in  an  address  to  Lord  Wilham  Campbell, 
the  new  governor*  of  this  province,  declared,  as  the  congress  had  done, 
that  they  adhered  to  the  British  crown,  though  they  took  arms  against 
British  tyranny.  Some  of  the  leading  patriots  in  the  province,  suspecting 
that  the  governor  was  fomenting  a  conspiracy  of  the  Royalists  against  the 
cause  of  America,  employed  M'Donald,  a  captain  in  the  provincial  militia, 
to  discover  the  governor's  policy  by  feigning  to  share  his  sentiments.  Lord 
William  unwarily  avowed  the  reality,  and  disclosed  the  particulars  of  the 
intrigue  he  was  conducting  ;  but  soon  perceiving  the  snare  into  which  he 
had  fallen,  and  learning  that  it  was  proposed  to  arrest  him,  he  fled  from 
Charleston,  and,  as  a  last  resource,  endeavoured  (not  unsuccessfully),  by  in- 
sidious addresses  to  the  remains  of  the  unfortunate  party  called  Regulators 
in  North  Carolina,  to  recruit  the  force  of  the  Royalists,  and  rekindle  the  em- 
bers of  civil  war.  The  convention  of  Virginia  declared  before  God  and  the 
world  that  they  bore  true  faith  to  the  king,  and  would  disband  their  forces 
whenever  the  liberties  of  America  were  restored  ;  —  as  doubtless  they  did, 
—  though  not  till  after  Britain  acknowledged  the  independence  of  America. 
In  this  province  the  march  of  the  Revolution  was  accelerated  by  the  in- 
temperate measures  of  Lord  Dunmore,  the  governor.  Having  by  a  sudden 
and  clandestine  operation  removed  a  portion  of  the  public  stores  during  the 
night  from  WiUiamsburg  on  board  of  armed  vessels,  and  finding  his  conduct 
sharply  arraigned  by  the  provincial  convention,  he  retorted  their  censure  and 
condemned  all  their  proceedings  in  a  proclamation  which  concluded  with 
the  usual  formula  of  "God  save  the  king."  They  replied  to  him  by  a 
proclamation  which  concluded  with  "  God  save  the  liberties  of  America  "  ; 
and  Patrick  Henry  marched  against  him  at  the  head  of  a  detachment  of 
the  provincial  mihtia.  Lord  Dunmore,  who  -at  first  solemnly  swore,  that, 
if  any  violence  were  offered  to  himself,  he  would  proclaim  liberty  to  all  the 

'  The  frequent  changes  of  royal  governors  at  this  epoch  detracted  much  from  the  reputation 
of  the  British  cabinet  for  firm,  consistent,  deliberate  purpose. 


CHAP.   IV.]        VIOLENT  PROCEEDINGS  OF  LORD  DUNMORE.  52 J 

negro  slaves  in  the  province,  and  lay  Williamsburg  in  ashes,  finding  that  his 
menaces  inflamed  the  public  rage,  instead  of  inspiring  fear,  was  obliged  to 
procure  a  respite  from  the  approaching  danger  by  granting  a  bill  of  ex- 
change for  the  pecuniary  value  of  the  stores  which  had  been  removed  ;  but 
soon  again  involving  himself  by  his  violence  in  a  quarrel  (from  which  the 
utmost  prudence  could  hardly  have  kept  him  free)  with  the  popular  party, 
he  fled  hastily  from  Williamsburg,  took  refuge  on  board  the  Fowey,  a  Brit- 
ish man-of-war,  and  thus  practically  abdicated  his  functions,  —  an  example, 
which,  greatly  to  their  own  discredit,  and  unhappily  for  the  interest  of  the 
principles  they  espoused,  was  followed  by  several  of  the  other  royal  gov- 
ernors of  American  provinces.  The  Virginian  assembly  invited  their  fu- 
gitive governor  to  return,  which  he  refused  to  do  unless  they  would  previ- 
ously announce  their  acceptance  of  Lord  North's  conciliatory  proposition. 
He  even  refused  to  signify  his  assent  to  certain  statutory  regulations  which 
awaited  this  formality,  unless  the  members  of  assembly  would  attend  him 
and  sohcit  his  concurrence  on  board  the  British  vessel.  The  assembly  re- 
plied by  an  address  (composed  by  Thomas  Jefferson)  which  announced  a 
firm  and  dignified  rejection  of  those  requisitions,  and  concluded  with  an 
"  appeal  to  the  even-handed  justice  of  that  Being  who  doth  no  wrong,  ear- 
nestly beseeching  him  to  illuminate  the  councils  and  prosper  the  endeavours 
of  those  to  whom  America  has  confided  her  hopes,  that,  through  their  wise 
direction,  we  may  again  see  reunited  the  blessings  of  liberty  and  prosperity, 
and  the  most  perfect  harmony  with  Great  Britain."  In  imitation  of  the 
measure  recommended  by  the  general  congress  to  Massachusetts,  a  provis- 
ional government  was  now  established  in  Virginia.  Lord  Dunmore,  how- 
ever, still  continued  to  hover  about  and  menace  the  coasts  of  the  prov- 
ince, and  by  proclamations  invited  the  inhabitants  of  Tory  principles  to 
make  head  against  the  rebels^  and  negro  slaves  to  gain  their  freedom  by  es- 
pousing the  cause  of  the  king.^  Landing  at  Norfolk  [October  15]  whh  a 
party  of  these  adherents,  he  destroyed  or  carried  away  a  considerable 
quantity  of  ordnance.  By  other  attacks  of  a  similar  description,  he  ravaged 
many  parts  of  the  province  confided  by  Britain  to  his  superintending  care, 
and  excited  additional  rage  and  hatred  against  the  authority  which  he  pro- 
fessed to  represent  and  administer.  Among  the  foremost  of  the  Virginians 
to  take  arms  in  defence  of  the  popular  cause  was  George  Wythe,  who, 
though  highly  distinguished  as  a  lawyer  and  statesman,  was  always  inclined 
to  approve  his  patriotism  rather  by  actions  than  by  words,  and,  diligently 
inuring  himself  to  the  toils  and  other  duties  of  the  field,  w^ould  have  contin- 
ued to  pursue  a  military  career,  if  the  voice  of  his  countrymen  had  not  re- 
called him  to  participate  in  their  legislative  councils  as  the  sphere  in  which 
his  peculiar  talents  were  likely  to  be  exerted  with  the  greatest  advantage. 

Wentworth,  the  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  alarmed  at  the  spread 
of  revolutionary  sentiments  in  this  province,  retired  from  his  post  ;  and  thus 
accelerated  the  advance  of  the  Revolution,  by  enabling  or  compelling  the 
partisans  of  liberty  openly  to  assume,  without  appearing  to  usurp,  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  supreme  executive  power  which  he  had  vacated.     Mar- 

'  M'Adam,  the  celebrated  improver  of  roads,  who  was  in  America  at  this  time,  assured  me 
that  the  negro  slaves  in  general  were  attached  to  monarchical,  and  inimical  to  republican 
power.  In  the  years  1778  and  1779,  both  Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  but  especially  the 
latter  province,  sustained  dreadful  calamities  from  the  vindictive  fury  of  their  negro  slaves, 
of  whom  great  numbers  revolted  against  their  masters  on  the  first  approach  of  a  British  army, 
and  fought  for  their  own  liberty  against  the  liberty  of  America. 

VOL.     II.  66  RR* 


522  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

tin,  the  governor  of  North  Carolina,  from  real  or  affected  apprehension  for 
his  own  safety,  caused  his  house  to  be  surrounded  with  cannon,  of  which 
several  pieces  were  seized  and  carried  off  by  the  people.  Alarmed  at  the 
outrage  which  his  own  preparation  had  provoked,  Martin  took  refuge  in 
Fort  Johnson,  on  the  river  of  Cape  Fear,  where  he  endeavoured  to  rally 
around  him  a  number  of  Scottish  emigrants  who  regarded  with  aversion  a 
final  rupture  with  Britain,  and  to  excite  insurrection  among  the  negro  slaves 
of  the  colonists  ;  but  he  was  forced  to  evacuate  his  stronghold,  and  to  fly 
from  the  province,  by  the  approach  of  a  body  of  provincial  troops  conducted 
by  Colonel  Ashe,  who  abandoned  the  service  of  the  British  king  and  es- 
poused the  cause  of  the  American  people.  The  spirit  of  resistance  al- 
ready kindled  in  the  southern  provinces  was  chafed  to  the  highest  pitch  of 
vindictive  exasperation  by  the  insidious  addresses  of  Martin,  Lord  Dun- 
more,  and  other  British  functionaries,  to  the  negro  slaves  in  America.  This 
influence  was  doubtless  experienced  in  Maryland,  where  a  popular  congress 
now  assumed  the  functions  of  the  provincial  assembly,  and  where  the  planters 
found  no  inconsistency  or  contradiction  between  their  claims  as  freemen 
and  their  possessions  as  slave-owners.^  A  remarkable  activity  of  martial 
preparation  was  exerted  in  this  province  ;  the  principal  inhabitants  set  the 
example  of  arming  themselves  ;  and  the  Provincial  Congress,  besides  levy- 
ing and  expending  large  sums  of  money  for  the  procurement  of  ammunition, 
commanded  every  citizen  to  provide  himself  with  arms,  under  pain  of  being 
proclaimed  an  enemy  to  his  country.  Corresponding  movements  and  pro- 
ceedings took  place  in  the  neighbouring  province  of  Delaware. 

Franklin,  the  governor  of  New  Jersey,  perceiving  that  his  people  were 
daily  falling  away  from  their  allegiance  to  Britain,  and  that  his  authority  over 
them  was  merely  nominal,  contented  himself  with  expressing  to  the  provin- 
cial assembly  the  regret  with  which  he  beheld  the  existing  troubles  and  heard 
the  wishes  that  were  breathed  for  American  independence  ;  for  his  own  per- 
sonal security  he  declared  that  he  desired  no  better  safeguard  than  the  good 
faith  of  the  people  of  New  Jersey.  The  assembly  in  answer  protested  that 
he  was  mistaken  in  supposing  the  Americans  to  be  aiming  at  national  inde- 
pendence ;  that  he  might  dismiss  all  doubt  and  inquietude  with  regard  to  his 
own  safety  ;  that  they  could  not  compose  the  existing  troubles  ;  and,  earnest- 
ly deploring  them,  must  still  more  keenly  regret  the  unjust  and  tyrannical  acts 
of  parliament  from  which  they  arose.  But  not  long  after,  Governor  Frank- 
lin, persisting  in  a  vain  adherence  to  the  cause  of  British  prerogative,  was 
denounced  as  an  enemy  of  his  country,  and  deposed  and  imprisoned  by  the 
people  of  New  Jersey.  In  all  the  States  of  North  America,  before  the  close 
of  the  present  year,  the  sceptre  had  substantially  departed  from  Great  Brit- 
ain ;  and  not  only  a  vast  preponderance  of  numbers,  but  the  effectual  au- 
thority, and  in  many  parts  the  open  and  exclusive  administration  of  municipal 
power,  belonged  to  the  partisans  of  American  revolt  and  liberty.^  In 
Georgia,  though  a  convention  representing  the  majority  of  the  people  signi- 
fied their  adherence  to  the  American  cause  and  the  Continental  Congress, 
yet  their  ascendency  was  disputed  and  their  efficiency  controlled  by  the 
number  of  Royalists  inhabiting  the  province,  and  by  the  presence  of  a  de- 

'  "We  know  too  much  of  slavery  to  be  slaves  ourselves,"  is  represented  as  a  customary  ex- 
pression of  the  free  citizens  of  American  States  where  negro  slavery  has  extensively  prevailed. 

*  "  This  pleased  me  well,"  said  an  active  American  politician  ;  "  for  I  knew,  if  government 
was  once  assumed,  upon  whatever  motives,  they  would  find  that  the  Rubicon  was  passedi 
and  that  they  could  never  return  to  their  ancient  form."    Gordon. 


CHAP.  IV.]  RAVAGES  BY  BRITISH  CRUISERS.  523 

tachment  of  British  troops  quartered  in  it.  These  troops,  after  a  bloody 
combat,  succeeded  in  recapturing  the  fort  of  Savannah,  which  had  been  oc- 
cupied by  a  party  of  the  insurgents  ;  but  this  advantage  was  counterbalanced 
by  the  arrival  of  an  American  regiment  which  the  congress  embodied  and 
despatched  for  the  protection  of  Hberty  in  Georgia.  Sir  James  Wright, 
the  governor  of  this  province,  was  arrested  by  the  daring  effort  of  a  small 
troop  of  volunteers,  commanded  by  Colonel  Habersham,  and  imprisoned  by 
decree  of  the  provincial  assembly.  Liberated  on  parole,  he  violated  his 
engagement,  and  by  nocturnal  flight  gained  the  shelter  of  a  British  ship  of 
war  that  was  stationed  at  Tybee. 

The  system  of  predatory  and  vindictive  hostility,  which  we  have  seen 
Lord  Dunmore  embrace,  was  pursued  by  many  of  the  British  commanders 
in  a  manner  little  creditable  to  the  wisdom  of  their  views  or  the  generosity 
of  their  sentiments.  Infatuated  with  tyrannical  insolence,  they  provoked 
the  Americans  by  menace  and  contumely,  and  rendered  them  desperate  by 
a  barbarous  cruelty  and  devastation.  Wallace,  a  captain  in  the  British  navy, 
whose  vessel  was  appointed  to  cruise  along  the  coasts  of  Connecticut  and 
Rhode  Island,  judged  himself  warranted  by  the  present  posture  of  affairs  to 
launch  indiscriminate  havoc  on  the  inhabitants  of  America,  and  accordingly 
ravaged  and  destroyed  every  village  and  hamlet  that  his  guns  could  reach. 
The  province  of  Massachusetts,  on  receiving  this  inielhgence,  promptly 
despatched  a  military  force,  under  the  command  of  General  Lee,  to  the  as- 
sistance of  their  allies  ;  and  the  assembly  of  Rhode  Island  decreed  the 
pains  of  death  and  confiscation  of  goods  on  all  who  should  hold  even  the 
slightest  correspondence  with  the  forces  of  the  British  king.  Of  this  de- 
cree a  practical  application  was  straightway  administered  by  an  act  of  the 
same  assembly  confiscating  various  estates  (and  among  others  an  estate  in 
Rhode  Island  belonging  to  Hutchinson,  the  ex-governor  of  Massachusetts), 
of  which  the  owners  were  declared  by  the  act  to  be  traitors  to  the  liberty 
of  America.  In  eompHance  with  a  resolve  of  the  Provincial  Congress  of 
Massachusetts,  that  Tories  should  not  be  allowed  to  convey  their  effects 
out  of  this  province,  the  inhabitants  of  Falmouth  had  obstructed  the  load- 
ing of  a  ship  which  was  engaged  to  carry  masts  to  Great  Britain.  In  ad- 
dition to  such  paltry  cause  of  offence,  Mowat,  the  commander  of  a  British 
sloop  of  war,  who  had  frequently  been  entertained  at  Falmouth  with  the  most 
friendly  hospitality,  was  roughly  seized  and  detained  for  a  few  minutes  by 
some  individuals  who  were  infuriated  by  the  recent  news  of  the  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill.  He  was  instantly  released  by  the  interposition  of  the  prin- 
cipal inhabitants  ;  but,  incensed  at  the  affront,  he  complained  of  it  to  the 
British  Admiral  Greaves,  who  was  too  easily  persuaded  to  intrust  him  with 
a  number  of  armed  vessels,  with  which  he  arrived  at  the  devoted  town  on 
the  17ih  of  October.  Next  day,  he  opened  a  heavy  cannonade  and  bom- 
bardment, which,  with  the  aid  of  a  party  sent  on  shore  under  cover  of  the 
naval  guns,  ^reduced  the  greater  part  of  the  town  to  ashes.  A  hundred 
and  thirty-nine  dwelling-houses  and  two  hundred  and  seventy-eight  ware- 
houses were  destroyed  on  this  occasion.^ 

»  Annual  Register  for  1775.  Gordon~Wirt  Burk.  Bradford.  Ramsay.  Holmes.  Pit- 
kin.  Dwight.  Botta.  Tucker's  Life  of  Jefferson.  Walsh's  Appeal.  McGuire's  Religious 
Opinions  of  Was.angtmi.  Collections  of  the  Georgia  Historical  Society.  Some  American  politi- 
cians showed  a  disposition  to  retaliate  the  devastations  committed  by  the  British  troops.  There 
is  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  by  the  instigation,  or  at  least  with  the  encouragement,  of  Sila* 
Deane,  the  Araericao  envoy  to  France,  that  an  English  vagabond,  named  Hill,  attempted  to  vA 


524  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  Xt. 

Nothing  could  be  more  impolitic  on  the  part  of  Britain  than  such  a  system 
of  warfare,  of  which  the  indiscriminate  havoc  involved  every  party,  hostile, 
neutral,  or  friendly,  in  one  common  destruction.  "  It  is  calculated,"  said 
Edmund  Burke  in  the  House  of  Commons,  "  to  produce  the  highest  degree 
of  irritation  and  animosity,  but  never  has  induced  and  never  can  induce  any 
one  people  to  become  subjects  to  the  government  of  another.  It  is  a  kind  of 
war  adapted  to  distress  an  independent  people,  but  not  to  coerce  disobedi- 
ent subjects."  The  men  whom  those  ravages  deprived  of  home  and  em- 
ployment were  constrained  to  seek  a  refuge  in  the  American  camp  ;  and 
were  provoked  to  hostility  or  confirmed  in  it  by  resentment  against  the 
British,  and  by  gratitude  to  their  own  countrymen,  by  whom  their  families 
were  sheltered  and  supported.  The  British  troops,  in  conformity  with  the 
language  of  their  government,  long  continued  to  regard  the  Americans  rather 
as  rebe/s  ^  whom  they  were  sent  to  chastise,  than  ^s  legitimate  belligerents 
entitled  to  claim  the  courtesies  of  civilized  war,  —  a  consideration  more  fitted 
to  enhance  the  cruelty  than  to  promote  the  efficiency  of  their  own  warfare. 
In  a  contest  with  America,  the  main  advantage  which  Britain  possessed 
was  the  superior  discipline  of  her  troops  ;  but  this  advantage  was  dimin- 
ished by  the  indulgence  of  a  barbarous  license  and  cruelty,  productive  of 
disorderly  habits  and  corruptive  of  the  principle  of  discipline  ;  and  it  was 
balanced  by  the  conviction  inevitably  impressed  on  the  British  officers  and 
soldiers,  that  their  triumph  would  be  attended  with  little  honor  and  their  de- 
feat with  deep  disgrace.  The  Americans,  on  the  contrary,  were  prepared 
to  rush  into  the  contest  with  all  the  energy  inspired  by  an  indignant  detesta- 
tion of  the  oppression  which  they  hoped  to  repel,  and  a  firm  and  animating 
conviction  of  the  justice,  advantage,  and  glory  of  the  objects  which  they 
hoped  to  obtain.  And  as  the  war  was  prolonged,  they  acquired  by  experi- 
ence that  discipline  which  alone  gave  any  superiority  to  the  arms  of  their 
opponents. 

The  Massachusetts  assembly  having  passed  an  act  for  the  equipment  of 
armed  vessels,  and  for  granting  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal  against  the 
shipping  of  Britain,  a  privateer,  commanded  by  Captain  Manly,  of  Marble- 
head,  was  quickly  put  to  sea,  and  soon  after  [November  29,  1775]  captured 
a  brig  from  Woolwich  containing  a  great  quantity  of  military  stores  and 
ammunition,  and,  almost  in  immediate  sequence  to  this  achievement,  a  num- 
ber of  vessels  from  London,  Glasgow,  and  Liverpool,  freighted  with  cargoes 
destined  for  the  use  of  the  British  forces.  A  court  of  admiralty  was  formed 
by  the  provincial  authorities  ;  and  by  its  sentence,  the  prizes  were  formally 

fire  to  the  British  dockyards  at  Bristol  and  Portsmouth.  On  the  trial  (in  1777)  of  Hill,  who 
was  hanged  for  this  offence,  the  counsel  for  the  crown  thus  vainly  and  foolishly  expressed 
himself:  —  "I  wish  Mr.  Silas  Deane  were  here.  A  time  may  come,  perhaps,  when  he  and 
Dr.  Franklin  will  be  here."  And  again,  —  "  Silas  Deane  is  not  here  yet :  he  will  be  hanged 
in  due  time."     Howell's  State  Trials. 

*  Some  of  the  British  commanders,  with  ostentatious  insult,  applied  this  epithet  to  the 
Americans,  even  at  the  time  when  a  prudent  regard  to  their  own  safety  imperiously  withheld 
them  from  inflicting  the  treatment  corresponding  to  it.  In  August,  1775,  General  Gage,  writ- 
ing to  Washington,  who  had  taxed  him  with  cruelty  to  the  American  prisoners  in  Boston, 
strongly  denied  the  charge,  and  plumed  himself  on  his  kind  and  humane  treatment  of  men 
whom  at  the  same  time  he  characterized  as  "  rebels  whose  lives  by  the  laws  of  the  land  are 
destined  to  the  cord."  He  added  that  his  prisoners  were  treated  though  humanely  yet  indis- 
criminately, "  as  I  acknowledge  no  rank  that  is  not  derived  from  the  king."  To  this  remark 
Washington  replied,  "You  affect.  Sir,  to  despise  all  rank  not  derived  from  the  same  source 
with  your  own.  I  cannot  conceive  one  more  honorable  than  that  which  flows  from  the  un- 
corrupted  choice  of  a  brave  and  free  people,  the  purest  source  and  original  fountain  of  all 
power."     Bradford.     Ramsay, 


CHAP.  IV.]  '    PENN-S  EXAMINATION.  525 

condemned.  A  detachment  of  the  militia  of  New  Jersey,  embarking  in  a 
small  coasting-vessel,  surprised,  boarded,  and  captured  a  large  British  ship, 
carrying  cattle,  coals,  and  beer  to  the  troops  at  Boston.  A  distinguished 
actor  in  this  achievement  was  Aaron  Ogden,  whom  a  long  and  gallant  ca- 
reer of  service  in  his  country's  cause  subsequently  conducted  to  the  highest 
municipal  honors  that  his  native  province  could  confer.  South  Carohna  was 
early  and  active  in  martial  preparation  ;  but  the  whole  quantity  of  powder 
in  the  province  did  not  exceed  three  thousand  pounds.  The  occasion  seem- 
ing to  require  extraordinary  exertions  for  obtaining  a  farther  supply  of  this 
essential  commodity,  a  committee  of  twelve  persons,  authorized  by  the  pro- 
vincial assembly,  sailed  from  Charleston  for  East  Florida  (which  retained 
its  adherence  to  the  British  government),  and,  boarding  by  surprise  a  Brit- 
ish vessel  near  St.  Augustine,  brought  off  fifteen  thousand  pounds  of  pow- 
der.' Before  the  close  of  the  year,  the  Continental  Congress  gave  orders 
for  the  construction  and  equipment  of  thirteen  vessels  of  war. 

The  British  government  at  this  crisis  betrayed  no  symptom  of  wavering 
in  its  purpose  to  effect  by  force  the  submission  of  the  American  people.^ 
The  king  refused  even  to  notice  the  second  petition  of  the  congress,  and, 
at  the  opening  of  parliament  in  October,  declared  that  the  colonists  were 
in  a  state  of  actual  revolt,  and  that  the  object  of  their  rebellion  was  to 
establish  an  independent  empire.  He  added,  that,  to  defeat  their  purpose, 
the  most  vigorous  and  decisive  measures  were  necessary  ;  and  that  he  had 
increased  all  his  forces,  and  also  engaged  the  aid  of  a  body  of  Hessians 
and  other  German  stipendiary  troops.  An  application  which  this  monarch 
had  previously  addressed  to  the  States  General  of  Holland,  for  leave  to 
engage  in  his  service  some  battalions  of  Scottish  adventurers  who  were 
enrolled  under  the  banners  of  the  Dutch  repubhc,  met  with  a  positive  re- 
fusal. Although  the  employment  of  German  mercenaries  in  a  quarrel  be- 
tween the  king  of  Britain  and  his  own  subjects  was  severely  censured  by 
the  wiser  and  more  liberal  of  the  British  politicians,  the  views  and  policy  of 
the  court  obtained  the  acquiescence  of  large  majorities  in  both  of  the  leg- 
islative chambers. 

The  second  petition  of  the  congress  to  the  king  had  been  intrusted  to 
Richard  Penn,  one  of  the  proprietaries  of  Pennsylvania  and  formerly  gov- 
ernor of  this  province,  who  conveyed  it  to  London,  but,  on  presenting  it  to 
Lord  Dartmouth,  was  peremptorily  informed  that  no  answer  would  be  re- 
turned. Penn  had  since  remained  more  than  two  months  in  England  with- 
out the  slightest  intercourse  or  communication  with  the  ministers,  —  a  cir- 
cumstance which  excited  just  but  unheeded  censure  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons,—  when,  in  consequence  of  a  motion  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  he 
was  examined  on  the  state  of  affairs  in  America  at  the  bar  of  the  House 
of  Lords.  In  his  answers  to  the  questions  which  were  addressed  to  him 
on  this  occasion,  Penn  (who  was  himself  no  friend  to  American  revolt  or 
independence)  affirmed  that  the  Continental  Congress  was  universally  re- 
spected and  implicitly  obeyed  in  America  ;  that  in  Pennsylvania  more  than 

'  Ebenezer  Piatt,  one  of  the  persons  who  performed  this  exploit,  having  fallen  soon  after 
into  the  hands  of  the  British  forces,  was  sent  to  England,  where  the  government  preferred 
a  charge  of  high  treason  against  him.  He  was  imprisoned  on  this  charge,  but  never  brought 
to  trial.     Annual  Re.gister  for   1777. 

^  It  was  this  year  that,  for  the  first  time,  that  great  genius,  but  abject  and  (compared  with 
his  genius)  despicable  man,  Gibbon,  the  historian,  took  a  seat  in  the  British  House  of  Com- 
mons, where,  as  he  relates  in  his  autobiography,  "  I  supported  with  many  a  sincere  and  si'ent 
vote  the  rights^  though  not  perhaps  the  interest^  of  the  mother  country." 


526  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI 

twenty  thousand  effective  men,  including  the  most  respectable  inhabitants 
of  the  province,  had  voluntarily  enrolled  themselves  to  undertake  actual 
service,  if  necessity  required  ;  and  that  the  Pennsylvanians  perfectly  un- 
derstood the  arts  of  casting  cannon  and  of  making  gunpowder  and  small 
arms  ;  that  the  Americans  were  as  expert  as  the  Europeans  in  ship-build- 
ing ;  that  the  language  of  the  congress  expressed  undoubtedly  the  general 
sense  of  the  people  of  America  ;  and  that  the  petition  to  the  king  with  which 
he  had  been  intrusted  was  considered  in  America  as  an  olive-branch,  and 
had  procured  him  there  numerous  compliments  as  the  messenger  of  peace  ; 
that  in  proportion  to  the  hope  which  had  been  attached  in  America  to  the 
petition  would,  he  feared,  be  the  despair  of  friendly  adjustment  inspired  by 
its  evil  reception  ;  that  the  Americans  were  willing  to  recognize  the  sove- 
reignty of  Britain,  but  so  firmly  opposed  to  the  injustice  (as  they  reckoned 
it)  of  her  claim  of  taxation,  that,  rather  than  yield  to  it,  they  would,  he 
believed,  embrace  the  policy  of  courting  foreign  succour  ;  and  that  it  was 
little  likely  that  even  the  presence  of  a  strong  military  force  would  induce 
many  colonists  to  support  the  pretensions  of  the  British  parliament  against 
the  authority  of  the  American  congress.  When  Penn  had  withdrawn,  it 
was  moved  by  the  Duke  of  Richmond  "that  the  matter  of  the  American 
petition  affords  ground  for  conciliation  of  the  unhappy  difference  subsisting 
between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies,  and  that  it  is  highly  neces- 
sary that  proper  steps  be  immediately  taken  for  attaining  so  desirable  an  ob- 
ject"', but  after  a  long  and  violent  debate  the  motion  was  rejected. 

In  the  close  of  the  year  [December],  an  act  of  parliament  was  passed, 
authorizing  the  confiscation  of  all  American  ships  and  cargoes,  and  of  all 
the  vessels  of  other  countries  engaged  in  trading  with  the  American  ports. 
One  of  the  opponents  of  this  measure  in  the  House  of  Commons  remarked, 
that,  as  the  indiscriminate  rapine  proclaimed  by  the  statute  would  oblige 
even  the  most  submissively  disposed  of  the  Americans  to  unite  with  their 
countrymen  in  resistance,  it  ought  to  receive  the  title  of  "An  act  for  more 
effectually  carrying  into  execution  the  resolves  of  congress."  By  a  clause 
in  this  act,  which  was  much  and  justly  reprobated,  the  commanders  of  Brit- 
ish ships  of  war  were  empowered  to  seize  the  crews  of  all  American  ves- 
sels whatever,  and,  besides  confiscating  their  property,  compel  them  to  take 
arms  against  their  countrymen  under  pain  of  being  treated  as  mutineers. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  wisdom  and  eloquence  of  Lord  Chatham,  Charles 
Fox,  Edmund  Burke,  and  other  great  statesmen,  were  exerted  to  inspire 
their  countrymen  with  milder,  juster,  and  more  generous  counsels.  "  Is 
there  either  justice  or  consistency,"  they  demanded,  "  in  despoiling  a  man  of 
his  goods  as  a  foreign  enemy,  and  at  the  same  time  compelling  him  to  serve 
the  state  as  a  citizen?"  The  king,  together  with  the  great  body  of  the  par- 
liament and  nation, >  was  bent  on  vengeance  and  war.  Whatever  estimate 
mi^ht  be  formed  of  the  farthest  views  and  purposes  of  the  Americans,  it  was 
evident  now  that  they  were  prepared  by  force  of  arms  to  emancipate  their 
commerce  from  the  control  which  had  been  imposed  on  it  for  the  fancied 
advantage  of  Britain  ;  and  the  strong,  though  erroneous,  impression  of  this 
advantage  that  was  commonly  entertained  exerted  a  deep  and  active  influence 
on  the  opinions  and  sentiments  of  the  British  people.  In  Scotland,  especial- 
ly, where  political  liberty  was  little  known  or  valued,  and  where  the  senti- 
ments engendered  by  the  feudal  system  of  manners  still  survived  its  decay, 
1  S«e  Note  XXXIV.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.       :  '.  ..,  ■,  >  '.:.  -. 


CHAP.  IV.]  INVASION  OF  CANADA.  527 

there  was  manifested  an  earnest  and  general  approbation  of  the  language  and 
conduct  of  the  government,  and  a  most  animated  inveteracy  against  the 
Americans.  The  ministers  themselves  declared  openly  in  both  houses  of 
parliament  that  they  had  been  duped  and  misled  by  erroneous  representations 
of  the  condition  and  sentiments  of  the  colonial  population  ;  and  Lord  Bar- 
rington,  one  of  their  colleagues,  while  he  protested  that  America  must  be 
subdued  in  order  to  preserve  her  constitutional  dependence  on  Britain,  admit- 
ted that  the  project  of  imposing  taxes  on  her  people  could  no  longer  be  ra- 
tionally entertained.  So  baseless  did  the  original  views  and  pretensions  of 
Britain  already  appear  to  have  been  !  The  other  ministers,  indeed  (with  the 
exception  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  who,  professing  that  he  had  been  fatally 
deceived,  abruptly  forsook  them  and  became  the  advocate  of  reconcile- 
ment with  America),  were  fa'm  to  modify  the  impression  of  disappoint- 
ment produced  by  Lord  Barrington's  language,  which  to  some  of  their 
alarmed  supporters  they  represented,  with  more  or  less  sincerity,  as  a  mere 
politic  device  employed  to  divide  and  weaken  the  Americans.  Lord 
Mansfield,  the  chief  justice  of  England,  in  defending  the  ministerial  policy, 
declared  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  it  was  now  too  late  to  entertain  or  dis- 
cuss the  questions  of  original  right  and  wrong,  that  the  nation  was  engaged 
in  war  and  must  disregard  every  object  but  victory,  and  that  "the  justice 
of  the  cause  must  give  way  to  the  exigence  of  our  present  situation." 
"  If  we  do  not,  my  Lords,  get  the  better  of  America,"  said  he,  ''  Ameri- 
ca will  get  the  better  of  us."  Littleton,  formerly  governor  of  South  Car- 
olina, now  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  defended  the  propriety 
and  predicted  the  efficacy  of  martial  rigor  on  the  part  of  Britain  ;  pro- 
testing, that,  "  if  a  (ew  regiments  were  sent  to  the  southern  colonies  of 
America,  the  negroes  would  rise  and  imbrue  their  hands  in  the  blood  of 
their  masters."  The  only  potentates  in  Europe  that  showed  any  inclination 
to  second  the  policy  of  the  British  court  were  the  kings  of  Denmark  and 
Portugal  ;  the  former  of  whom  this  year  issued  an  edict  prohibiting  his 
subjects  from  trading  with  the  Americans.  By  the  Portuguese  monarch 
there  was  published  in  the  following  year  a  proclamation  declaring  that 
the  cause  of  the  British  king  was  the  common  cause  of  all  sovereign 
princes  ;  and  prohibiting  his  subjects  from  holding  any  intercourse  whatever 
with  the  Americans,  and  the  ships  and  natives  of  America  from  presuming 
to  enter  his  dominions. 

An  enterprise  deeply  affecting  the  relative  interests  of  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica, and  materially  advancing  their  quarrel,  had  latterly  been  embraced  by 
the  American  congress,  and  carried  into  effect  by  the  vigor  of  Washington. 
The  movements  of  Sir  Guy  Carleton  and  the  British  troops  whom  he  com- 
manded, in  Canada,  led  the  American  congress  to  anticipate  from  this 
quarter  a  formidable  invasion  of  their  northwestern  frontier.  To  coun- 
teract the  impending  blow  by  an  attack  on  the  quarter  whence  it  was  ex- 
pected to  proceed,  the  American  leaders  were  sensible,  was  to  divest  their 
warfare  of  its  merely  defensive  aspect,  and  to  make  a  daring  advance  to 
the  assumption  of  national  independence.  But  they  perceived  that  the 
danger  with  which  they  were  menaced  was  great  and  imminent  ;  they 
deemed  it  inconsistent  with  reason  and  policy  to  await  a  stroke  which  might 
be  diverted  by  a  timely  exertion  of  vigor  ;  and  they  warmly  protested  that 
no  man  was  morally  obliged  to  remain  an  inactive  spectator  of  the  conduct 
of  an  enemy  who  wai  loading  a  gun  for  his  destruction.     Of  the  conse 


528  HISTORY  OF  NORTH   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

quent  expeditions  into  Canada  which  were  projected  by  the  congress  and 
executed  by  their  forces  a  detailed  account  would  be  foreign  to  the  purpose 
of  this  work,  of  which  the  concluding  portion  regards  as  its  main  object  the 
history  of  the  international  quarrel,  and  views  the  military  operations  as  (com- 
paratively) unimportant,  except  in  so  far  as  they  displayed,  inspired,  or 
confirmed  in  the  Americans  the  purpose  of  final  and  absolute  revolt.^  The 
conduct  of  the  enterprise  to  which  we  shall  now  briefly  advert  was  commit- 
ted to  Generals  Schuyler  and  Montgomery,  of  whom  the  first  was  soon 
obliged  by  bad  health  to  retire  from  active  service.  Montgomery  com- 
menced the  siege  of  St.  John's  and  compelled  it  to  surrender,  after  a  bloody 
action,  in  which  he  defeated  a  British  force  that  marched  to  its  relief.  Dur- 
ing the  siege,  Ethan  Allen,  who  had  distinguished  himself  by  the  surprise 
of  Ticonderoga,  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  party  of  the  enemy's  troops,  and, 
instead  of  being  treated  as  a  prisoner  of  war,  was  sent  to  England  fettered 
as  a  traitor.  Montgomery,  advancing  from  St.  John's,  took  unresisted 
possession  of  Montreal,  from  which  Sir  Guy  Carleton,  by  a  hasty  flight  and 
in  disguised  apparel,  with  difficulty  escaped  to  Quebec.  Washington  had 
previously  detached  against  this  place  a  force  commanded  by  Arnold, 
which,  after  enduring  the  most  dreadful  hardships  and  exerting  the  most 
admirable  fortitude  and  energy,  suddenly  emerged  from  the  depths  of  an 
unexplored  wilderness,  and  struck  the  city  and  its  defenders  with  astonish- 
ment and  consternation.  But  arrested  at  this  critical  moment  by  the  diffi- 
culty of  procuring  boats  in  order  to  cross  the  St.  Lawrence,  Arnold  and 
his  followers  saw  the  opportunity  which  they  had  purchased  so  dearly,  of  a 
successful  efl^ort  of  surprise,  slip  out  of  their  hands.  The  English  and 
Canadian  inhabitants  of  the  place,  though  previously  discontented  and  at  va- 
riance, now  united  for  the  common  defence  of  their  respective  possessions, 
which  were  staked  on  the  stability  of  the  existing  government,  and  a  troop 
of  Canadian  farmers  and  peasants,  who  at  first  joined  the  invaders,  soon 
withdrew  from  them  in  disgust  at  the  impolitic  rudeness  and  disrespect  with 
which  the  Americans  behaved  to  the  Catholic  priests.  Montgomery,  ar- 
riving from  Montreal  in  the  beginning  of  December,  and  uniting  his  forces 
with  those  of  Arnold,  was  slain  in  a  desperate  and  ineffectual  assault  upon 
Quebec. 

In  this  sanguinary  conflict,  and  in  every  circumstance  of  the  campaign 
which  afforded  scope  to  the  display  of  soldierly  qualities,  no  officer  in 
the  American  army  was  more  conspicuous  than  Colonel  Morgan,  who 
now,  by  his  heroic  constancy  and  brilliant  valor,  laid  the  foundation  of  a 
fame  which  every  year  of  his  country's  danger  and  glory  contributed  to  en- 

'  I  agree  with  the  two  illustrious  Americans  to  whom  the  following  observations  are  as- 
cribed :  —  "  Mr.  Jefferson  preferred  Botta's  Italian  History  of  the  American  Revolution  to  any 
that  had  yet  appeared;  remarking,  however,  the  inaccuracy  of  the  speeches." — "  Mr.  John 
Adams  said,  that  of  all  the  speeches  made  in  congress  from  1774  to  1777,  inclusive  of  both 
years,  not  one  sentence  remains  except  a  few  periods  of  Dr.  Witherspoon  printed  in  his 
works."  Hall's  Travels  in  Canada,  &c.  This  author,  whom  I  have  already  had  occasion  to 
cite,  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  later  traveller,  Captain  Basil  Hall.  I  have  had  the 
pleasure  of  learning  from  Josiah  Quincy,  President  of  Harvard  College,  that  John  Quincy 
Adams,  late  president  of  the  United  States,  honored  my  performance  with  the  same  commen- 
dation which  Jefferson  bestowed  on  the  labors  of  Botta. 

Most  of  the  American  accounts  of  the  Revolutionary  War  are  overcrowded  with  names  that 
leave  no  distinct  or  lasting  impression  on  the  minds  of  general  readers,  and  loaded  with  an  ac- 
cumulation of  petty  details.  This  is  Homer's  style,  but  quite  unfit  for  the  lasting  representa- 
tion of  a  scene  so  greatly  superior  in  dignity  and  interest  to  the  subject  of  his  lay.  In  sur- 
veying any  great  object  in  the  physical  or  moral  world,  a  certain  distance,  local  or  temporal, 
is  essential  to  a  just  appreciation  of  its  grandeur  and  proportions. 


CHAP.   IV.]  INVASION   OF  CANADA*      ;  :  ^j^ 

large.  Anthony  Wayne,  hitherto  known  to  his  countrymen  only  as  a  sup- 
porter of  the  principles  of  liberty  in  the  Pennsylvanian  assembly,  also 
commenced  with  much  honor  in  this  campaign  a  career  that  conducted 
him  to  the  highest  military  renown.  The  martial  taste  and  genius  of 
Wayne  (awakened  probably  by  the  interesting  events  of  the  war  that  issued 
in  the  British  conquest  of  Canada)  were  signally  illustrated  in  his  boyhood, 
when  he  narrowly  escaped  expulsion  from  school  for  diverting  his  comrades 
from  their  studies  by  the  continual  rehearsal  of  sieges,  skirmishes,  and 
battles.  Aaron  Burr,  likewise,  more  generally  known  by  his  subsequent 
title  of  Colonel  Burr  (grandson  of  the  great  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  after- 
wards vice-president  of  the  United  States  of  North  America)  first  distin- 
guished himself  in  this  campaign  by  the  inflexible  fortitude  and  the  deter- 
mined spirit  of  adventurous  enterprise  which  he  displayed,  first  as  a  volun- 
tary associate  of  Arnold's  followers,  and  then  as  aid-de-camp  of  Montgom- 
ery, the  commander-in-chief ;  he  was  only  nineteen  years  of  age,  when, 
deaf  to  the  remonstrances  of  all  his  friends  and  relations,  he  braved  and 
sustained  the  fatigues  and  dangers  of  the  Canadian  expedition.  In  the  sub- 
sequent scenes  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  till  his  broken  health  compelled 
him  to  abandon  the  field,  he  continued  to  approve  himself  one  of  the  most 
skilful,  intrepid,  and  efficient  officers  in  the  American  army  ;  but  he  ob- 
structed his  own  promotion  and  the  recognition  of  his  real  merit  by  his 
inordinate  ambition,  his  moody,  jealous  pride,  his  splenetic  obstinacy,  and 
the  unbounded  license  of  profligacy  which  he  indulged  in  his  intercourse 
with  women.  The  annals  of  America  present  no  other  instance  of  the 
dark,  hard,  restless,  dangerous  character  disclosed  in  the  career  of  Burr. 
Montgomery  himself,  whose  fall  we  have  remarked,  was  a  native  of  Ireland, 
and,  after  serving  with  the  British  army  during  the  last  war  in  America, 
had  married  and  established  himself  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and  trans- 
ferred his  patriotic  attachments  to  the  new  scene  of  his  residence  and  do- 
mestic afl^ections.  His  loss  was  deeply  deplored,  and  his  merits  as  a  gallant 
and  experienced  officer  and  generous  friend  of  liberty  were  enthusiastically 
commemorated  in  all  the  American  States.  Even  the  partisans  of  Britain 
admired  his  character,  while  they  blamed  his  conduct  ;  and  Lord  North,  in 
alluding  to  him  in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  exclaimed,  "  Curse  on 
his  virtues  !  for  they  have  undone  his  country."  Arnold,  on  whom  the 
command  of  the  invading  forces  now  devolved,  contrived  through  the  whole 
winter  to  maintain  the  blockade  of  Quebec  ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  arrival 
of  the  following  year  and  of  strong  reinforcements  to  the  British  army 
from  Europe,  that  he  and  his  American  troops,  successively  abandoning 
post  after  post,  were  finally  compelled  to  evacuate  Canada. i 

Among  all  the  scenes  of  war  to  which  the  quarrel  between  Britain  and 
America  gave  rise,  this  expedition  was  honorably  distinguished  both  by  the 
intrepid  valor  and  endurance  of  the  Americans,  and  (with  the  exception  of 
the  indignities  inflicted  on  Allen)  by  the  generous  concern  and  respect  for 
each  other  reciprocally  demonstrated  by  the  belligerent  forces.  The  Amer- 
icans warmly  celebrated  the  merits  of  Carleton  as  a  magnanimous  foe,  and 
ascribed  to  his  undisguised  abhorrence  of  the  employment  of  Indian  auxilia- 

*  Annual  Register  for  1775  and  for  1776!  Gordon.  Ramsay.  Holmes.  Williams's  His- 
tory  of  Vermont.  Armstrong's  Life  of  General  Wayne.  Davis's  Memoirs  of  Aaron  Burr. 
Walsh's  j^^pm/.  Pitkin.  This  last  cited  work,  though  invaluable  from  the  access  to  novel 
and  important  American  documents  which  its  writer  enjoyed,  is  rendered  extremely  perplexing 
to  ordinary  readers  by  ltd  negligent  composition  and  disregard  of  chronological  arrangement 
VOL.   II.  67  ss 


gg5  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

ries  the  policy  which,  unfortunately  for  Britain,  prompted  her  ministers  to 
divest  him  of  his  command  and  preferably  intrust  it  to  General  Burgoyne.^ 
The  Canadian  expedition  of  the  Americans  and  its  result,  misrepresented  by 
the  folly  and  insolence  of  Burgoyne,  induced  the  British  cabinet  to  entertain 
a  very  erroneous  view  of  the  importance  and  facility  of  hostile  operations 
in  this  quarter,  and  in  the  sequel  exerted  a  very  injurious  influence  on  its 
military  policy, —  which,  instead  of  directing  the  British  forces  to  act  with 
combined  vigor  upon  one  point,  divided  them  into  two  armies,  of  which  the 
operations  were  totally  unconnected,  and  of  which  the  one  was  appointed  to 
invade  America  in  front  from  the  seacoast,  while  the  other,  descending 
from  Canada  by  the  lakes,  attempted  from  the  rear  to  penetrate  into  the  in- 
terior of  the  revolted  provinces.  .  , 


CHAPTER    V. 


Popular  Feeling  and  public  Policy  in  America. — American  Negotiations  with  France. — 
La  Fayette.  —  Condition  of  the  American  Army.  —  Operations  of  Washington.  —  Retreat 
of  the  British  Army  from  Boston.  —  Hostilities  in  South  Carolina.  —  The  Americans  de<;lare 
their  Commerce  free.  —  Conduct  of  the  American  Quakers.  —  Proceedings  in  Congress. 
— Declaration  of  American  Independence.  —  Conclusion. 

Our  historical  progress  has  at  length  conducted  us  to  the  last  year 
[1776],  during  any  part  of  which  even  a  shadowy  semblance  or  rather 
pretext  of  political  union  subsisted  between  Britain  and  the  provinces  of 
North  America.  For  more  than  ten  years,  the  parent  state  had,  by  a  series 
of  most  impolitic  measures,  prolonged  a  quarrel  of  constantly  augmenting 
bitterness  with  her  colonies,  and  provoked  them  to  demonstrate  a  more  and 
more  determined  resistance  to  her  authority.  Since  the  refusal  of  the  Amer- 
icans to  submit  to  the  Stamp  Act  in  1765,  the  temper  and  deportment  of 
both  parties  disclosed  a  reciprocal  and  progressive  hostility  ;  and  every 
year  had  enlarged  the  numerical  force  of  the  partisans  of  America,  con- 
firmed their  resolution,  and  extended  the  compass  of  their  democratic 
view  and  purpose.  In  this  country  a  whole  generation  had  grown  up  from 
infancy  to  intelligent  youth  and  manhood's  dawn  since  the  controversy  be- 
gan. Their  education  under  such  circumstances  had  not  inculcated  the 
respect  that  was  formerly  entertained  for  the  parent  state  ;  and  with  the 
fearless,  generous  spirit  that  distinguishes  their  season  of  life,  they  warmly 
embraced  the  interests  of  liberty,  and  hailed  the  prospect  of  their  country's 
independence.^     Nor  was  the  general  ardor  for  liberty  confined  to  the  more 

'  Carleton  learned  from  his  own  feelings  and  understanding  what  Burgoyne  ascertained  by 
a  lamentable  experience,  that  the  vindictive  and  ungovernable  fury  of  the  Indians  was  more 
fitted  to  provoke  rage  and  despair  than  to  inspire  fear  or  recommend  submission.  Like  those 
half-tamed  beasts  of  prey  employed  in  the  chase  by  the  inhabitants  of  Eastern  countries,  they 
became  dangerous  to  their  employers  whenever  their  unchained  ferocity  encountered  a  check 
or  disappointment. 

'  Almost  all  the  young  men  in  America  were  ardent  patriots.  At  the  commencement  of  the 
war,  the  College  of  New  Jersey  was  deserted  by  many  of  its  students,  who  rushed  to  join 
the  ranks  of  the  American  army.  Thither  also  repaired,  from  the  school  at  which  he  was 
placed  in  South  Carolina,  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  Andrew  Jackson,  afterwards  president  of 
the  United  States.  Joel  Barlow,  the  American  poet,  then  a  student  at  Yale  College,  always 
passed  his  vacations  in  the  American  camp.  At  the  age  of  seventeen,  John  Marshall,  of 
Virginia,  afterwards  so  highly  distinguished  as  a  patriot,  a  lawyer,  and  chief  justice  of  the 


CHAP,  v.]  PROGRESS  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  4|^| 

youthful  inhabitants,  or  even  to  the  stronger  sex  in  America  ;  it  glowed  in 
the  gentle  bosoms  of  women,  and  triumphed  over  the  feebleness  and  timidity 
of  age.  The  female  inhabitants  of  the  county  of  Bristol,  in  Massachusetts, 
equipped  a  regiment  at  their  own  expense.  The  oldest  German  colonists  at 
Philadelphia  formed  themselves  into  an  armed  company  of  veterans,  and  in 
the  election  of  their  officers  gave  the  command  to  a  man  nearly  a  hundred 
years  of  age.  While  the  Americans  of  British  descent  were  inspired 
with  indignation  by  the  intelligence  that  Britain  had  drawn  a  mercenary  host 
from  Germany  to  invade  them,  the  colonists  of  German  origin  experienced 
no  distraction  of  sentiment  from  this  prospect  ;  their  zealous  attachment  to 
the  adopted  country  where  they  found  liberty  and  happiness  was  not  abated 
by  the  hostility  with  which  it  was  menaced  from  the  instruments  of  that 
tyranny  whence  they  themselves  had  sought  refuge  in  America. 

This  country  at  present  exhibited  the  singular  spectacle  of  a  people  pro- 
fessing allegiance  to  a  distant  monarch,  whose  commands  they  had  for  ten 
years  openly  disobeyed  ;  zealously  adhering  to  a  domestic  government  which 
that  monarch  denounced  as  a  traitorous  usurpation  ;  and  maintaining  an 
army  avowedly  raised  to  fight  his  troops,  already  engaged  in  battle  with 
them,  and  latterly  employed  in  the  invasion  of  his  territories.  A  state  of 
things  so  heterogeneous  could  not  subsist  much  longer  ;  and,  notwithstanding 
the  exertions  that  were  made  to  bridle  the  impetuosity  of  the  partisans  of 
independence,  this  great  consummation  was  rapidly  maturing,  and  became 
with  more  certainty  from  day  to  day  the  substantial,  though  unacknowledged, 
purpose  of  the  Americans.  Nay,  its  advancement  was  promoted  even  by 
the  exertions  of  the  moderate  and  temporizing  politicians,  and  the  conces- 
sions which  they  obtained  from  the  more  ardent  party  of  their  country- 
men. In  language  more  guarded  and  calm  than  the  British  parhament,  the 
American  congress  was,  in  purpose  and  action,  more  steady,  consistent, 
and  prospective.!  Professions  of  loyalty  to  the  king  induced  timid  and 
wavering  men  to  acquiesce  in  measures  which  practically  realized  inde- 
pendence, and  rendered  a  speedy  and  open  declaration  of  it  unavoidable. 
"  In  the  beginning  of  the  dispute,''  exclaimed  an  American  patriot,  **  we 
aimed  not  at  separation  from  Britain,  but  there  's  a  divinity  that  shapes 
our  ends.''"'  An  attitude  was  gradually  assumed,  maintained,  and  improved, 
from  which  it  was  impossible  to  retreat  without  certain  ruin,  or  to  advance 
without  the  assertion  of  national  independence.  Various  symptoms  had  of 
late  betokened  the  approaching  birth  of  this  event.  Paine  and  other  popu- 
lar writers,  in  works  which  were  extensively  read  and  relished,  attacked 
the  principle  of  regal   government  with  energetic  reprobation  and  ingenious 

United  States,  forsook  his  classical  and  juridical  studies  to  enrol  himself  in  the  militia  of  his 
native  State.  Such  also  was  the  conduct  of  John  Trumbull,  of  Connecticut,  whose  talent 
as  a  draughtsman  was  appreciated  and  employed  by  Washington,  and  who  now  devoted  to 
the  military  service  of  his  country  the  pictorial  genius  whiclT  was  afterwards  exerted  in  de- 
lineating the  scenes  and  particulars  of  her  glory.  No  small  surprise  and  admiration  was  ex- 
cited in  America  by  the  discovery  that  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  eloquent  compositions  in 
support  of  liberty,  that  were  published  in  the  year  1774,  were  the  productions  of  Alexander 
Hamilton,  a  student  at  New  York  College,  only  seventeen  years  of  age.  This  young  man  in 
the  present  year  entered  the  American  army  as  an  officer  of  artillery.  He  rose  to  the  rank 
of  general,  and  gained  high  distinction  as  a  soldier,  a  statesman,  and  a  political  writer  Many 
years  after,  he  was  slain  in  a  duel  by  Aaron  Burr,  his  equally  ardent,  but  far  less  virtuous, 
contemporary  in  youthful  zeal  and  gallant  exertion  for  American  liberty. 

*  From  the  debates  in  the  British  parliament  only  two  years  after  the  present  epoch,  one 
might  suppose  that  a  great  majority  of  the  members  had  always  execrated  a  war  with  America, 
and  had  been  gradually  betrayed  into  measures,  of  which,  at  the  time,  the^  perceived  neither 
the  full  import  nor  th«  fetal  consequences.  Hoi-^    ..: '  '    '  .    " '         .    ;:  v.   ^'  f:  5-i  *     :     A 


^$2  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

ridicule  ;  and  animated*  the  Americans  to  declare  themselves  an  independ- 
ent people,  —  supporting  the  legitimacy  and  exalting  the  dignity  of  this 
claim  by  every  consideration  that  could  prove  it  to  their  reason  or  wed  it 
to  their  desire.  In  electing  members  to  the  second  congress,  the  people 
of  Maryland  expressly  charged  their  delegates  not  to  consent  to  the  assump- 
tion of  independence  unless  they  found  a  majority  of  the  congress  convinced 
of  the  expediency  of  that  measure  and  determined  to  espouse  it.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  county  of  Mecklenburg,  in  North  Carolina,  on  learning 
the  affair  of  Lexington,  felt  all  their  doubts  dissolved,  and  instantly  em- 
braced and  published  a  violent  resolution,  declaring  themselves  independent, 
and  all  political  connection  with  Britain  abandoned.  The  project  of  inde- 
pendence was  discussed  in  every  province  and  assembly,  and  daily  gained 
partisans,  of  whom  some  pursued  it  with  passionate  desire,  and  others  con- 
templated it  with  patient  expectation.  Drayton,  whom  the  assembly  of 
South  Carohna  now  appointed  chief  justice  of  this  province,  in  a  charge 
delivered  by  him  to  a  grand  jury,  thus  expressed  himself :  —  ''The  Al- 
mighty created  America  to  be  independent  of  Great  Britain  ;  let  us  beware 
of  the  impiety  of  being  backward  to  act  as  instruments  in  the  almighty  hand 
now  extended  to  accomplish  his  purpose."  All  these  symptoms  of  public 
feeling  were  watched  with  interest  and  cherished  with  policy  by  the  prevail- 
ing party  in  the  national  congress,  which,  without  ever  expressly  alluding  to 
independence,  except  in  professions  that  they  were  not  aiming  at  it  and 
would  fain  avoid  it,  only  waited  a  fit  juncture  for  asserting  this  pretension 
with  the  most  decisive  efficacy.  Before  taking  so  critical  a  step,  it  highly 
imported  them  to  assure  themselves  with  extraordinary  wariness  and  care  of 
finding  a  firm  and  stable  footing  in  the  perilous  path  which  it  would  pledge 
them  to  tread. 

Anticipating  the  approaching  rupture,  and  desirous  to  fortify  their  coun- 
try by  every  possible  means  against  the  shock  of  a  tremendous  and  inevi- 
table conflict,  the  American  congress  had  for  some  time  directed  their  at- 
tention to  the  acquisition  of  foreign  succour.  In  the  month  of  November 
of  the  preceding  year,  a  committee,  consisting  of  Franklin,  Jay,  Dickin- 
son, Harrison,  and  Johnson,  was  appointed  for  the  purpose  of  holding  a 
secret  correspondence  with  the  friends  of  America  in  Great  Britain,  Ireland, 
and  other  parts  of  the  world.  The  real  object  of  this  committee  was  to 
sound  the  dispositions  of  the  principal  powers  of  Europe,  and  particularly 
of  France  and  Spain,  with  respect  to  the  American  controversy  ;  and,  if 
possible,  to  obtain  from  them  assistance  or  a  pledge  of  it  in  a  war  for  Amer- 
ican independence.  The  requisite  negotiations  commenced  immediately  af- 
ter by  a  correspondence  between  Franklin  and  a  Frenchman  of  his  acquaint- 
ance, named  Dumas,  who  resided  in  Holland  and  w^as  known  to  be  friendly 
to  the  American  cause  ;  a  sentiment  which  likewise  prevailed  to  a  great  and 
growing  extent  among  the  Dutch,  who  could  not  but  deeply  sympathize  with 
a  people  whose  situation  so  nearly  resembled  what  had  once  been  their  own. 
These  negotiations  were  attended  with  such  promising  results,  that,  in  the 
spring  of  the  present  year,  Silas  Deane,  one  of  the  deputies  to  congress 
from  Connecticut,  w^as  secretly  despatched  by  the  committee  as  political 
agent  for  America  to  the  court  of  France,  —  where  he  continued  to  dis- 
charge this  important  function,  till  the  exercise  of  it  was  openly  acknow^l- 
edged,  and  confided  to  worthier  hands,  by  the  mission  of  Franklin  and 
Arthur  Lee  to  Paris  after  the  declaration  of  independence.     \  ;    i.  . 


CHAR  v.]    EUROPEAN  INTEREST  IN  THE  CAUSE  OF  AMERICA.  535 

The  contagious  Influence  of  revolutionary  movements  in  behalf  of  liberty 
appears  to  have  been  very  little  understood  or  regarded  by  the  cabinets  of 
Europe  at  this  period.  It  required,  indeed,  a  greater  diffusion  of  knowledge 
than  yet  existed,  together  with  an  efficacious  machinery  for  the  circula- 
tion of  sentiment  and  opinion  (subsequently  afforded  by  the  maturity  of  the 
periodical  press),  in  order  fully  to  develope  that  important  principle  of 
social  life,  which  has  no  perceptible  existence  in  a  barbarous  and  illiterate 
age.  All  the  commercial  states  of  Europe,  as  we  have  frequently  re- 
marked, were  interested  in  the  destruction  of  the  British  monopoly  of 
American  commerce  ;  and  of  late  they  began  more  highly  to  appreciate, 
by  partially  obtaining,  the  advantage  of  that  catastrophe.  In  proportion  as 
the  breach  was  widened  between  Great  Britain  and  America,  the  contraband 
trade  between  America  and  those  states  increased  ;  and  it  was  now  yield- 
ing to  them  an  extent  of  profit  which  they  ardently  desired  to  retain, 
and  which  only  a  final  severance  of  the  British  colonies  from  their  parent 
state  could  render  legitimate  and  permanently  secure.  The  friendly  in- 
terest in  the  cause  and  fortune  of  America,  thus  derived  from  motives 
of  commercial  gain,  was  aided  in  France  both  by  the  strong  predilection 
for  liberty  that  was  recently  aroused  in  this  country,  and  by  national  jealousy 
and  antipathy  against  Great  Britain.  A  literary  band,  composed  of  the 
most  eloquent  and  ingenious  writers  in  France,  had,  for  a  series  of  years, 
exerted  themselves  with  equal  zeal  and  success  to  awaken  among  their  coun- 
trymen a  hatred  of  royalty  and  aristocracy  and  a  passion  for  republican  free- 
dom. The  hatred  which  they  sought  to  kindle  was  fanned  by  the  tyranny 
and  prodigality  exemplified  by  their  own  domestic  government,  and  the  dem- 
ocratic visions  which  they  engendered  found  an  attractive  bodily  show  in  the 
condition  and  prospects  of  the  Americans.  The  events  of  the  last  war,  be- 
sides wounding  the  pride  of  France,  had  taught  her  by  severe  lessons  to 
dread  the  accession  of  force  which  Britain  derived  from  her  American 
colonies.  Issuing  from  the  ports  of  America,  four  hundred  privateers  had 
successfully  cruised  on  French  property  ;  and  besides  a  colonial  militia  of 
23,800  men,  who  cooperated  with  the  regular  British  forces  in  America,  the 
colonists  had,  by  their  powerful  and  seasonable  aid  both  of  men  and  provis- 
ions, materially  contributed  to  the  reduction  of  Martinique  and  Havana. 
Their  growing  importance  rendered  those  colonies  daily  more  formidable  to 
the  rivals  of  their  parent  state  ;  and  their  prolonged  union  with  Britain 
threatened  destruction  to  the  commerce  and  colonies  of  France.  This 
the  Duke  de  Choiseul  clearly  perceived  ;  and,  though  bis  plans  had  perished 
with  his  ministerial  power,  the  policy  to  which  they  were  subservient  was 
by  no  means  disregarded  by  his  successors.  With  improvident  acqui- 
escence or  vindictive  satisfaction,  the  French  government  now  beheld  the 
rise  and  gradual  spread  among  its  people  of  a  passionate  zeal  for  Ameri- 
can liberty,  which  it  ascribed  to  mercantile  competition  and  national  rivalry, 
and  encouraged,  or  at  least  permitted,  a  number  of  French  oflicers  and  en- 
gineers to  indulge  their  enmity  to  Britain  or  their  thirst  for  martial  enter- 
prise by  accepting  commissions  which  were  readily  tendered  to  them  by 
Deane  in  the  American  army.  The  attraction  to  this  confluence  of  repub- 
lican and  revolutionary  spirits,  whether  martial  or  commercial,  national  or 
philanthropic,  though  chiefly  experienced  in  France,  was  not  confined  to 
this  country.  German  officers  (some  of  whom  had  been  trained  to  the  art 
of  war  in  the  armies  of  Frederick  the  Second  of  Prussia)  hastened  across 


534  HlStORV  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.         ^  [BOOK  XI. 

the  Atlantic  to  exert  their  skill  and  talents  in  defence  of  American  liberty. 
Polish  noblemen  *  were  among  the  earliest  and  bravest  of  its  champions  ; 
and  the  name  of  Kosciusko  acquired  in  America  a  part  of  its  claims  on  the 
gratitude  and  admiration  of  mankind. 

Vergennes,  the  present  French  minister,  encouraged  Deane  to  expect  all 
but  open  assistance  in  the  actual  posture  of  affairs  ;  and  a  pretended  com- 
mercial establishment  was  soon  after  formed  in  Holland,  through  which 
military  stores  and  other  succours,  the  gift  of  the  French  government,  were 
transmitted  in  the  guise  of  mercantile  consignments  to  America.  Under 
strict  injunctions  of  secrecy,  two  millions  of  livres  were  presented  by  the 
French  court  to  congress  ;  American  agents  were  secretly  permitted  to  fit 
out  a  number  of  vessels  from  French  ports  to  cruise  against  the  British 
shipping  ;  and  various  prizes  thus  acquired  were  brought  in  and  sold  in 
France.  By  the  influence  of  the  French  court,  a  secret  contribution  of 
arms  and  money  in  aid  of  the  Americans  was  likewise  procured  from 
Spain.  In  the  progress  of  the  negotiations  that  ensued,  the  Americans 
endeavoured  to  interest  the  cupidity  of  France  by  proposing  to  her  an  ad- 
vantageous commercial  treaty  and  the  reconquest  of  Canada,  and  to  pro- 
voke her  pride  by  suggesting  that  now  was  the  time  "  to  obtain  satisfaction 
from  Britain  for  the  injuries  received  in  the  last  war  commenced  by  that 
nation  in  a  manner  contrary  to  the  laio  of  nations  !  "  But  surely  the 
American  politicians  from  whom  this  suggestion  proceeded  must  have  been 
blinded  by  passion  or  duped  by  the  extravagance  of  their  own  cunning, 
when  they  hoped  (if  they  really  could  hope)  to  awaken  the  sympathy  of 
France  by  reproaching  England  with  the  late  war,  and  decrying  those  con- 
quests which  had  inspired  their  own  most  ardent  wishes  and  triumphant 
exultations.  Even  so  late  as  the  year  1775,  the  congress,  in  their  final 
address  to  the  British  king,  which  was  circulated  throughout  all  Europe, 
had  characterized  the  late  war  as  "the  most  glorious  and  advantageous  that 
ever  was  carried  on  by  British  arms,  and  to  the  success  of  which  your  loyal 
colonists  contributed  by  such  repeated  and  strenuous  exertions  as  frequently 
procured  them  the  distinguished  approbation  of  your  Majesty,  of  the  late 
king,  and  of  parliament."  The  French,  besides,  had  no  longer  any  desire  to 
reobtain  Canada  ;  the  possession  of  which  by  Britain  they  judged  likely  to 
conduce  to  the  more  entire  dependence  of  America  on  the  power  and  friend- 
ship of  France.^     The  utmost  dupHcity  was  practised  by  both  the  parties  in 

'  Among  these  was  Count  Pulaski,  who  had  been  outlawed  for  his  share  in  the  desperate 
enterprise  by  which  a  few  conspirators  seized  and  carried  off  Stanislaus,  king  of  Poland, 
in  the  midst  of  his  capital,  in  the  year  1771.  After  a  gallant  career  in  America,  he  was 
mortally  wounded  in  a  conflict  with  the  British  troops  in  1779.  The  Polish  monarch,  on 
receiving  the  intelligence  of  his  death,  is  said  to  have  exclaimed,  "  Pulaski !  always  brave, 
but  always  the  enemy  of  kings."  Another  Polish  nobleman,  Count  Grabouski,  joined  as  a 
volunteer  the  British  army  in  America.  In  the  nineteenth  century  we  have  seen  the  Ameri- 
can States,  by  a  territorial  grant,  afford  a  new  country  to  many  brave,  unhappy  Poles,  driven 
from  their  native  land  by  Russian  tyranny. 

2  Some  of  the  members  of  congress  were  so  far  transported  by  exasperated  zeal  beyond  the 
bounds  of  sense   and   moderation,  that  they  proposed  to  bestow  on  France  what  they  would 


not  now 


have  yielded  to  Britain,  by  transferring  to  the  French  ports  the  same  monopoly  of 
1  commerce  which  the  British  had  hitherto  enjoyed.     Treaties  framed  in  conformi- 


ty witn  such   passionate    propositions  could  not  have  been  durably  binding  or  satisfactory. 
The  counsels  of  the  re^ 


American  commerce  which  the  British  had  hitherto  enjoyed. 

ate    propositions  could  not  have  been  ( 

evolutionary  government  of  America,  though  sometimes  warped  by  pas- 
sion, never  evinced  a  lasting  departure  from  the  principles  of  sound  policy.  In  1778,  an  ex- 
pedition for  the  conquest  of  Canada,  suggested  by  D'Estaing  and  La  Fayette,  was  opposed  by 
Washington,  and  declined  by  the  American  congress.  Britain,  far  more  sincerely  than  Amer* 
ica,  endeavoured  to  employ  Canada  as  a  bribe  to  the  French,  to  whom  she  vainly  offered  to 
H}store  her  now  regretted  conquest  jw  the  price  of  their  deserting  the  American  caus*.      t 


CHAP,  v.]  NEGOTIATIONS  WITH  FRANCE.  53^ 

this  negotiation  ;  and  each  (but  chiefly  the  court  of  France)  was  entrapped 
in  the  toils  of  its  own  craft  and  insincerity.  When  Lord  Stormont,  the 
British  ambassador  at  Paris,  complained  of  the  transmission,  which  he  had 
discovered,  of  military  stores  to  America  from  France,  and  of  the  shelter  and 
facilities  afforded  in  this  country  to  American  privateers,  the  French  gov- 
ernment flatly  denied  any  participation  in  these  transactions,  and  even  car- 
ried dissimulation  so  far  as  to  throw  its  own  agents  into  prison.  And  about 
two  years  after  the  present  period,  when  the  American  congress  was  dissat- 
isfied with  the  conduct  of  Silas  Deane,  —  and  when  Paine,  their  secretary 
for  foreign  correspondence,  had,  in  order  to  depreciate  the  vaunted  services 
of  that  envoy,  published  a  statement  which  showed,  that,  before  the  Amer- 
ican declaration  of  independence,  and  before  even  Deane's  arrival  in  France, 
a  promise  of  succour  was  given  by  this  power  to  America,  —  in  consequence 
of  a  remonstrance  from  the  French  government,  the  congress  consented  to 
sacrifice  its  own  integrity  to  the  reputation  of  its  ally,  and  published  a  denial 
of  Paine's  statement,  which  nevertheless  was  unquestionably  true.  They 
characterized  all  the  secret  succours  they  had  received  from  France  as  mere 
mercantile  consignments  to  them  from  the  private  individuals  whom  they 
well  knew  to  be  agents  of  the  French  minister  ;  and  were  severely  punished 
by  the  embarrassing  claims  which  these  agents  (emulating  the  impudence 
and  hypocrisy  of  the  parties  between  whom  they  transacted)  preferred  for 
repayment  of  their  pretended  advances. * 

The  court  of  France,  regardless  of  the  contest  which  itself  was  actually 
waging  against  the  principles  of  liberty  with  the  provincial  parliaments  of 
the  kingdom,  and  actuated  by  jealousy,  ambition,  and  an  insatiable  spirit  of 
intrigue,  was  willing  to  embarrass  and  weaken  Great  Britain  by  fomenting 
the  quarrel  between  her  and  America,  but  demurred  openly  to  patronize 
American  revolt  and  independence.  Ill-treated  as  the  Americans  had  been, 
this  court  could  not,  without  absurd  and  manifest  hypocrisy,  affect  an  honest 
concern  for  a  people  whom  it  had  long  sought  to  enslave,  nor  honest  disap- 
probation of  a  treatment  far  more  liberal  than  itself  had  ever  bestowed  on 
the  colonies  of  France  ;  and  though  it  did  undervalue,  it  could  not  entirely 
overlook,  the  impolicy  and  peril  of  sanctioning  and  allowing  its  subjects  to 
participate  in  a  democratic  controversy  with  monarchical  authority.  "Let 
France  avoid  open  hostilities,"  said  the  celebrated  French  minister,  Turgot, 
in  a  representation  which  he  addressed  to  his  court  and  colleagues,  *'  but 
privately  aid  the  Americans  with  arms,  ammunition,  and  money.  An  of- 
fensive war  on  our  part  would  unite  the  mother  country  to  her  colonies  by 
giving  to  the  minister  a  pretext  for  yielding,  and  to  the  colonies,  a  motive 
for  acceding  to  his  propositions,  in  order  to  obtain  time  to  consolidate  them- 
selves, to  ripen  their  projects,  and  to  multiply  their  means."  It  was  the 
force  of  public  sentiment  and  opinion  in  France,  partly  nurtured  by  the  in- 
triguing pohcy  of  the  French  court,  that  ultimately  overcame  the  scruples 
of  this  court,  and  prevailed  with  it  to  espouse  openly  the  cause  of  America. 
The  most  active,  the  most  influential,  and  the  most  generous  promoter  and 
partisan  of  this  cause  in  France,  and  indeed  in  Europe,  was  a  young  French 

*  Pitkin,  Franklin's  Pn'rale  Correspondence.  Botta.  The  congress  showed  more  regard  to 
the  principles  of  honor  in  its  domestic  than  in  its  foreign  policy.  It  withstood  and  counter- 
acted the  general  but  erroneous  inpression  of  the  incapacity  of  Generals  Schuyler  and  St. 
Clair,  which  the  Americans  derived  from  the  unexpected  surrender  of  Ticonderoga  to  Bur- 
goyne  in  the  year  1777  ;  but  instructed  its  foreign  agents  to  propagate  that  impression  in  Europe 
as  an  antidote  to  the  unfavorable  prognostic  that  might  be  formed  of  American  spirit  and 
good  fortune. 


536  HISTORY   OF  JVORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

officer,  the  Marquis  de  la  Fayette.  The  circumstance  ^  from  which  his 
connection  with  America  originated  was  curious  and  remarkable,  and  oc- 
curred in  the  commencement  of  the  present  year,  when  this  illustrious  friend 
of  human  liberty,  then  in  the  nineteenth  year  of  his  age,  was  in  garrison  with 
his  regiment  at  the  town  of  Metz.  Here  arrived,  in  the  progress  of  a  con- 
tinental #our  which  he  was  pursuing,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  brother  of 
the  king  of  Britain,  who,  having  contracted  a  marriage  that  was  deemed 
unsuitable  to  his  dignity,  was  discountenanced  by  his  reigning  brother  and 
denied  the  privilege  of  presenting  his  duchess  at  court.  The  duke  sought 
to  cover  his  disgrace  under  the  show  of  a  conscientious  opposition  to  the 
measures  and  policy  of  the  British  government,  and  vented  his  discontent 
in  passionate  declamations  in  favor  of  liberty  and  reprobation  of  arbitrary 
power.  Having  accepted  an  invitation  to  dine  with  the  French  officers  at 
Metz,  he  launched,  after  dinner,  into  an  animated  exposition  of  British 
tyranny  and  of  the  gallant  spirit  of  resistance  which  it  had  provoked  in 
America,  and  indulged  his  spurious  zeal  on  this  theme  with  such  success, 
as  to  kindle  in  the  breast  of  young  La  Fayette  a  purer  and  more  generous 
fire,  and  awaken  the  first  glimmering  of  that  purpose  which  soon  after 
broke  forth  with  so  much  honor  and  glory  in  the  enterprise  by  which  he 
staked  his  life  and  fortune  on  the  cause  of  American  freedom.  And  thus 
the  irritated  pride  and  effervescent  impatience  of  a  discontented  scion  and 
ally  of  royalty  was  able  to  rouse  the  zeal,  dormant  as  yet  from  lack  of  knowl- 
edge and  opportunity,  of  a  champion,  as  virtuous  and  heroic  at  least  as  the 
world  has  ever  produced,  of  the  principles  of  democracy  and  the  just  rights 
of  men.  So  strange  (was  the  remark  of  La  Fayette  himself  fifty-three 
years  after)  are  the  concatenations  of  human  affairs  !  ^ 

We  must  now  transfer  our  attention  from  Europe  to  America,  and  briefly 
surv^ey  the  posture  and  conduct  of  the  American  forces,  which,  encamped  in 
Massachusetts,  watched  the  motions  and  blockaded  the  position  of  Howe  and 
the  British  army.  Washington,  on  his  arrival  at  the  camp,  had  found  (he 
acknowledged)  the  materials  for  a  good  army,  but  assembled,  rather  than 
combined,  and  in  a  state  of  the  crudest  composition.  Never  was  a  military 
commander  beset  by  a  greater  or  more  perplexing  variety  of  counteractions. 
The  troops  having  been  separately  raised  by  the  various  provincial  govern- 
ments, no  uniformity  existed  among  the  regiments.  Animated  by  the  spirit 
of  that  liberty  for  which  they  were  preparing  to  fight,  and  unaccustomed  to 
discipline,  they  neither  felt  the  inclination  nor  appreciated  the  importance  of 
subjection  to  military  rules.  Every  one  was  more  forward  to  advise  and  to 
command  than  to  obey,  —  forgetful  that  independence  must  be  securely  ac- 
quired before  it  can  be  safely  enjoyed,  and  unaware  that  liberty,  to  be  gained 
by  batde,  must  be  preceded  by  submission,  nearly  mechanical,  to  the  stern- 
est restraint  of  absolute  authority.  In  many  of  the  regiments  the  officers  had 
been  elected  by  their  troops,  whose  suffrages  too  often  were  gained  by  a 
show  of  enthusiastic  confidence  which  was  mistaken  for  genius  and  valor, 
and  of  furious  zeal  for  American  liberty  which  not  less  erroneously  was  sup- 
posed the  certain  test  of  pure  honor,  generous  virtue,  and  sound  patriotism. 
In  other  cases,  it  proved,  that,  when  a  regiment  was  in  process  of  constitu- 

*  Related  to  the  author  by  La  Fayette  himself. 

^  "La  Fayette  trouvait  la  cause  des  Americains  juste  et  sacrfee  :  raffection  qu'il  lui  portait 
etait  d'autant  plus  vive,  qu'independamment  de  la  candeur  de  son  caract^re,  n'ayant  encore 
que  dix-neuf  ans,  il  etait  dans  I'age  ou  le  bien  parait  non  seulement  bon,  mais  beau,  et  ou  tous 
Ifcs  sentimens  deviennent  des  passions."  Botta.    See  Note  XXXVI.,at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


CHAP,  v.]  CONDITION  OF  THE  AME5^1CAN  ARMY.  537 

tion,  the  men  elected  only  those  for  officers  who  consented  to  throw  their 
pay  into  a  joint  stock,  from  which  all  the  members  of  the  regimental  body, 
officers,  drummers,  and  privates,  drew  equal  shares.  These  defects  were 
counterbalanced  by  the  ardent  zeal  and  stubborn  resolution  of  the  troops, 
and  the  strong  persuasion  they  cherished  of  the  justice  and  glory  of  their 
country's  cause.  When  the  last  speech  of  the  British  monarch  to  his  par- 
liament was  circulated  in  the  camp,  it  produced  a  violent  burst  of  universal 
indignation,  and  was  publicly  burned  by  the  soldiers  with  the  strongest  de- 
monstrations of  contempt  and  abhorrence.  They  expunged  at  the  same 
time  from  their  standards  every  emblem  appropriate  to  the  British  crown, 
and  adopted  a  flag  variegated  with  thirteen  colored  stripes,  in  allusion  to  the 
number  of  the  confederated  provinces.  The  difficulty  of  establishing  a  due 
subordination  in  the  American  camp  was  greatly  enhanced  by  the  shortness 
of  the  terms  for  which  the  regiments  were  enlisted,  none  of  which  were 
to  endure  for  more  than  a  few  months.  Nor  was  it  long  before  Washington, 
in  addition  to  his  other  embarrassments,  made  the  alarming  discovery,  that 
his  troops  labored  under  a  deficiency  of  bayonets,  and  that  all  the  powder 
in  his  possession  was  barely  sufficient  to  furnish  each  man  with  nine  car- 
tridges. ^  By  the  exertion  of  consummate  address,  and  with  a  magnanimous 
sacrifice  of  his  own  reputation  to  his  country's  interest,  he  succeeded  ia 
concealing  these  dangerous  deficiencies  both  from  the  enemy  and  from  the 
general  knowledge  of  the  American  people,  some  of  whom,  with  audacious 
absurdity  and  injustice,  imputed  to  him  a  wilful  forbearance  to  destroy  the 
British  forces,  for  the  sake  of  prolonging  his  own  importance  at  the  head 
of  the  American  army.  Destitute  of  tents,  a  great  portion  of  this  army 
was  lodged  in  scattered  dwellings,  a  circumstance  unfavorable  equally  to  dis- 
cipline and  to  promptitude  of  operation.  There  was  no  conEwnissary-general 
and  consequently  no  systematic  arrangement  for  obtaining  provisions.  A 
supply  of  clothes  was  rendered  peculiarly  difficult  by  the  effect  of  the  non- 
importation agreements.  There  was  besides  a  lack  of  engineers,  and  a 
deficiency  of  tools  for  the  construction  of  works.  The  American  States 
were  unaccustomed  to  combined  exertion,  which  was  farther  obstructed  by 
the  incompact  and  indefinite  frame  of  the  federal  league  into  which  their 
common  rage  and  danger  had  driven  them.  Practically  independent  of  the 
supreme  authority  of  congress,  and  little  acquainted  with  each  other's  condi- 
lion  and  resources,  the  provincial  governments  respectively  indulged  too  often 
B.  narrow  jealousy  of  imposing  on  their  constituents  a  disproportioned  share 
of  the  general  burdens  ;  and  from  inexperience,  in  addition  to  other  causes, 
iheir  operations  were  so  defective  in  harmony,  that  stores  of  food,  clothing, 
and  implements  of  war,  collected  for  the  army,  sometimes  perished,  and 
were  often  injuriously  detained  by  neglect  of  the  means  of  transporting  them 
lo  their  appointed  destination. 

Washington,  happily  qualified  to  endure  and  overcome  difficulties,  prompt- 
ly adopted  and  patiently  pursued  the  most  judicious  and  effectual  means  to 
organize  the  troops,  to  fit  them  for  combined  movements  and  active  service, 
and  to  introduce  and  mature  arrangements  for  securing  a  steady  flow  of  the 
necessary  supplies.  Next  to  these  measures,  he  judged  the  reenhstment  of 
the  army  the  most  mteresting.  To  this  essential  object  he  had  early  solicited 

^  Shipments  of  ammunition  and  warlike  stores  were  made  about  this  time  from  Ireland  to 
the  North  American  States.  Some  of  the  parties,  concerned  in  these  transactions  were  dwKOv 
ared  and.impri«med  by  the  BcitiafasgOkV«niiin«iit.    jammal  Mtgifter  fgr  >177!6. 

VOL.  II.  68       \  '       :.^M    .c 


538  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

the  attention  of  congress,  who  appointed  a  committee  of  its  members  to  re- 
pair to  the  military  head-quarters  at  Cambridge,  in  order  to  consult  with 
the  commander-in-chief  and  the  magistrates  of  the  New  England  States  on 
the  most  eligible  mode  of  preserving,  supporting,  and  regulating  a  conti- 
nental army.  Recruiting  orders  were  issued  ;  but  the  progress  in  collect- 
ing recruits  was  not  proportioned  to  the  public  exigence.  Many  Americans, 
firmly  attached  to  the  cause  of  their  country,  indulged  their  reluctance  to  the 
toil  and  hardship  of  military  life  under  the  shelter  of  a  fond  credulity  which 
still  lingered  in  contemplation  of  an  adjustment  of  the  dispute  with  Britain 
without  farther  bloodshed.  At  the  close  of  the  last  year,  when  all  the 
original  troops  not  engaged  on  the  new  establishment  were  disbanded,  there 
had  been  enlisted  for  the  army  of  1776  little  more  than  nine  thousand  men. 
An  earnest  recommendation  of  Washington  to  try  the  influence  of  a  bounty 
was  at  length  acceded  to  by  the  congress  [January,  1776],  and  during 
the  winter  the  number  of  recruits  was  considerably  augmented.  Soon  after 
his  assumption  of  the  supreme  command,  Washington  engaged  as  his  secre- 
tary and  aid-de-camp  Joseph  Reed,  a  distinguished  lawyer  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  latterly  a  determined  advocate  of  American  independence,  who  had  re- 
signed a  lucrative  forensic  practice  at  Philadelphia,  in  order  to  serve  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  continental  army  in  Massachusetts.  In  his  new  functions 
Reed  displayed  so  much  valor  and  ability,  that,  on  the  promotion  of  Gates  in 
the  present  year  to  a  command  directed  against  the  British  forces  in 
Canada,  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  to  the  post  thereby  vacated  of  adjutant- 
general  of  the  American  army.^ 

Before  this  army  received  its  proper  mihtary  organization,  or  discipline 
had  strengthened  the  hands  of  the  officers,  they  were  obliged  to  supply  their 
defective  power  by  the  influence  of  their  own  example  and  the  authority  of 
their  personal  character.  Passion  and  zeal  had  collected  the  first  levies 
of  men.  But  passions  spend  themselves,  and  zeal  declines,  —  while  habits 
of  discipline  abide  ;  and  though  they  render  the  character  of  an  army  much 
less  romantic  and  interesting,  they  mightily  increase  its  steadiness  and  vigor 
as  an  effective  machine.  After  the  first  ardor  of  the  American  troops 
was  somewhat  spent,  considerable  vices  and  disorders  broke  out  among 
them.  The  virtue  (and  it  was  very  great)  that  still  manifested  itself  in  their 
ranks  was  the  more  creditable  from  its  superiority  to  the  contagious  influ- 
ence of  evil  example,  and  as  arising  purely  from  natural  character  and  senti- 
ment, and  not  from  that  professional  sense  of  honor  educated  by  the  habits 
of  civilized  schools  of  war.  Great  disadvantage  has  accrued  to  the  repu- 
tation of  the  American  troops  from  the  almost  intolerable  pressure  of  the  dis- 
tress and  privations  to  which  they  were  exposed  ;  and  in  some  of  the  works 
that  record  their  campaigns,  the  virtue  they  long  exerted  in  resisting  temp- 
tations to  mutiny  and  disorder  is  obscured  by  the  acts  of  pillage  and  deser- 
tion to  which  the  extremity  of  suffering  did  in  the  end  occasionally  impel 
them.  Never  before  had  there  arisen  in  the  world  a  war  so  universally  in- 
teresting to  mankind  as  the  revolutionary  warfare  between  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica. Unlike  prior  wars,  its  incidents  were  instantly  recorded  by  numerous 
pens  arid  extensively  circulated  with  the  minutest  detail.  Harsh  lines  and 
features  were  thus  preserved,  which  would  have   escaped  or  been  softened 

-  ^  It  wa&this  officer  who  two  years  after  thus  replied  to  the  offers  of  riches  and  honors  by 
which  the  agents  of  Britain  endeavoured  to  detach  him  from  the  cause  of  his  country  :  —  "1 
am  not  worth  purcliasiitg ;  but,  gubh  as  I  am,  thb  king  of  Great  Britain  is  not  ticb  enough  to 
buy  me."  '^ 


CHAP.  V-l         RAVAGES  OF  LORD  DUNMORE.  gg^ 

in  a  more  distant  survey  ;  and  circumstances  both  melancholy  and  disgust- 
ing, the  concomitants  of  every  war,  have  by  many  writers  and  readers  beea 
regarded  as  almost,  if  not  entirely,  peculiar  to  the  war  of  the  American 
Revolution. 

The  conflicts  of  Lexington  and  Bunker's  Hill,  and  other  similar  en- 
counters that  signalized  the  commencement  of  hostilities,  tended  to  delude 
the  Americans  with  very  exaggerated  notions  of  the  efficacy  of  their  militia> 
which  had  been  exhibited  in  situations  peculiarly  favorable  to  a  force  of  this 
description.  They  entertained  a  rooted  prejudice  against  troops  of  the 
line,  and,  appreciating  the  example  of  Braddock  as  erroneously  as  that  un- 
fortunate commander  had  appreciated  his  own  position,  they  cherished  the 
chimerical  hope  of  organizing  every  year  a  new  militia  force  capable  of 
withstanding  the  attack  of  a  regular  army.  The  prevalence  and  the  dan- 
gerous consequences  of  this  delusion  were  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  gen- 
eral panic  and  consternation  that  followed  the  first  victories  of  the  disci- 
plined troops  of  Britain  in  the  close  of  the  present  year.  It  was  a  more 
surprising  and  more  honorable  trait  in  the  character  of  the  American  troops 
and  people,  that  even  in  such  trying  circumstances  they  were  never  tempted 
to  withdraw  the  generous  confidence  which  they  reposed  in  their  command- 
ers, but  invariably  displayed  a  noble  superiority  to  those  mean  suspicions 
of  treachery  which  rage  and  vanity  so  readily  suggest  to  nations  irritated  by 
reverses  after  having  been  intoxicated  by  success.  A  numerous  party  in 
the  congress,  however,  continued  long  to  resist  the  formation  of  a  regular, 
army  ;  and  even  when  this  could  no  longer  be  avoided,  they  jealously  op- 
posed the  measures  that  were  necessary  to  the  improvement  of  its  military 
habits  and  discipline.  "  God  forbid,"  they  exclaimed,  "  that  the  civic  char- 
acter should  be  so  far  lost  in  the  soldiers  of  our  army,  that  they  should 
cease  to  long  for  the  enjoyments  of  domestic  happiness.  Let  frequent  fur- 
loughs be  granted,  rather  than  the  endearments  of  wives  and  children  should 
cease  to  allure  the  individuals  of  our  army  from  camps  to  farms."  ^ 

Lord  Dunmore,  the  fugitive  governor  of  Virginia,  still  continued,  with  a 
flotilla  carrying  a  force  composed  of  British  troops  and  American  Royal- 
ists, to  ravage  the  Virginian  coasts.  On  the  first  day  of  this  year,  the  town, 
of  Norfolk,  which  had  formerly  experienced  his  hostility,  was  by  his  direc- 
tions reduced  to  ashes  by  the  guns  of  the  Liverpool  man-of-war.  This 
vessel  on  her  arrival  from  England  having  joined  Lord  Dunmore's  flotilla^ 
a  flag  was  sent  on  shore  to  demand  if  the  inhabitants  of  Norfolk  would 
supply  his  Majesty's  ship  with  provisions.  On  the  return  of  a  negative 
answer,  the  town  was  bombarded,  and  property  to  the  value  of  three  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds  sterling  destroyed.  The  provincials  themselves  de- 
molished the  houses  and  wasted  the  plantations  situated  near  the  water,  in 
order  to  deprive  the  ships  of  every  resource  of  supply.  The  barbarous 
and  inglorious  cruise,  in  which  Lord  Dunmore  persisted  for  some  time  longer, 
issued  in  the  discomfiture  of  his  arms  and  the  ruin  of  his  American  asso- 
ciates. Everywhere  committing  havoc,  but  everywhere  repulsed,  he  beheld 
some  of  his  vessels  driven  by  storms  on  the  coast,  where  the  survivors  of  the 

*  "Men  unaccustomed  to  control,"  said  an  enlightened  American  patriot,  "cannot  in  a 
day  be  taught  the  necessity,  or  be  brought  to  see  the  expediency,  of  strict  discipline.  Expe- 
rience has  shown  that  our  militia  will  not  stand  fire.  Tliey  will  not  fight  fi-om  home.  Men 
must  learn  to  fight  as  they  learn  any  thing  else.  No  laws  can  be  too  severe  for  the  govern- 
ment of  men  who  live  by  the  sword,  and  who  have  this  only  reply  for  their  ravages, —  ^if 
negat  arma  tenentif  " 


^^  '  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

cre^vb  \^'^re  mad^  prisoners  by  their  exasperated  fellow-citizens.  Constrained 
at  length  to  consult  his  own  safety  in  preference  to  empty  visions  of  con- 
quest or  the  farther  pursuit  of  a  perilous  revenge,  Lord  Dunmore,  having 
first  burned  the  least  valuable  vessels  of  his  squadron,  bade  adieu  with  the 
rest  to  the  scene  of  his  barbarity  and  disgrace ;  and  the  miserable  remnant 
of  soldiers  and  Royahsts,  assailed  at  once  by  tempest,  famine,  and  disease, 
sought  refuge  in  Florida,  Bermudas,  and  the  West  Indies. 

The  exertions  by  which  Martin,  the  fugitive  governor  of  North  Carolina, 
signalized  his  constancy  to  the  cause  of  Britain,  were  as  illiberal  and  unsuc- 
cessful as  those  of  Lord  Dunmore,  though,  happily,  less  protracted  and 
mischievous.  Attacked  in  the  commencement  of  the  present  year  by  a 
body  of  provincial  troops  and  mihtia,  the  partisans  of  royalty  whom  Martin's 
intrigues  had  drawn  to  a  head,  though  greatly  superior  in  number  to  their 
assailants,  sustained  a  defeat  which  completely  blasted  the  hopes  and  ex- 
tinguished the  activity  of  this  party  in  North  Carolina. 

During  the  winter,  the  British  troops  that  occupied  Boston  suffered  great 
privations  from  scarcity  of  food  and  of  fuel.  An  armament,  which  their 
commander  despatched  in  quest  of  provisions  to  Savannah,  in  Georgia,  was 
opposed  by  the  militia  of  this  province,  and,  after  some  sharp  encounters, 
finally  repulsed.  Washington  had  hitherto  found  ample  scope  for  his  most 
strenuous  activity  within  the  limits  of  his  own  encampment  ;  ^  but  desirous 
now  by  some  grand  and  important  achievement  to  elevate  the  spirits  of  his 
army  and  country,  he  conceived  the  project  of  attacking  Boston  as  soon  as 
the  circumstances  of  his  situation  might  seem  to  justify  an  effort  so  critical 
and  adventurous.  Towards  the  middle  of  February,  the  coldest  portion  of 
the  season  having  begun,  and  the  ice  becoming  sufficiently  firm  to  support 
the  troops,  he  was  disposed  to  undertake  that  enterprise  ;  but  deferred  it 
with  reluctance  in  consequence  of  the  almost  unanimous  disapprobation  of 
his  council  of  war.  The  effective  regular  force  of  the  Americans  in  this 
quarter  now  amounted  to  upwards  of  fourteen  thousand  men,  —  in  addition 
to  which,  the  commander-in-chief  called  into  active  service  about  six  thou- 
sand of  the  militia  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  with  these  forces  he  determined 
to  take  possession  of  the  Heights  of  Dorchester,  whence  he  would  possess 
the  power  of  inflicting  severe  annoyance  on  the  British  soldiery  and  shipping 
in  the  town  and  harbour  of  Boston.  By  assuming  this  position,  from  which 
an  attempt  to  dislodge  him  by  the  enemy  was  certain,  he  expected  to  bring 
6n  a  general  action,  during  which  he  intended  to  cross  with  a  part  of  his 
forces  from  the  Cambridge  side  of  the  river  and  attack  the  town  of  Bos- 

^  "  It  is  not  in  the  pages  of  history,  perhaps,"  he  observed  in  a  letter  to  the  congress,  "  to 
fbmish  a  case  like  ours.  To  maintain  a  position  within  musket-shot  of  the  enemy  for  six 
months  together  without  ammunition,  and  at  the  same  time  to  disband  one  army  and  recru  t 
another  within  that  distance  of  more  than  twenty  British  regiments,  is  more,  probably,  than 
ever  was  before  attempted."  —  "  During  the  siege  of  Boston,  General  Washington  consulted 
congress  upon  the  propriety  of  bombarding  the  town.  Mr.  Hancock  was  then  president 
of  congress.  After  General  Washington's  letter  was  read,  a  solemn  silence  ensued.  This 
was  broken:  by  a  member  making  a  motion,  that  the  house  should  resolve  itself  into  a  commit- 
tee of  the  whole,  in  order  that  Mr.  Hancock  might  give  his  opinion  upon  the  subject,  as  he 
was  so  deeply  iiJterested  from  having  all  his  estate  in  Boston.  After  he  left  the  chair,  he  ad- 
dressed the  chainnan  of  the  committee  of  the  whole  in  the  following  words:  —  'It  is  true.  Sir, 
nearly  all  the  property  I  have  in  the  world  is  in  houses  and  other  real  estate  in  the  town  of 
Boston  ;  but  if  the  expulsion  of  the  British  army  from  it  and  the  liberty  of  our  country  require 
their  being  burnt  to  ashes,  issue  the  orders  for  that  purpose  immediately.'  "  Sanderson's  Bi- 
ography of  the  Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  "  The  animation  of  the  times 
raised  the  actors  in  these  scenes  above  themselves,  and  excited  them  to  deeds  of  self-denial 
♦'hich  the  interested  prudence  of  calmer  seasons  can  scarcely  credit."    Ramsay^. 


CHAP.  V.J  THE  BRITISH  EVACUATE  BOSTON.  5|| 

ton  ;  counting,  doubtless,  on  being  aided  by  a  simultaneous  insurrection  of 
the  citizens.  To  conceal  his  design  by  diverting  the  attention  of  the  British 
army,  a  heavy  bombardment  of  their  lines  was  commenced  one  evening 
[March  2]  and  continued  during  the  two  following  nights.  On  the  third 
evening  [March  4],  immediately  after  the  firing  began,  a  strong  detachment 
o(  the  American  forces  under  the  command  of  General  Thomas,  proceed- 
ing from  Roxbury,  took  silent  possession  of  Dorchester  Heights.  The 
ground  was  almost  impenetrably  hard,  but  the  night  was  mild  ;  and  by  la- 
boring with  great  diligence,  the  troops  before  morning  advanced  their  works 
so  far  as  to  cover  themselves  in  a  great  measure  from  the  shot  of  the  enemy. 
When  the  British,  at  break  of  day  [March  5],  discovered  these  works, 
magnified  to  their  view  by  the  intervention  of  a  hazy  atmosphere,  they 
were  struck  with  astonishment,  and  gloomily  anticipated  a  repetition  of 
the  carnage  of  Bunker's  Hill.  "  The  rebels  have  done  more  in  one  night, '^ 
said  General  Howe,  "  than  my  whole  army  would  have  done  in  a  month." 
Nothing  now  remained  but  to  abandon  the  town  or  instantly  to  dislodge 
the  Americans  from  Dorchester  Heights.  Howe,  with  more  enterprise 
and  energy  than  usually  characterized  his  mihtary  policy,  decided  to  venture; 
an  attack  ;  and  took  measures  for  the  embarkation  on  the  same  evening  of 
two  thousand  chosen  troops  on  this  important  and  hazardous  service.  The 
Americans,  remarking  this  demonstration,  prepared  to  abide  the  encounter 
with  a  lively  valor,  which  was  inflamed  to  the  utmost  eagerness  by  Washing- 
ton's seasonable  remark  to  them,  that  this  was  the  anniversary  of  the  Boston 
massacre^  and  that  the  day  of  vengeance  for  tlieir  slaughtered  countrymen  had 
arrived.  But  the  royal  troops  were  hardly  embarked  in  the  transports, 
when  a  tremendous  storm  arose,  and  the  fury  of  the  elements,  intercepting 
human  strife,  rendered  the  execution  of  Howe's  design  impracticable.  A 
British  council  of  war  was  assembled  the  next  morning  [March  6],  and 
recommended  the  evacuation  of  Boston  with  all  possible  speed.  Whether 
from  the  numerous  preparations  which  were  requisite,  or  from  a  lingering 
sentiment  of  shame  in  the  breast  of  the  British  commander,  some  delay 
occurred  before  this  measure  was  carried  into  effect.  Meanwhile,  the 
Americans  were  actively  engaged  in  strengthening  and  extending  their 
works  ;  and  on  the  morning  of  the  17th  of  March,  the  British  discovered  a 
breastwork  which  had  been  constructed  by  their  enemies  during  the  night 
at  Nook's  Hill,  on  Dorchester  Peninsula,  and  completely  commanded  Bos- 
ton Neck  and  the  southern  quarters  of  the  town.  Delay  was  no  longer 
consistent  with  safety.  A  flag  of  truce  was  sent  by  the  selectmen  of  the 
town  to  Washington,  intimating  that  Howe  was  making  preparation  to  re- 
tire, and  that  he  was  willing  to  leave  the  town  undamaged  provided  his  own 
retreat  were  unmolested.  Washington  declined  to  give  any  pledge  to  this 
efl!ect,  but  expressed  himself  in  terms  that  tranquillized  his  countrymen  and 
the  British  commander.  At  four  o'clock  the  next  morning  [March  18], 
the  discomfited  British  army,  amounting  to  about  ten  thousand  men,  and 
attended  by  all  the  inhabitants  of  Boston  who  were  attached  to  the  royal 
cause,  began  to  embark ;  and  in  a  few  hours  they  were  under  sail  for  Hal- 
ifax, in  Nova  Scotia.  As  the  British  rear-guard  embarked,  Washington,  at 
the  head  of  his  successful  forces,  marched  into  Boston,  whose  remaining 
inhabitants  hailed  their  dehverance  and  deliverer  with  triumphant  joy.  A 
considerable  quantity  of  valuable  military  stores  fell  into  the  possession  of 
the  victors ;  and  a  British  vessel,  arriving  at  Boston  soon  after,  with  a  tardy 

TT 


542  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

reinforcement  to  the  fugitive  army,  was  forced  to  surrender  the  troops  she 
conveyed  as  prisoners  of  war.  The  American  congress  testified  their 
satisfaction  with  this  exploit  by  a  formal  resolve,  "  That  thanks  be  presented 
to  General  Washington  and  the  officers  and  soldiers  under  his  command 
for  their  wise  and  spirited  conduct  in  the  siege  and  acquisition  of  Boston^ 
and  that  a  medal  of  gold  be  struck  in  commemoration  of  this  great  event 
and  presented  to  his  Excellency."  Shortly  after  the  departure  of  the 
British  troops  from  the  town,  the  fortification  of  its  harbour  was  undertaken 
and  accomplished  by  the  zeal  of  the  people  of  Boston  and  of  the  neighbour- 
ing districts.  Many  persons  (clergymen  as  well  as  laymen)  aided  as  vol- 
unteers in  this  important  service  ;  and  only  the  poorest  of  the  inhabitants  who 
took  a  share  in  it  received  wages  for  their  labor. 

It  was  at  this  period,  that  a  remarkable  debate  occurred  in  the  British 
House  of  Lords  on  a  motion  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton  for  pacifying  America 
by  concessions.  The  motion  was  negatived  by  a  great  majority  of  voices  ; 
the  supporters  of  the  ministry  now  explicitly  declaring  that  the  season  for 
conciliation  was  past,  and  that  to  America  there  remained  only  the  alterna- 
tive of  absolute  conquest  or  unconditional  submission. 

While  a  part  of  the  British  troops  were  employed  this  year  in  reinforcing 
the  garrison  of  Quebec  and  recovering  Canada  from  the  American  invaders 
[May],  another  body  had  been  directed  to  acquire  and  occupy  some  com- 
manding position  in  the  southern  provinces  of  America.  The  conduct  of 
this  enterprise  was  committed  to  General  Chnton  and  Sir  Peter  Parker, 
who,  having  formed  a  junction  at  Cape  Fear,  resolved  to  attempt  the  re- 
duction of  Charleston,  the  metropolis  of  South  Carolina.  For  this  place 
they  accordingly  sailed  with  two  thousand  eight  hundred  land  forces  ;  and 
crossing  Charleston  Bar,  anchored  about  three  miles  from  Sullivan's  Island. 
[June  4.]  The  people  of  South  Carolina  had  already  made  the  most 
strenuous  efforts  to  put  the  province,  and  especially  its  capital,  in  a  posture 
of  defence.  Works  were  constructed  on  Sullivan's  Island,  which  lies 
about  six  miles  below  Charleston  towards  the  sea,  and  affords  a  post  well 
adapted  to  the  annoyance  and  interruption  of  ships  approaching  the  town. 
The  militia  of  the  State  now  repaired  in  great  numbers  to  Charleston  ;  and 
General  Charles  Lee,  on  whom  the  national  congress  bestowed  the  immedi- 
ate command  of  all  the  forces  in  the  southern  department  of  the  common- 
wealth, arrived  at  this  critical  juncture  with  a  detachment  of  regular  troops 
from  the  northern  provinces.  After  having  consumed  much  valuable  time 
in  preparatory  inquiries  and  arrangements,  Parker  attacked  [June  28]  the 
fort  on  Sulhvan's  Island  with  a  squadron  which  poured  upon  it  a  fire  from 
two  hundred  and  fifty-four  cannons.  On  the  fort  were  mounted  twenty- 
six  guns,  with  which  the  garrison,  consisting  of  three  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  regulars  and  a  few  militia,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Moultrie, 
made  a  gallant  defence  ;  while  Colonel  Thompson,  at  the  head  of  seven 
hundred  men,  confronted  and  prevented  an  attack  which  was  menaced  by 
Chnton  in  another  quarter  of  the  island.  The  assault  was  maintained  for 
ten  hours.  Shortly  after  it  began,  the  flag-staff  of  the  fort,  struck  by  a 
shot,  fell  down  upon  the  beach  ;  whence  it  was  instantly  resumed  by  Jas- 
per, a  sergeant  in  the  American  army,  who,  springing  from  the  wall,  and 
reascending  amidst  a  furious  storm  of  battle,  replaced  it  on  the  top  of  the 
rampart.  Three  of  the  British  ships,  advancing  to  attack  the  western  wing, 
became  entangled  with  a  shoal  ;  and  to  this  incident  the  final  deliverance 


CHAP,  v.]  INDIAN  ALLIANCES  OF  BRITAIN.  543 

of  the  garrison  was  ascribed.  At  night  the  firing  ceased  on  both  sides, 
the  British  ships  slipped  their  cables,  and  the  enterprise  was  abandoned. 
In  this  action,  the  deliberate  and  well  directed  fire  of  the  garrison  severely- 
shattered  the  hostile  vessels,  of  whose  crews  more  than  two  hundred  were 
killed  and  wounded.  Ten  men  killed  and  twenty-two  wounded  formed 
the  amount  of  the  loss  sustained  by  the  garrison.  Though  many  thousand 
balls  were  fired  from  the  British  squadron,  yet  the  works  of  the  fort  were 
but  little  damaged.  Its  walls  were  formed  chiefly  of  the  wood  of  the  pal- 
metto, a  tree  indigenous  to  South  Carolina,  and  of  a  remarkably  spongy  na- 
ture ;  whence,  the  shot  that  took  effect  was  buried  in  the  wood  without 
shivering  or  splintering  the  object  of  resistance.  Scarcely  a  hut  or  tree 
on  the  island  escaped  uninjured.  Among  other  American  officers  engaged 
in  this  affair  was  Francis  Marion,  so  highly  renowned  in  the  progress  of 
the  war  for  enterprising  valor  and  inflexible  fortitude  and  perseverance. 
The  thanks  of  congress  were  voted  to  Lee,  Moultrie,  and  Thompson, — 
an  honor  very  little  merited  by  Lee,  who  had  rashly  proposed  to  evacuate 
Sullivan's  Island,  and  was  restrained  from  the  commission  of  such  a  peril- 
ous act  of  folly  and  timidity  only  by  the  resolute  interference  of  John  Rut- 
iedge.^  Yet  Lee  was  a  very  skilful  officer,  and,  though  eccentric,  an  able 
and  courageous  man. 

•  Relieved  from  the  presence  of  the  British  armament,  the  southern  prov- 
inces had  leisure  to  employ  their  forces  in  repelling  and  punishing  an  attack 
they  sustained  from  a  different  quarter.  No  sooner  did  the  controversy  be- 
tween Britain  and  America  assume  an  aspect  that  betokened  war,  than  the 
policy  of  the  parent  state  was  exerted  to  induce  the  Indian  tribes  to  espouse 
her  interest  and  support  her  quarrel.  In  the  month  of  July,  1775,  a  number 
of  Indian  chiefs,  instigated  by  the  hope  of  a  wide,  ferocious  range  in  car- 
nage, pillage,  and  devastation,  and  conducted  by  Johnson,  the  principal 
agent  of  Britain  with  these  savages,  repaired  to  Montreal  and  solemnly 
pledged  themselves  to  support  the  cause  of  the  British  king  against  the 
American  people.  They  readily  hearkened  to  Johnson's  plausible  repre- 
sentation that  the  king  was  their  natural  protector  against  those  encroaching 
colonists,  who,  if  they  should  succeed  in  their  opposition  to  Britain,  would 
probably  next  attempt  the  extirpation  of  their  colored  neighbours.  Stuart, 
another  British  agent,  by  magnificent  promises  of  reward  and  assistance, 
had  more  recently  induced  the  Creeks  and  the  Cherokees  to  interrupt  their 
friendly  relation  with  Virginia  and  the  Carolinas.  The  Creeks,  eagerly 
rushing  to  war,  were  as  suddenly  depressed  and  paralyzed  by  the  manifest 
inability  of  Stuart  to  fulfil  his  insidious  promises.  Imploring  and  obtaining 
pardon  from  the  colonists,  they  rejected  a  subsequent  overture  of  alliance 

^  Annual  Register  for  1776.  Gordon.  Bradford.  Ramsay's  Histories  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution and  of  the  Revolution  of  South  Carolina.  Holmes.  Garden.  Botta.  Rogers.  Pitkin. 
Nothing  could  exceed  the  bravery  which  the  British  displayed  in  their  attack  on  Sullivan's 
Island.  The  behaviour  of  Morris,  captain  of  the  Bristol  man-of-war,  was  particularly  cele- 
brated. After  receiving  a  severe  wound  in  the  neck,  and  having  his  right  arm  shattered  by  a 
chain-shot,  he  retired  to  the  cockpit  of  his  vessel,  where  the  mangled  limb  was  amputated. 
No  sooner  was  this  operation  performed  than  he  reascended  the  deck,  where,  as  he  was  un- 
dauntedly directing  and  animating  the  fight,  he  received  a  third  and  mortal  wound.  Such 
valor  must  have  tnumphed  but  for  the  equal  valor  with  which  it  was  encountered.  The 
American  sergeant,  Jasper,  executed  what  even  the  romantic  courage  of  Hotspur  would  hard- 
ly have  deemed  "  an  easy  leap."  A  sword  was  presented  and  a  commission  offered  to  this 
gallant  man  by  the  provincial  government  of  South  Carolina.  The  sword  he  gratefully  ac- 
cepted, the  commission  he  modestly  declined.  And  yet  Lord  George  Germaine,  who  had 
himself  been  cashiered  by  a  court-martial  for  cowardice,  expected  to  subdue  and  enslave  such 


544  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

from  thje  Cherokees,  protesting  that  they  had  wonderfully  escaped  from 
destruction,  and  were  determined  never  again  to  court  such  jeopardy  or 
need  such  good  fortune.  The  Cherokees,  with  more  stubborn  ferocity, 
adhered  to  their  hostile  purpose  ;  and,  encouraged  by  the  approach  of  Chn- 
ton  and  Parker,  committed  the  most  ruthless  ravages  on  the  Virginian  and 
Carohnian  frontiers.  Attacked  by  the  combined  forces  of  these  provinces 
after  the  repulse  of  the  British  from  Sullivan's  Island,  the  Cherokees  were 
defeated  in  various  engagements  and  forced  to  evacuate  their  territory  and 
take  refuge  in  Florida. 

The  most  important  enterprise  by  which  the  British  government  proposed 
to  illustrate  the  campaign  of  this  year  was  the  occupation  of  New  York  by 
a  powerful  body  of  troops,  composed  of  a  detachment  from  the  army  of 
Sir  William  Howe,  aided  by  reinforcements  despatched  from  England  under 
the  command  of  his  brother.  Lord  Howe,  who,  along  with  himself,  in  ad- 
dition to  their  mihtary  functions,  were  appointed  to  exercise  the  vain  office 
of  commissioners  for  restoring  peace  and  harmony  between  Britain  and 
America,  by  granting  pardons  in  the  king's  name  to  such  Americans  as 
would  surrender  their  arms  and  sue  for  indulgence.  Washington  was  sen- 
sible of  the  danger  to  which  New  York  was  exposed  from  the  importance 
which  the  British  must  attach  to  its  occupation ;  and,  during  the  siege  of 
Boston,  had  detached  General  Lee  from  the  camp  in  Massachusetts,  to 
conduct  defensive  preparations  in  Long  Island  and  New  York.  Lee  ar- 
rived at  New  York  two  hours  after  the  appearance  of  some  British  ships 
of  war  off  the  harbour,  and,  finding  the  citizens  much  alarmed  by  the  pros- 
pect of  an  attack  on  the  town,  he  publicly  proclaimed,  that,  "  If  the  men- 
of-war  set  one  house  on  fire  in  consequence  of  my  coming,  I  will  chain  a 
hundred  of  their  friends  together  by  the  neck  and  make  the  house  their  fu- 
neral pile."  He  farther  composed  the  formula  of  a  tremendous  oath,  which 
he  employed  Captain  Sears  to  administer  to  all  persons  suspected  of  inclina- 
tion to  the  royal  cause.  But  the  congress  condemned  and  forbade  such 
proceedings,  by  proclaiming  their  resolve,  "  That  no  oath,  by  way  of  test, 
be  imposed  upon  or  required  of  any  of  the  inhabitants  of  these  colonies  by 
any  military  officer."  Soon  after  the  evacuation  of  Boston,  Washington, 
having  despatched  reinforcements  to  the  American  troops  in  Canada,  and 
leaving  some  troops  in  Massachusetts,  repaired  himself  with  the  main  body 
of  his  army  to  New  York,  where  his  head-quarters  were  established  on  the 
14th  of  April.  Here  the  renewed  and  augmenting  difficulties  of  his  arduous 
predicament  afforded  wide  and  constant  scope  to  the  exercise  of  his  own 
wisdom  and  of  his  countrymen's  patience  and  fortitude.  The  reciprocal 
jealousies  and  prejudices  of  the  continental  troops  of  the  different  States 
broke  forth  in  dissensions,^  which  their  common  interest  and  danger  were 
unable  to  prevent,  and  which  all  their  commander's  influence  barely  sufficed 
to  compose  ;  and  so  imperfect  was  the  provision  of  military  stores,  that 
the  citizens  of  New  York  were  fain  to  surrender  the  leaden  weights  of  their 
windows  to  eke  out  the  ammunition  of  their  defenders.  Every  province 
and  almost  every  seaport  town  in  America  was  pervaded  by  the  apprehen- 
sion that  its  own  individual  danger  from  British  attack  was  the  most  real 
and  immediate ;  and  hence  applications  for  instant  succour  so  numerous  and 

*  "  Their  animosities,"  said  an  jVmerican  officer,  m  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "  have  already  risen  to 
such  a  height,  that  the  Pennsylvania  and  New  England  troops  would  as  soon  fight  each 
pUwr  ^  the  enemy."  ,      ^^  .,  /  ,  .     .,        ,, 


CHAP.    V.j  GERMAN   MERCENARIES.  545 

SO  ui^ent  were  addressed  to  Washington,  that  it  required  all  his  firmness 
and  vigor  to  prevent  the  feeble  American  force  and  the  deficient  stock  of 
public  arms  from  being  divided  and  subdivided  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be 
unequal  to  the  proper  defence  of  any  one  place.  Meanwhile,  Sir  William 
Howe  and  the  Generals  Clinton  and  Lord  Percy,  with  their  forces  which 
had  been  withdrawn  from  Boston,  waited  anxiously  at  Halifax  for  the 
promised  succour  from  Britain  ;  and  it  was  not,  till,  in  despair  of  its  arrival, 
they  had  sailed  for  New  York,  that  they  were  joined  by  the  auxiliary 
British  armament  conducted  by  Lord  Howe  and  Lord  Cornwallis.  But  so 
much  of  the  year  was  then  elapsed,  that  the  ineffectual  attempts  of  the 
commissioners,  as  well  as  the  consequent  military  operations  of  the  British 
ti'oops,  fall  not  within  the  scope  of  this  work. 

The  late  rigorous  measures  of  the  British  king  and  parliament,  in  con- 
currence with  the  actual  progress  of  hostilities,  the  irritating  devastation  of 
the  American  coasts,  and  the  elevating  successes  that  crowned  the  Amer- 
ican arms,  had  contributed  to  inflame  and  propagate  in  America  the  firmest 
purpose  of  decisive  warfare,  and  every  sentiment  tending  to  a  distinct  asser- 
tion of  national  independence.  It  was  openly  proclaimed  by  the  recent  acts 
of  parliament,  that  the  inhabitants  of  America,  so  far  from  being  included 
any  longer  within  the  pale  of  royal  protection,  were  delivered  up  to  the 
most  vindictive  severities  of  mihtary  execution.  "  Protection  and  allegiance 
are  reciprocal,"  became  the  general  exclamation  of  the  Americans  ;  ''and 
to  withdraw  the  one  is  to  discharge  the  other."  By  invading  Canada  the 
Americans  had  practically  expressed  their  determination  to  assert  inde- 
pendence rather  than  yield  submission  or  endure  conquest  ;  and  in  rejecting 
the  conciliatory  overture  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  the  British  government 
had  left  them  no  other  choice  but  between  the  dignity  of  independent  free- 
men and  the  degradation  of  pardoned  rebels. 

Nothing  rendered  the  royal  government  more  generally  odious,  or  contrib- 
uted with  more  decisive  efficacy  to  confirm  and  extend  the  purpose  of  inde- 
pendence, than  the  measure  of  employing  German  mercenary  soldiers  in 
the  subjugation  of  America.^  When  the  Americans  learned  that  foreigners 
were  summoned  to  interfere  in. a  domestic  quarrel,  and  that,  instead  of  con- 
tending with  men  educated  in  the  same  acknowledged  principles  with  them- 
selves, they  were  to  be  exposed  to  the  hired  ferocity  of  German  slaves, 
the  last  tie  that  held  them  to  Britain,  the  allegiance  they  professed  to  their 
prince,  was  dissolved.  "  He  employs,"  they  exclaimed,  "  the  borrowed 
tools  of  the  most  detestable  tyrants  of  Europe,  who  trade  in  human  blood, 
to  subvert  American  liberty,  and  to  erect  on  its  ruins  the  same  despotic 
power  of  which  they  are  the  fit  instruments  and  guardians  in  their  own  native 
land,  and  from  the  rigor  of  which  so  many  of  their  own  oppressed  country- 
men have  already  sought  refuge  among  us."    These  sentiments  were  warmly 

*  In  the  sequel,  also,  it  contributed  to  sustain  and  render  eifectual  the  resolution  of  inde- 
pendence. The  German  auxiliaries  of  Britain,  at  first  from  wanton  indifference  for  the  Amer- 
icans, and  afterwards  from  resentment  of  the  furious  abhorrence  to  which  they  found  them- 
selves exposed,  indulged  their  cruelty  and  cupidity  in  the  most  barbarous  devastation  and 
pillage.  The  English  generals  could  neither  restrain  the  barbarity  of  the  Germans  nor 
wholly  preserve  their  own  troops  from  the  contagious  influence  of  such  evil  example.  Noth- 
ing tended  more  effectually  to  rouse  the  Americans  from  the  depression  occasioned  by  the  first 
successes  of  the  British  and  German  forces  than  the  vindictive  rage  with  which  they  were  in- 
spired by  the  rapine  and  insolence  of  the  victors.  Written  protections  granted  to  Americans 
by  the  British  officers  were  vainly  presented  to  soldiers  who,  not  understanding  English,  could 
not  read  them. 

VOL.    II.  69  -^xc-:...  "        :  ■        ^^  »        :  :k.  :  :.:_i^^ .. 


546  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XL 

expressed  by  the  Americans  at  the  very  time  (and  indeed  somewhat  pos- 
terior to  the  time)  when  their  own  domestic  government  had  deeply  engaged 
in  negotiations  for  obtaining  the  aid  and  interposition  of  France  in  the 
quarrel  with  England.  If  England  seek  the  aid  of  foreign  powers  (it  was 
asked),  may  not  and  must  not  America  do  the  same  ?  And  how  can  she 
hope  to  obtain  open  and  active  assistance,  till  she  seek  it  in  the  character 
of  an  independent  state  ?  Among  the  violent  declarations  elicited  at  this 
period  from  the  American  communities,  we  distinguish  a  resolution  of  the 
Committee  of  Safety  for  the  province  of  Georgia  to  defend  their  metropolis, 
Savannah,  to  the  last  extremity,  and  to  burn  the  town  and  shipping  rather 
than  suffer  them  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  British,  —  a  flight  of  lofty  sen- 
timent and  ebullition  of  bold  words,  it  must  be  confessed,  very  inadequately 
supported  by  the  subsequent  conduct  of  the  people  of  that  province. 

Not  less  was  the  displeasure  excited  in  America  by  discovery  of  the  ex- 
ertions that  were  made  by  British  officers  and  agents  to  excite  the  Indian 
tribes  to  espouse  the  cause  of  Britain,  and  promote  it  by  their  cruel  and 
barbarous  system  of  warfare  ;  although  the  American  governments  had  them- 
selves made  urgent  application  to  the  Indians,  and  solicited  their  savage  aid 
to  the  cause  of  liberty  and  independence.  There  was  certainly,  however, 
a  wide  difference  between  employing  Indian  savages  to  resist  the  hostilities 
of  armed  soldiers,  and  engaging  them  to  attack  defenceless  citizens  and  hus- 
bandmen, and  make  war  on  villages,  plantations,  and  families.  The  Conti- 
nental Congress,  besides,  accounted  the  sanction  it  gave  to  the  employment 
of  Indian  auxiliaries  a  measure  of  necessary  defence  and  rightful  retaliation. 
An  entire  neutrality  was  preferably  desired  and  earnestly  recommended  to 
the  Indians  by  this  assembly.^  But  the  Indians  in  general  manifested  a 
decided  preference  of  the  British  to  the  American  cause.  Britain  had  of 
late  years  dihgently  cultivated  the  friendship  of  those  savages  ;  and  while 
she  enjoyed  access  to  the  most  considerable  of  the  tribes  through  Canada 
on  the  north  and  Florida  on  the  south,  and  was  abundantly  capable  of  sup- 
plying their  numerous  wants,  the  Americans  were  compelled  to  suspend 
much  even  of  their  usual  intercourse  with  the  Indians  by  their  own  non- 
importation agreements,  which  deprived  them  of  the  articles  chiefly  required 
in  the  Indian  trade.  It  might  have  been  foreseen  from  the  first,  as  it  was 
clearly  manifested  in  the  sequel,  that  the  employment  of  such  auxiliaries  in 
such  a  contest  was  less  likely  to  affect  its  final  issue  than  to  beget  odium, 
animosity,  and  irritation.  Britain  suffered  most  from  these  unfavorable  sen- 
timents ;  because  her  camps  and  fortresses,  the  only  possessions  she  enjoyed 

'  For  a  while,  some  of  the  Indian  tribes  professed  a  strict  neutrality  between  Britain  and 
America.  The  Oneida  tribe  of  the  Six  Nations  thus  replied  to  the  overtures  of  the  Ameri- 
cans :  —  "  Brothers  !  we  have  heard  of  the  unhappy  dilFerences  and  great  contention  between 
you  and  Old  England.  We  wonder  greatly  and  are  much  troubled  in  mind.  Brothers  !  pos- 
sess your  minds  in  peace  with  respect  to  us,  and  take  no  umbrage  that  we  refuse  joining  in 
the  contest.  We  are  for  peace.  We  cannot  intermeddle  in  a  dispute  between  two  brothers." 
To  this  professed  neutrality  the  Oneida  tribe  steadily  adhered.  All  the  other  tribes  of  the 
Six  Nations  espoused  the  cause  of  Britain.  Some  Indian  nations,  however,  embraced  the  in- 
terests of  America.  A  small  tribe  thus  expressed  its  sentiments  to  the  Provincial  Congress  of 
Massachusetts  :  —  "  Brothers  !  we  have  always  been  friends.  When  you  were  small,  we 
were  great,  and  we  protected  you.  Now  you  are  great  and  tall,  we  are  small  and  not  so  high 
as  your  heel ;  and  you  take  care  of  us.  Brothers  !  whenever  we  see  your  blood  running, 
we  will  revenge  it.  Though  we  are  small,  we  will  gripe  hold  of  your  enemy's  heel,  that 
he  cannot  run  so  fast  and  so  light  as  if  he  had  nothing  at  his  heels."  The  Indian  converts 
of  the  Moravian  missionaries,  at  the  expense  of  provoking  insult  and  violence  from  both  the 
belligerents,  firmly  declined  all  participation  in  the  war,  declaring  that  "  the  Great  Being  did 
not  make  men  to  destroy  men,  but  to  love  and  assist  each  other." 


CHAP,  v.]  DEFECTIONS  FROM  THE  BRITISH  SERVICE.  547 

in  America,  were  less  exposed  to  Indian  ravage  than  the  settlements  and 
plantations  of  the  Americans. 

In  consequence  of  the  recent  Cherokee  war,  some  Americans,  who,  till 
the  close  of  the  preceding  year,  professed  themselves  Tories,  and  disavow- 
ed all  right  of  resistance  to  their  parent  state,  now  became  active  Whigs, 
and  eagerly  took  arms,  in  the  first  instance  against  the  Indians,  and  finally 
against  Britain,  as  the  instigator  of  their  barbarous  devastations.  Lord 
Effingham,  Lord  Pitt,  son  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham,  Wilson,  a  member  of 
the  Irish  parliament,  and  several  other  persons,  distinguished  by  their  rank 
or  character,  who  held  commissions  in  the  British  army,  protesting  against 
the  injustice  of  the  quarrel  and  the  disgraceful  association  required  from 
them  with  German  mercenaries  and  savage  Indians,  withdrew  at  this  period 
from  the  British  service,  —  an  example  that  was  not  imitated  by  Lord 
Percy,  who  procured  himself  to  be  matriculated  a  member  of  the  tribe  of 
Mohawks,  and  accepted  an  Indian  name,  which  he  ostentatiously  employed 
in  his  intercourse  with  the  savage  alHes  of  his  country.  Among  others  who 
refused  to  serve  against  America  was  a  young  naval  lieutenant  named 
Cartwright,  long  afterwards  highly  celebrated  as  a  zealous  and  disinterested 
patriot,  under  the  title  of  Major  Cartwright.  He  was  urged  to  accept  a 
commission  in  the  service  of  America ;  but  he  declared,  that,  though  he 
would  never  accede  to  an  unjust  and  offensive  war  upon  that  country,  he 
would  yet  stick  to  England  as  long  as  a  plank  of  her  remained  above 
water.  Many  natives  of  Britain,  however,  were  less  scrupulously  attached 
to  their  particular  birthplace  ;  and,  having  formed  connections  by  residence 
in  America  and  intercourse  with  it,  conceived,  that,  in  this  great  divulsion  of 
the  empire,  they  were  entitled  to  choose  which  portion  of  it  they  would 
adhere  to.  Some  daring  adventurers,  also,  of  dubious  character  and  ex- 
traction, found  in  this  tempestuous  crisis  an  element  congenial  to  their  rest- 
less souls,  and  figured  as  partisans  of  hberty,  more  or  less  genuine,  on  the 
scene  of  American  affairs.  Among  these  was  a  person  who  obtained  the 
rank  of  general  in  the  American  army,  and  was  named  Alexander.  He  had 
been  in  Britain  an  unsuccessful  claimant  of  the  Scottish  title  of  Lord  Stirling, 
and  pronounced  an  impostor  by  decree  of  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Amer- 
icans, though  arrayed  against  royal  and  aristocratical  pretensions,  readily 
complimented  Alexander  with  the  empty  ascription  of  a  title,  the  substantial 
loss  of  which,  perhaps,  occasioned  his  espousal  of  their  cause.  It  was  re- 
marked, that,  on  the  very  day  [February  28]  after  that  on  which  Lord  Pitt 
resigned  his  commission,  two  Indian  chiefs  from  Canada  were  presented  at 
the  British  court  and  obtained  a  gracious  reception  from  the  monarch  who 
had  hired  them  to  steep  their  weapons  in  his  people's  blood.  One  of  them, 
carrying  a  tomahawk  in  his  hand,  and  having  his  face  painted  with  the  rep- 
resentation of  streaks  of  blood,  attended  the  king  at  a  review  of  a  body  of 
troops  that  were  preparing  to  embark  for  America. 

Petitions  and  instructions  now  began  to  flow  to  the  congress  from  most 
parts  of  America,  desiring  and  authorizing  the  open  proclamation  of  Ameri- 
can independence.  Notwithstanding  these  indications,  the  congress,  pru- 
dently desirous  in  a  matter  of  such  importance  to  follow  rather  than  to  pre- 
cede the  march  of  public  spirit  and  opinion,  still  hesitated  to  broach  the 
claim  of  independence,  and  waited  a  more  general  and  deliberate  expres- 
sion of  the  national  wish  and  readiness  for  this  consummation.  They  studied 
by  gradual  approach  to  familiarize  the  public  mind  to  the  contemplation  of 


54g  HISTORY   OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

independence,  and  by  preparatory  measures  so  far  to  realize  this  predica- 
ment as  to  diminish  the  alarm  necessarily  connected  with  its  fateful  name. 
In  this  politic  course  they  were  prompted  to  make  a  notable  stride  by  the 
tidings  which  arrived  in  the  spring  of  the  rejection  of  their  last  petition  to 
the  king,  and  of  the  acts  of  parliament  authorizing  the  employment  of  Ger- 
man troops  and  the  confiscation  of  American  ships,  and  by  the  general  and 
lively  indignation  which  these  tidings  provoked.  The  measures  they  em- 
braced on  this  occasion  imported  the  boldest  defiance  of  British  authority, 
and  tended  to  unite  the  fortune  of  America  with  the  interests  of  every  other 
commercial  state  in  the  world.  They  directed  [March  23]  reprisals  to  be 
made  by  armed  vessels,  both  public  and  private,  on  all  British  ships  and 
cargoes,  and,  deliberately  breaking  the  shackles  of  that  monopoly  by  which 
their  commerce  had  been  so  long  held  in  bondage,  they  declared  the  ports 
of  America  open  to  all  the  world  except  Great  Britain.  On  the  same  day 
they  embraced  and  published  a  resolve,  "that  no  slaves  be  imported  into 
any  of  the  colonies."  About  two  months  after  [May  10],  emboldened, 
perhaps,  by  the  expulsion  of  the  British  troops  from  Boston,  the  congress,  as 
a  provocation  and  preparatory  step  to  independence,  recommended  to  the 
various  provincial'  assemblies  and  conventions  an  entire  suspension  through*- 
out  America  of  all  authority  derived  from  British  appointment,  and  the 
adoption  of  such  forms  of  government  as  they  should  judge  most  conducive 
to  the  happiness  and  safety  of  their  constituents.  This  recommendation  of 
the  congress  was  instantly  carried  into  effect  ;  and  all  the  provincial  gov- 
ernments were  now  reconstructed  in  conformity  with  the  principle,  that  in 
each  commonwealth  the  will  of  the  citizens  was  the  supreme  and  independ- 
ent source  of  power,  and  that  the  majesty  of  the  crown  was  superseded 
by  the  majesty  of  the  people.  John  Rutledge  was  elected  governor  of 
South  Carolina,  and  Patrick  Henry  of  Virginia.  Some  varieties  occurred 
in  the  details  of  the  new  political  structures  ;  but  the  general  features  of 
their  composition  were  alike,  and  the  same  fundamental  principles  pervaded 
them  all.  This  change  was  effected  with  little  agitation  and  without  any 
dangerous  convulsion.  The  general  diffusion  of  knowledge  in  America  de- 
fended its  inhabitants  from  the  chimeras  of  ignorant  enthusiasm.  Familiar- 
ized with  a  reasonable  and  orderly  freedom,  they  were  not  likely  to  mistake 
the  features  of  a  political  blessing  which  had  been  always  embodied  in  their 
favorite  domestic  institutions.  They  cherished,  revered,  and  pursued  it 
with  an  ardor  passionate,  yet  tempered  by  sober  sense  and  reason,  and  un- 
tinctured  with  that  visionary  strain  of  undisciplined  fancy  which  misleads 
expectation  and' misguides  practice.  Ev^ry  mode  of  happiness  and  enjoy- 
ment adapted  to  the  capacities  of  human  nature  is  cherished  with  more  solid 
regard,  and  cultivated  with  more  judicious  concern  in  proportion  to  the 
virtuous  freedom  of  acquaintance  habitually  admitted  between  its  objects 
and  its  admirers.  The  experience  of  an  oppressive  and  degrading  yoke 
of  tyranny,  while  it  inflames  the  desire  of  liberty,  promotes  a  false  concep- 
tion of  the  nature  and  value  of  this  condition,  promotes  extreme  and  cease- 
less innovation  in  the  season  of  revolutionary  change,  and  paves  the  way, 
through  the  lassitude  and  impatience  of  disgust  and  disappointment,  to  that 
worst  of  all  revolutions,  a  restoration  of  abrogated  tyrannical  power.  Some 
of  the  royal  g^overnors  unnecessarily  deserted  their  executive  functions, 
and,  in  the  plenitude  of  rashness,  insolence,  and  ignorance,  predicted  an 
inextricable  chaos  and  confusion  as  the  result  of  an  abrupt  extinction  of 


CHAP,  v.]  CONDUCT  OF  THE  aUAKERS.  549 

the  lamp  of  royal  prerogative.  Never  was  policy  more  effectually  balked, 
nor  prediction  more  completely  falsified.  No  violent  shock  or  extensive 
change  was  required  to  enable  the  American  States  to  accomplish  the 
transition  to  what  they  desired  from  what  they  had  already  theoretically  or 
practically  enjoyed. 

This  memorable  year  was  additionally  signalized  by  the  third  and  last 
voyage  of  the  illustrious  navigator,  Captain  Cook,  —  an  exploit  recom- 
mended to  our  present  notice  by  its  connection  with  the  history  and  labors 
of  a  distinguished  American  traveller.  John  Ledyard,  a  native  of  Con- 
necticut, cherished  from  his  earliest  years  an  ardent  desire  to  explore  the 
undiscovered  regions  of  the  globe.  He  was  placed  at  Dartmouth  Col- 
lege, with  a  view  to  his  acquisition  of  so  much  theological  knowledge  as 
might  qualify  him  for  the  profession  of  a  clergyman  ;  but,  diverted  by 
taste  or  driven  by  penury  from  his  academic  pursuits,  he  forsook  the  col- 
lege and  performed  a  part  of  his  homeward  journey  in  a  canoe  constructed 
by  his  own  hands.  Yielding  to  the  favorite  inclination  of  his  genius,  he 
passed  several  years  among  the  Indians,  studying  their  manners  and  culti- 
vating the  means  of  recommending  himself  to  the  favor  and  protection  of 
savages.  He  was  enabled  to  visit  England  by  engaging  himself  as  a  common 
sailor  on  board  a  ship  bound  from  New  York  to  London,  and  now  gained 
admission  among  the  associates  of  Cook's  last  voyage,  —  acceptmg  the 
humble  situation  of  corporal  of  marines  rather  than  forego  an  opportunity 
so  inviting  to  his  inquisitive  and  adventurous  spirit.  The  qualities  he  dis- 
played in  this  voyage  won  the  praise  of  his  great  pattern  and  commander, 
who  recognized  with  esteem  the  kindred  genius  which  was  afterwards 
illustrated  with  so  much  honor  and  renown  by  the  travels  of  Ledyard  in 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.^ 

In  all  the  States  of  America  there  was  a  party  of  the  inhabitants  firmly- 
attached  (from  prejudice,  from  principle,  or  from  interest)  to  the  royal 
cause,  and  who  received  the  appellation  of  Tories  from  the  rest  of  their 
countrymen,  by  whom  they  were  regarded  with  implacable  rage  and  de- 
testation.^ The  vain  efforts  of  these  persons  to  stem  the  prevailing  current 
of  national  sentiment  and  purpose  were  now  aided  by  the  sect  of  Quakers  * 
in  America,  who,  after  a  long  retreat  from  politics  and  political  controversy, 
came  forward  this  year  with  rekindled  zeal  in  support  of  the  declining  cause 
of  royalty,,  and  pubhshed  at  Philadelphia  a  declaration  of  non-resistance  to 
the  king,  whom  they  pronounced  to  be  set  over  them  by  God,  and  lawfully 
removable  by  the  same  great  Being  alone.  They  seemed  entirely  to  exclude 
from  the  scheme  of  nature  and  Providence  the  operation  of  the  divine  will 
through  human  instrumentality.'*     As  a  sect,  or  religious  society,  the  Quakers 

^  Miller's  Retrospect.  St.  John's  Memoirs  of  Ledyard.  Ledyard  was  born  in  1751,  and 
died  at  Grand  Cairo  in  1788. 

'  John  Adams,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Gushing  during  the  Revolutionary  War,  reminds 
him,  that  "  I  strenuously  recommended  at  first  to  fine,  imprison,  and  hang  all  Americans  ini- 
mical to  the  cause,  without  favor  or  affection."  He  adds,  "  I  would  have  hanged  my  own  broth- 
er, if  he  had  taken  part  with  our  enemy  in  this  contest."  Annual.  Register  for  1781.  Adam» 
at  a  later  period  deplored  and  vainly  endeavoured  to  restrain  in  his  countrymen  the  fury  and 
violence  that  had  been  sanctioned  and  fomented  by  such  language. 

3  Voltaire,  speculating  on  the  probable  conduct  of  the  Qjiakers  at  this  crisis,  shows  at  least 
his  acquaintance  with  their  policy  on  former  occasions.  In  a  letter  co  the  king  of  Prussia, 
dated  the  30th  of  March,  177b,  he  says :  —  "I  do  not  believe  that  my  dear  Quakers  will  fight 
with  their  own  hands,  but  they  will  pay  others  to  fight  for  them." 

*  We  have  seen  it  proclaimed  by  one  of  the  most  illustrious  patriarchs  of  the  Quakers, 
that  Good  mm  loiU  never  suffer  bad  laios.    AntCy  Book  VII.,  Chap.  1. 


550  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

exposed  themselves  to  general  reproach  in  America  by  this  proceeding,  and 
by  the  repeated  testimonies  which  they  subsequently  published,  during  the 
Revolutionary  War,  of  adherence  to  Britain  and  sympathy  with  the  occa- 
sional success  of  her  arms.  But  as  a  body  of  men,  the  conduct  of  the 
American  Quakers  was  nowise  uniform  or  consentaneous.  Many  enlight- 
ened and  estimable  persons  who  had  hitherto  professed  Quakerism  in  Amer- 
ica, now  openly  embracing  the  American  cause  and  taking  arms  in  its  de- 
fence, were  excommunicated  by  their  more  consistent  fellow-sectaries. 
Among  those  were  Thomas  Mifflin,  who  afterwards  became  president  of 
the  congress,  and  Nathaniel  Greene,  the  greatest  military  genius  that  Amer- 
ica produced  in  the  Revolutionary  War.  Some  others  of  the  members 
of  congress  were  professed  Quakers,  who  (we  learn  from  the  letters  of  An- 
thony Benezet)  were  distinguished  by  the  warmth  of  their  patriotic  zeal, 
and  the  violence  of  the  hostility  which  they  expressed  and  promoted  against 
Britain.  Of  the  Quakers  who  adhered  to  their  doctrine  of  non-resistance, 
there  were  some  who  demeaned  themselves  during  the  whole  of  the  con- 
test with  a  strict  neutrality,  supported  by  the  most  magnanimous  intrepidity. 
One  of  these,  Warner  Mifflin,  whose  serene,  dauntless  heart  was  awed 
neither  by  the  pride  nor  by  the  violence  of  man,  sought  an  interview  with 
General  Howe,  and  upbraided  him  with  the  desolation  inflicted  by  his  troops 
on  America  ;  and  when  the  Quakers  had  become  objects  of  general  dislike 
and  suspicion  to  the  Americans,  at  the  risk  of  being  considered  and  treated 
as  a  spy,  he  penetrated  to  Washington  in  his  camp  and  defended  their  con- 
duct. The  behaviour  of  some  other  Quakers,  however,  was  by  no  means 
defensible  either  by  the  general  principles  of  honor,  or  by  those  peculiar 
sectarian  principles  to  which  they  professed  an  inviolable  adherence.  They 
exasperated  the  Americans  by  congratulating  the  British  on  their  victories, 
even  when  these  victories  were  sullied  by  the  most  barbarous  outrage, 
rapine,  and  cruelty  ;  and  two  of  them  were  hanged  for  assisting  a  party  of 
British  troops  to  rescue  some  of  their  captive  comrades,  by  disclosing  the 
place  where  they  were  confined  by  the  Americans  as  prisoners  of  war.^ 

We  willingly  turn  to  a  more  agreeable  feature  in  the  contemporary  pro- 
ceedings of  the  American  Quakers.  Our  attention  has  been  too  often  so- 
licited by  that  painful  circumstance  in  the  composition  of  American  society, 
negro  slavery.  The  present  circumstances  of  the  free  colonists  were  pecu- 
liarly fitted  to  impress  them  with  clear  and  just  notions  of  the  merits,  both 
moral  and  political,  of  this  institution.  Protesting  against  established  author- 
ity, and  appealing  from  its  maxims  and  pretensions  to  the  general  rights  of 
man  and  the  presumed  will  of  God,  they  sought  the  protection  of  principles 
which  manifestly  sanctioned  a  similar  appeal  against  the  bondage  to  which 
their  own  negro  slaves  were  consigned.^     If  the  pious  and  the  reasonable 

»  See  Note  XXXVII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

*  Innumerable  citations  to  this  effect  might  be  extracted  from  the  speeches  of  American  pa- 
triots and  the  resolves  and  manifestoes  of  American  assemblies.  The  proclamation,  by  which 
the  Continental  Congress,  in  1775,  justified  its  military  preparations,  commenced  in  the  follow- 
ing manner:  —  "If  it  were  possible  for  men  who  exercise  their  reason  to  believe  that  the  Di- 
vine Author  of  our  existence  intended  a  part  of  the  human  race  to  hold  an  absolute  property 
in,  and  an  unbounded  power  over,  others,  marked  out  by  his  infinite  goodness  and  wisdom  as 
the  objects  of  a  legal  domination  never  rightly  resistible,  however  severe  and  oppressive;  the 
inhabitants  of  these  colonies  might  at  least  require  from  the  parliament  of  Great  Britain  some 
evidence  that  this  dreadful  authority  over  them  has  ever  been  granted  to  that  body.  But  a 
reverence  for  our  great  Creator,  principles  of  humanity,  and  the  dictates  of  common  sense 
must  convince  all  those  who  reflect  upon  the  subject,  that  government  was  instituted  to  pro- 
mote the  welfare  of  mankind,  and  ought  to  be  administered  for  the  attainment  of  that  end."  &t.. 


CHAP,  v.]      EMANCIPATION  OF  SLAVES  BY  THE  aUAKERS.  55] 

were  impressed  with  this  consideration,  the  timid  and  interested  were  not  less 
struck  with  apprehension  of  the  dangerous  accession  which  the  hostile  force 
of  England  was  likely  to  derire  from  the  enslaved  negro  population.  In 
all  the  provinces,  an  increased  humanity  was  now  displayed  in  the  treatment 
of  negro  slaves  and  of  Indian  neighbours.  The  humane  exertions  of  a 
party  among  the  Quakers  to  mitigate  the  evils  of  slavery  have  already  on 
several  occasions  demanded  our  notice,  and  merited  a  praise  inferior  only  to 
that  which  is  due  to  the  unvaunted  proceedings  we  recently  remarked  ^  in 
Massachusetts.  But  the  disinterested  example  which  had  been  afforded  by 
many  of  the  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts  was  now  to  be  iraritated  by  a  ma- 
jority of  the  society  of  Quakers.  Two  years  prior  to  the  present  period, 
the  annual  convocation  of  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey 
published  an  ordinance  menacing  with  excommunication  all  members  of 
their  ecclesiastical  community  who  should  import,  buy,  or  sell  negro  slaves, 
or  retain  negroes  in  a  state  of  slavery  for  a  longer  period  than  the  legal  or 
customary  endurance  of  the  indentures  of  white  servants.  And  in  the  pres- 
ent year,  the  same  assembly  enacted  a  statute  of  excommunication  against 
every  Quaker  who  should  for  a  moment  longer  detain  a  negro  in  a  state  of 
slavery.^  Thus  the  emancipation  of  their  slaves  by  the  Quakers  (though 
some  contumacious  members  of  the  sect  were  excommunicated,  and  many 
sold  their  slaves  to  elude  that  penalty) ,  and  the  emancipation  of  themselves 
from  British  tyranny  by  the  Americans  in  general,  were  contemporary  events. 
And  which,  it  may  be  asked,  —  the  act  of  just  sacrifice,  or  the  act  of  gen- 
erous exertion,  —  was  the  transaction  most  honorable  to  human  nature  } 
Without  attempting  the  impossibility  of  answering  this  question  to  the  satis- 
faction of  every  class  of  thinkers,  it  may  be  remarked,  with  little  hazard  of 
contradiction,  that  the  conduct  of  the  American  Quakers  would  have  afforded 
scope  for  more  unmixed  commendation,  if  they  had  refrained  from  embar- 
rassing the  exertions  of  their  countrymen  for  the  achievement  of  political  lib- 
erty. The  oppressed  and  degraded  state  of  freed  negroes  in  North  America 
has  rendered  their  manumission  in  actual  effect  very  litde  beneficial,  if  not 
positively  detrimental,  to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  mankind.^ 

The  American  congress  had  now  received  from  a  majority  of  the  thir- 
teen confederated  States  which  it  represented  either  urgent  entreaties  or 
deliberate  consent  and  authority  to  the  dissolution  of  all  farther  political 
connection  with  Great  Britain.    One  or  two  of  the  provincial  assemblies  yet 

The  original  draught  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  contained  a  strong  protest  against  the 
iniquity  of  negro  slavery.  But  this  clause  was  surrendered  by  an  approving  majority  to  a 
dissenting  minority  of  the  members  of  congress. 

"  If  there  be,"  said  Day,  the  author  of  Sandford  and  Merton, "  an  object  truly  ridiculous  in 
nature,  it  is  an  American  patriot  siting  resolutions  in  favor  of  liberty  with  the  one  hand, 
and  with  the  other  brandishing  a  whip  over  his  affrighted  slaves. "_  Day  in  the  present  year 

"sh 


(^1776)  reprobated  the  policy  and  predicted  the  discomfiture  of  the  British  operations  in  Amer- 
ica in  a  poem  entitled  Tlie  Devoted  Legions.  Thus  wrote,  with  dying  hand,  one  of  the  greatest 
and  best  of  mankind  ;  —  "  Go  on  in  the  name  of  God  and  in  the  power  of  his  might,  till  even 
American  slavery,  the  vilest  that  ever  saw  the  sun,  shall  vanish  away."  John  Wesley  to  William 
Wilberforce,  1791. 

'  Ante,  Chap.  III.    The  first  decisive  interference  of  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  on 

lis  subject  occurred  in  the  year  1777,  when  a  British  vessel  with  a  cargo  of  negro  slaves  was 

captured  by  an  American  privateer  and  carried  into  Salem.     The  captors  proposed  to  sell  the 


this  subject  occurred  in  the  year  1777,  when  a  British  vessel  with  a  cargo  of  negro  slaves  was 
captured  by  an  American  privateer  and  carried  into  Salem.  The  captors  proposed  to  sell  the 
negroes ;  but  the  legislature  forbade  the  sale,  and  directed  that  the  negroes  should  be  set  at 


liberty.    Bradford. 

•  Annual  Register  for  1776.  Gordon.  Holmes.  Pitkin.  Garden.  Rogers.  Ramsay. 
Clarkson's  History  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave-trade.  Brissot's  Travels  in  America.  Botta. 
Stone's  Ufe  of  Joseph  Brant. 

'  See  Note  XXaVIII.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


552  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI: 

reframed  from  giving  any  explicit  directions  on  this  subject  to  their  representa- 
tives ;  the  directions  from  Maryland  were  latterly  unfavorable  to  an  imme- 
diate assertion  of  independence  ;  and  those  from  Pennsylvania  and  Dela- 
ware were  flatly  opposed  to  it.  But  the  leading  partisans  of  independence 
perceived  that  the  season  had  arrived  when  this  great  design  must  be  either 
openly  espoused  or  definitively  abandoned  ;  they  remarked,  that,  in  general, 
the  main  objections  that  were  still  urged  against  it  applied  rather  to  the  time 
than  to  the  measure  itself,  and  they  were*  convinced  that  in  every  one  of  the 
States  the  majority  of  the  people,  however  credulous  or  desirous  of  a 
reconciliation  with  Britain,  would  rather  repudiate  such  views  than  retain 
them  in  opposition  to  the  declared  and  general  policy  of  America.  On  the 
7th  of  June,  accordingly,  it  was  formally  proposed  in  congress,  by  Richard 
Henry  Lee  of  Virginia  (where  the  project  of  independence  was  openly  es- 
poused by  unanimous  vote  of  the  provincial  assembly),  that  the  American 
States  should  be  declared  free  and  independent.  This  proposition  in- 
duced long  and  animated  debates,  and  afforded  scope  to  the  largest  dis- 
play of  wisdom,  genius,  and  eloquence  in  the  discussion  of  a  question  than 
which  none  more  interesting  to  human  liberty  and  happiness  was  ever  before 
submitted  to  the  decision  of  a  national  assembly.  The  American  congress, 
in  its  original  composition,  exhibiting  the  citizens  of  a  subordinate  common- 
wealth in  the  act  of  assuming  into  their  own  hands  the  reins  of  government 
which  a  superior  state  had  previously  wielded  over  them,  presented  a  spec- 
tacle of  deep  and  stirring  interest  to  human  nature  and  civihzed  society. 
Deliberating  now  if  the  grand  conception  which  it  had  suggested  was  to  be 
despondingly  abandoned  or  resolutely  fulfilled,  it  addressed  the  universal 
sentiments  of  mankind  with  extended  interest  and  augmented  dignity.  While 
European  sovereigns  were  insulting  and  violating  every  sanction  and  safe- 
guard of  national  right  and  human  liberty  by  the  infamous  partition  of  Po- 
land, a  revolutionary  principle  of  nobler  nature  and  vindictive  destiny  was 
developed  to  the  earnest  and  wondering  eyes  of  the  world,  in  America.^  A 
very  ordinary  degree  of  knowledge  and  reflection  may  enable  any  person  to 
suggest  to  himself  the  principal  arguments  which  must  have  been  employed 
in  the  conduct  of  this  solemn  and  important  debate  ;  but  no  authentic  re- 
port of  the  actual  discussion  has  been  transmitted.  John  Adams,  who 
supported  the  project  of  independence,  and  Dickinson,  who  opposed  it, 
were  acknowledged  to  have  preeminently  distinguished  themselves  by  their 
rhetoric  and  ingenuity.  Adams  (as  we  are  desired  by  tradition  to  believe, 
and  authorized  by  probability  to  suppose)  forcibly  maintained  that  a  restora- 
tion of  union  and  harmony  between  Britain  and  America  was  impossible  ; 
that  military  conquest  alone  could  restore  the  British  ascendency  ;  and  that 
an  open  declaration  of  independence  was  imperiously  required  to  harmonize 
the  views  of  the  Americans,  to  elevate  and  confirm  their  spirits  in  an  inevi- 
table conflict,  and  to  enable  them  to  seek,  expect,  and  obtain  effectual 
succour  from  foreign  powers.^     Prudence  and  justice  alike  demanded  that 

'  See  Note  XXXIX.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

2  Before  the  close  of  this  year  the  congress  were  practically  sensible  of  the  advantage  which 
only  an  open  pretension  to  independence  was  capable  of  opposing  to  the  impressions  created 
by  defeat  and  misfortune.  Seeing  many  of  their  constituents  and  some  of  their  troops  disheart- 
ened by  the  first  successes  of  the  bands  of  disciplined  mercenaries  employed  by  Britain,  they 
declared  by  a  manifesto  to  their  countrymen  that  essential  services  had  already  been  rendered 
to  them  by  foreign  states,  and  that  they  had  received  the  most  positive  assurances  of  farther 
aid.  This  was  derided  as  a  false  and  vain  boast  by  the  British  journals;  notwithstanding  a 
prochimation  of  the  king  of  Spain,  in  the  month  of  October,  declaring  all  the  Spanish  ports 
freely  open  to  American  vessels. 


CHAP,  v.]  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  553 

the  brave  men  who  had  taken  arms  in  defence  of  their  country's  freedom 
should  be  enabled  to  dismiss  the  apprehension  of  fighting  for  a  hollow  and 
precarious  reconciliation  and  a  return  to  the  yoke  of  dependence.  Dickin- 
son is  said  to  have  insisted  (and  very  plausibly,  it  must  be  allowed)  that  an 
instant  dissolution  of  the  American  confederacy  would  be  produced  by  the 
mere  act  of  Great  Britain  in  withdrawing  her  fleets  and  armies  at  the  pres- 
ent juncture  ;  but  in  maintaining,  as  he  is  also  reported  to  have  done,  that  the 
same  breach  of  federal  union,  aggravated  by  an  effervescence  of  popular 
spirit  incompatible  with  civil  order,  must  ensue  from  the  withdrawment  of  the 
British  troops  at  a  later  period,  and  after  a  prolonged  contest  and  the  ex- 
citation of  furious  passion  in  every  part  of  America,  he  disregarded  the  con- 
tinued influence  of  that  bond  of  union  whose  initial  operation  he  was  so 
strongly  impressed  with,  and  undervalued  the  wisdom  and  virtue  which  his 
countrymen  were  capable  of  exerting  for  the  extinction  of  the  flames  of 
revolutionary  passions.  Some  members  of  the  congress  opposed  a  decla- 
ration of  independence  as  unwarrantable  or  premature ;  and  others  for  a 
while  were  reluctantly  deterred  from  supporting  it  by  the  instructions  of  their 
constituents.  After  the  discussion  had  been  protracted  for  nearly  a  month, 
during  which  interval  the  hesitation  or  opposition  of  a  minority  of  the  States 
was  overborne,  as  had  been  foreseen,  by  the  general  current  of  national  will, 
—  the  measure  proposed  by  Lee  was  approved  and  embraced  by  a  vote 
almost  unanimous  ;  ^  and  a  document,  entitled  Declaration  of  the  Independ- 
ence of  the  Thirteen  United  States  of  JSTorth  America,  composed  by  Thomas 
Jefferson,  was  subscribed  by  all  the  members  who  were  willing  to  indulge 
the  wish,  to  accomplish  the  glory,  and  to  confront  the  danger  of  their 
country.^  [July  4.] 

This  admirable  production  commenced  in  the  following  manner  :  — 
"  When,  in  the  course  of  human  events,  it  becomes  necessary  for  one 
people  to  dissolve  the  political  bands  which  have  connected  them  with  an- 
other, and  to  assume  among  the  powers  of  the  earth  the  separate  and  equal 
station  to  which  the  laws  of  nature  and  of  nature's  God  entitle  them,  a  de- 
cent respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare 
the  causes  which  impel  them  to  the  separation. 

"  We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident:  —  that  all  men  are  created 
equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable  rights  ; 
that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  ;  that  to  se- 
cure these  rights  governments  are  instituted  among  men,  deriving  their  just 
power  from  the  consent  of  the  governed  ;  that,  whenever  any  form  of  gov- 
ernment becomes  destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of  the  people  to 
alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  institute  new  government,  laying  its  foundation 
on  such  principles,  and  organizing  its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them  shall 
seem  most  likely  to  promote  their  safety  and  happiness.  Prudence,  in- 
deed, will  dictate  that  governments  long  established  should  not  be  changed 

»  \3nnual  Register  for  1776.^  Grordon7"Rogers.  Pitkin.  Botta.  OiTthVlSth  of"june,"the 
representatives  of  the  people  of  New  Hampshire  voted  unanimously  that  their  delegates  at 
the  Continental  Congress  be  instructed  to  jom  with  the  other  colonies  in  declaring  the  Thir- 
teen United  Colonies  a  free  and  independent  state,  provided  the  regulation  of  their  internal 
police  be  reserved  to  their  own  provincial  assembly.  On  the  28th  of  June,  chiefly  by  the  in- 
fluence of  Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton,  the  assembly  of  Maryland  declared  its  espousal  of  the 
project  of  independence.  On  the  3d  of  July,  it  was  declared  by  unanimous  vote  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts assembly,  "  that,  if  congress  shall  think  proper  to  declare  the  colonies  independent, 
this  house  will  approve  of  the  measure." 

*  See  Note  XL.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 
VOL.    II.  70  UU 


554  HISTORY  or  north   AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

for  light  and  transient  causes  ;  and,  accordingly,  all  experience  hath  shown 
that  mankind  are  more  disposed  to  suffer  while  evils  are  sufFerable,  than  to 
right  themselves  by  abolishing  the  forms  to  which  they  are  accustomed." 

After  a  recital,  couched  in  strains  at  once  simple,  spirited,  manly,  and 
dignified,  of  the  wrongs  which  the  American  States  had  endured  from  the 
government  and  people  of  Great  Britain,  the  Declaration  thus  concluded  :  — 
"  We  must  therefore  acquiesce  in  the  necessity  which  denounces  our  separa- 
tion, and  hold  them,  as  we  hold  the  rest  of  mankind,  enemies  in  war,  —  in 
peace,  friends. 

"  We,  therefore,  the  representatives  of  the  United  States  of  America 
m  general  congress  assembled,  appealing  to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the 
world  for  the  rectitude  of  our  intentions,  do,  in  the  name  and  by  the  author- 
ity of  the  good  people  of  these  colonies,  solemnly  publish  and  declare,  that 
these  United  Colonies  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be.  Free  and  Independent 
States  ;  that  they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the  British  crown, 
and  that  all  poHtical  connection  between  them  and  the  state  of  Great  Britain 
is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally  dissolved  ;  and  that,  as  free  and  independent 
states,  they  have  full  power  to  levy  war,  conclude  peace,  contract  alliances, 
establish  commerce,  and  to  do  all  other  acts  and  things  which  independent 
states  may  of  right  do.  And  for  the  support  of  this  Declaration,  with  a 
firm  rehance  on  the  protection  of  Divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge 
to  each  other  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  our  sacred  honor."  ^ 

Thus,  at  once,  all  the  vague  and  various  notions  respecting  the  legitimate 
boundaries  of  royal  prerogative  or  British  supremacy,  by  which  the  Ameri- 
cans had  been  hitherto  divided  and  perplexed,  were  finally  discarded  from  the 
international  controversy,  which  now  presented  only  the  one  grand  and  simple 
question,  —  Whether  the  inhabitants  of  North  America  should  in  future  exist 
as  conquered  colonists,  or  as  a  free  and  independent  people. 

This  great  transaction,  involving  at  once  the  creation  of  a  new  empire, 
and  the  exposure  of  it  in  the  very  hour  of  its  birth  to  the  vindictive  hostility 
of  the  most  puissant  monarchy  in  the  world,  was  conducted  in  the  metropo- 
lis of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  —  a  city  which  had  existed  little  more 
than  ninety  years,  and  whose  extent  of  population  would  have  entitled  it  to 
very  little  distinction  in  a  European  commonwealth, — the  centre  of  Qua- 
kerism in  America,  —  and  of  which  the  inhabitants  were  generally  charac- 
terized by  moderation  of  temper  and  sobriety  of  manners.  Pennsylvania, 
after  repeatedly  opposing,  was  one  of  the  latest  of  the  provinces  in  assent- 
ing to,  the  project  of  independence.  Hence,  as  well  as  from  the  privacy 
with  which  the  deliberations  of  the  congress  were  still  conducted,  no  adven- 
titious fervor  was  imparted  to  this  assembly  by  the  contagious  vicinity  of 
popular  excitement,  or  the  animating  presence  and  sympathy  of  a  crowded 
and  admiring  audience.  In  the  congress  thus  sequestered  from  an  infiu- 
ence  of  which  the  most  enterprising  assemblies  in  the  world  have  acknowl- 
edged the  powerful  efficacy,  the  heroic  or  ambitious  partisans  of  American 
independence  were  aware  that  the  glory  of  the  measure  must  be  shared 
with  all  their  colleagues  ;  while  the  cautious  and  timid  were  conscious  that 
the  danger  of  it  was  equally  extended  to  every  individual  who  should  sanc- 

*  The  articles  of  confederation  between  the  States,  which  defined  the  powers  of  congress, 
were  not  arranged  and  ratified  till  a  later  period.  They  were  published  almost  contempora- 
tieously  with  a  royal  proclamation  (in  England)  errjoinmg  a  fast  for  the  deliverance  of  America 
from  the  tyranny  and  injustice  of  rebels^  who  (so  said  the  proclamation)  had  assumed  there  the 
exercise  of  arbitrary  power. 


CHAP,  v.]  CONCLUSION.  555 

tion  the  Declaration.  Every  man,  indeed,  who  signalized  his  espousal  of 
this  decisive  measure,  irrevocably  staked  his  life  and  fortune  on  the  achieve- 
ment of  his  country's  freedom,  and  linked  his  own  fate  to  the  political 
destiny  of  North  America.^ 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  proclaimed  by  order  of  the  con- 
gress, and  received  with  shouts  of  applause,  and  an  instant  and  eager  expul- 
sion of  every  badge  of  royal  authority  and  British  connection  in  all  the  con- 
federated States  ;  and,  on  the  evening  of  its  arrival  at  New  York,  a  leaden 
statue  of  the  king  of  Britain,  which  had  been  erected  in  former  days,  was 
hurled  from  its  pedestal  and  given  up  to  be  melted  into  bullets  for  the  use 
of  the  American  army.  The  enthusiasm,  with  which  the  great  measure 
announced  to  them  was  hailed  and  embraced  by  the  troops  of  this  army, 
showed  how  fully  they  appreciated  the  altered  and  exalted  attitude  which 
it  imparted  to  their  own  condition  and  to  that  of  their  country.^ 

In  reviewing  these  remarkable  tides  in  the  affairs  of  men,  it  is  difficult 
to  resist  the  temptation  of  speculating  on  the  consequences  that  might 
have  resulted  from  a  conduct  and  policy  different  from  that  which  was 
actually  pursued.  Had  Britain,  after  the  treaty  of  Paris,  discerned  the 
change  which  her  relation  with  America  had  actually  undergone,  and  liber- 
ally recognized  it ;  had  she,  instead  of  aggravating  the  pressure  of  her  com- 
mercial restrictions,  and  introducing  new  regulations  still  more  arbitrary  and 
severe,  begun  with  prevenient  grace  to  relax  those  bonds  ;  and  finally,  ac- 
knowledging the  national  maturity  of  her  colonies,  declared  them  inde- 
pendent ;  and,  trusting  to  their  grateful  friendship,  sought  to  negotiate  with 
them  a  commercial  treaty  beneficial  to  her  own  people,  —  would  the 
consequences  of  this  pohcy,  more  magnanimous  than  any  nation  had  ever 
yet  shown  itself  equal  to,^  have  proved  more  conducive  than  the  scenes 
which  actually  ensued  to  the  happiness  of  Britain,  America,  and  mankind 
in  general  .-*  To  suppose  so  would  be  to  impeach  the  wisdom  or  benefi- 
cence of  the  dominion  exerted  by  Providence  over  the  passions  of  men 
and  the  stream  of  events.  As  the  commonwealths  of  America  did  not  owe 
their  existence,  so  they  were  destined  not  to  owe  their  independence,  to 
European  grace  and  liberality.  If  Britain  had  merely  persisted  in  her 
original  course  of  policy,  without  aggravating  its  severity,  the  Americans, 
notwithstanding,  would  doubtless  have  revolted  in  process  of  time  ;  but  in 

^  See  Note  XLI.,  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  Annual  Register  for  1776.  Botta.  Burk.  In  Virginia,  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
was  welcomed  with  transports  of  joy.  The  provincial  assembly  instantly  commanded  that 
the  name  of  the  king  should  be  expunged  from  every  formulary  of  public  prayer,  and  that  a 
new  and  appropriate  seal  of  the  commonwealth  should  be  framed.  For  this  Virginian  seal 
various  devices  were  suggested.  Dr.  Franklin  proposed  a  figure  of  Moses  standing  on  the 
shore  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  extending  his  hand  over  tne  waves  collected  for  the  destruction  of 
Pharaoh,  with  the  motto,  Rebellion  to  tyrants  is  obedience  to  God.  Jefferson  suggested  a 
different  device,  with  the  motto.  Rex  est  qui  regem  non  habet.  The  device  actually  adopted 
was  suggested  by  Wythe,  and  disclosed  on  one  side  a  figure  of  Virtue,  the  genius  of  the  com- 
monwealth, treading  on  Tyranny,  represented  by  a  man  prostrate,  a  crown  fallen  from  his 
head,  a  broken  chain  in  his  lefl  hand  and  a  scourge  in  his  right,  with  the  motto.  Sic  semper 
tyrannis;  on  the  reverse,  a  group,  of  which  the  principal  figures  were  the  goddess  of  Liberty 
and  Ceres  holding  a  cornucopia,  with  the  motto,  Deus  nobis  hcec  otia  fecit.  In  all  the  States  the 
formula  of  legal  writs  was  changed  from  "  George,  by  the  grace  of  God  king,"  to  "  The  peo- 
ple of  America,  by  the  grace  of  God  free  and  independent." 

3  «  There  are  instances  in  which  individual  rulers,  weary  of  power,  have  freely  resigned 
it ;  but  no  people  ever  yet  voluntarily  surrendered  authority  over  a  subject  nation."  Heeren's 
Reflections  on  the  Politics  of  Ancient  Greece.  It  has  been  said,  with  melancholy  semblance  of 
truth,  that  A  nation  has  no  heaH. 


556  HISTORY  OF  NORTH  AMERICA.  [BOOK  XI. 

that  case,  most  probably,  either  the  revolt  would  have  been  partial,  irreg- 
ular, and  proportionally  ineffective  ;  or,  if  it  had  been  general,  it  would, 
from  the  increased  growth  and  strength  of  the  provinces,  have  been  in- 
stantly successful.  The  sudden  increase  in  the  mode  and  measure  of  Brit- 
ish domination  caused  all  the  States  to  revolt  simultaneously  ;  and  the  long 
and  arduous  struggle  that  ensued  served  to  knit  them  together  in  strong 
conjunction  and  prepare  them  for  permanent  federal  association. 


NOTES 


TO 


THE     SECOND     VOLUME 


NOTE  I.    Page  58. 

The  people  of  New  Englcmd  were  not  in  this  respect  more  credulous  than  the 
inhabitants  of  the  parent  state.  A  shock  of  an  earthquake  having  been  expe- 
rienced in  London  on  the  8th  of  February,  1750,  and  another  somewhat  more 
violent  on  the  8th  of  the  follow^ing  March,  a  common  soldier,  disordered  in  his 
intellects,  began  to  preach  in  the  streets,  "  and  boldly  prophesied  that  the  next 
shock  would  happen  on  the  same  day  of  April,  and  totally  destroy  the  cities  of 
London  and  Westminster.  Considering  the  infectious  nature  of  fear  and  super- 
stition, and  the  emphatic  manner  in  which  the  imagination  had  been  prepared  and 
prepossessed,  it  was  no  wonder  that  the  prediction  of  this  illiterate  enthusiast  should 
have  contributed  in  a  great  measure  to  augment  the  general  terror.  The  churches 
were  crowded  with  penitent  sinners ;  the  sons  of  riot  and  profligacy  were  over- 
awed with  sobriety  and  decorum.  The  streets  no  longer  resounded  with  exe- 
crations, or  the  noise  of  brutal  licentiousness  ;  and  the  hand  of  charity  was  liber- 
ally opened.  Those  whom  fortune  had  enabled  to  retire  from  the  devoted  city 
fled  to  the  country  in  hurry  and  precipitation,  insomuch  that  the  highways  were 
encumbered  with  horses  and  carriages.  Many  who  had  in  the  beginning  combated 
these  groundless  fears  with  the  weapons  of  reason  and  ridicule  began  insensibly 
to  imbibe  the  contagion,  and  felt  their  hearts  fail  in  proportion  as  the  hour  of  pro- 
bation approached  ;  even  science  and  philosophy  were  not  proof  against  the  un- 
accountable effects  of  this  communication.  In  after  ages  it  will  hardly  be  believed, 
that,  on  the  evening  of  the  8th  of  April,  the  open  fields  that  skirt  the  metropolis 
were  filled  with  an  incredible  number  of  people  assembled  in  chairs,  in  chaises, 
and  coaches,  as  well  as  on  foot,  who  waited  in  the  most  fearful  suspense  until 
morning  and  the  return  of  day  disproved  the  truth  of  the  dreaded  prophecy.  Then 
their  fears  vanished ;  they  returned  to  their  respective  habitations  in  a  transport 
of  joy  ;  and  were  soon  reconciled  to  their  abandoned  vices,  which  they  seemed 
to  resume  with  redoubled  affection,  and  once  more  bade  defiance  to  the  vengeance 
of  Heaven."    Smollett. 


NOTE  II.     Page  69. 

Various  European  bards  have  essayed,  more  or  less  successfully,  to  wake,  or 
at  least  to  imitate,  the  lyre  of  the  Indian  Muse.  The  songs  of  Outalissi,  in  Camp- 
belPs  Gertrude  of  Wyoming^  will  outlast  all  the  genuine  productions  of  Indian 
poets,  and  probably  the  Indian  race  itself.    Of  these  JEuropean  compositions,  the 

XJU* 


558  NOTES. 

best  (in  point  of  fidelity  to  Indian  sentiment  and  character)  that  I  have  ever  met 
with  is  a  little  German  poem  of  Schiller,  of  which  I  have  been  furnished  with  the 
following  English  version  by  my  friend,  Sir  John  Herschel.     It  is  entitled, 

THE    DEATH-SONG    OF   A   NADOWESSEE*  CHIEF. 

See,  where  upon  the  mat  he  sits 

Erect  before  his  door,  - 
With  just  the  same  majestic  air 

That  once  in  life  he  wore. 
But  where  is  fled  his  strength  of  limb, 
,  I  i    i  /      J      The  whirlwind  cif  his  bre>&tl^ 
To  the  Great  Spirit  when  he  sent 

The  peace-pipe's  mounting  wreath  ? 

Where  are  those  falcon  eyes,  which  late 

Along  the  -phtm  could  trace, 
Along  the  grass's  dewy  wave. 

The  reindeer's  printed  pace  .-• 
Those  legs,  which  once  with  matchless  speed 

Flew'through  thediifled  snow, 
Surpassed  the  stag's  unwearied  course, 
/>       .  ..,     .  Outran  the  mountain  roe .'' 

.'  Those  arnas,  once  used  with  might  and  main 

,,  '    .  The  .stubborn  bow  .to  twang  .^ 

See,  see,  their  nerves  are  slack  at  last. 
All  motionless  they  hang. 

■  ■■"■■  "T 'is  well  with  him,  for  he  is  gone 
'l.  Where  snow  no  more  is  found, 

„  ,-  .  Where  the  gay  thorn's  perpetual  bloom 

Decks  all  the  fields  around ; 

■  Where  wild  birds  sing  from  every  spray, 

^here  deer  come  sweeping  by, 
Where  fish,  from  every  lake,  afford 

A  plentiful  supply. 
With  spirits  now  he  feasts  above, 

And  leaves  us  here  alone 
To  celebrate  bis  valiant  deeds 

And  round  his  grave  to  moan. 

Sound  the  death-song,  bring  forth  the  gifts. 

The  last  gifts  of  the  dead,— 
Let  all  which  yet  may  yield  him  joy 

Within  his  grave  be  laid. 
The  hatchet  place  beneath  his  head. 

Still  red  with  hostile  blood  ; 
And  add,  because  the  way  is  long, 

The  bear's  fat  limbs  for  food. 

The  scailping-knife  bewde  him  lay, 

With  paints  of  gorgeous  dye, 
That  in  the  land  of  souls  his  form 

May  shine  triumphantly. 

Very  similar  to  the  foregoing  effusion  is  an  Indian  declamatioo  in  honor  ol  a 
6mA  ^wf,  ipsesBTYed  in  Davia^a  Travels  in  America, 


NOTE  III.     Page  96. 

The  French  traveller  Volney,  in  his  View  of  the  United  States,  thus  contrasts 
the  English,  vGterman,  and  Dutch  colonists  of  America  with  those  of  French  ex- 
traction. 

"  The  settler  of  JBritish  or  German  descent  is  of  a  cold  and  phlegmatic  temper, 
*'W  tbifl  tribe :8cmie,notk«  x)ccHrs  in  C^ 


NOTES. 


659 


and  deliberately  forms  a  plan  of  husbandry  which  he  steadily  pursues.  He  at- 
tends sedulously  to  every  thing  that  can  influence  the  success  of  his  projects. 
He  never  becomes  idle,  till  his  end  is  accomplished,  and  he  has  put  his  affairs  on 
a  good  footing. 

"  The  impetuosity  of  the  Frenchman  leads  him  to  embiraee;  precipitately  any 
plausible  or  flattering  project,  and  he  proceeds  in  his  career  without  laboriously 
computing  expenses  and  contingencies.  With  more  genius  for  his  portion,  he 
kughs  at  the  dulness  and  caution  of  his  Dutch  and  English  neighbour,  whom  h© 
stigmatizes  as  an  ox ;  but  his  neighbour  will  sedately  ajod  wisely  reply,  that  the 
patient  ox  will  plough  much  better  than  the  mettlesome  racer.  And,  in  truth, 
the  Frenchman's  fire  easily  slackens,  his  patience  is  worn  out,  and,  after  change 
ing,  correcting,  and  altering  his  plans,  he  finally  abandons  his  project  in  despair, 

"  His  neighbour  is  in  no  haste  to  rise  in  the  morning,  bui,  when  fairly  up,  he 
applies  steadily  to  work.  At  breakfast  he  gives  cold  and  laconic  orders  to  his 
wife,  who  obeys  them  without  contradiction  or  demur.  Weather  permitting,  he 
goes  to  plough  or  chop  wood  ;  if  the  weather  be  bad,  he  prosecutes  his  in-door 
tasks,  looks  over  the  contents  of  his  house  and  granary,  repairs  his  doors  ox 
windows,  drives  pegs  or  nails,  makes  chairs  or  tables,  and  is  always  busied;  in 
rendering  his  habitation  more  comfortable  and  secure.  With  these  habits,  he. 
is  nowise  averse  to  sell  his  farm  for  a  good  price^  and  reiaaove,  even  in  old  ag»^, 
still  farther  into  the  forest,  cheerfully  recommencing  all  the  labors  of  a  new  set- 
tlement.  There  will  he  spend  years  in  felling  trees,  building  a  hut  and  a  barn, 
and  in  fencing  and  sowing  his  fields.  His  wife,  as  placid  and  patient  as  himseif, 
will  second  all  his  labors  ;  and  they  will  sometimes  pass  six  months  together 
without  seeing  the  face  of  a  stranger.  In  four  or  five  years,  comfort,  conveor 
ience,  and  ease  will  grow  up  around  them,  and  a  competence  will  reward  their 
soUtary  toils. 

"  The  Frenchman,  on  the  contrary,  will  be  up  betimes,  for  tb&  pleasure  of  sur*- 
veying  and  talking  over  matters  with  his  wife,  whose  counsel  he  demands.  Their 
constant  agreement  would  be  quite  a  miracle  ;  the  wife  dissents,  argues,  and 
wrangles,  and  the  husband  has  his  own  way  or  giv^  u-p  to  her,  and  is  irritated  and 
disheartened.  Home,  perhaps,  grows  irksome  ;  so  he  takes  hjis  gua,  and  goes  a 
shooting,  or  a  travelling,  or  to  chat  with  a  neighbour.  If  he,  atay  at  home,  he 
either  whiles  away  the  hours  in  good-humored  talk,  or  he  scolds  and  quarrels* 
Neighbours  interchange  visits ;  for  to  visit  and  talk  are  sa  necessary  to  a  Frenchr 
man,  that,  along  the  frontiers  of  Canada  and  Louisiana,  there  is  nowhere  a  settler 
of  that  nation  to  be  found,  but  within  sight  or  reach  of  some  other.  On  asking 
how  far  off"  the  remotest  settler  was,  I  have  been  tc^d, '  He  is.  in  the  woods  with 
the  bears,  and  with  nobody  to  talk  to.' 

"  This  temper  is  the  most  characteristic  difference  between  the  two  nations ; 
and  the  more  I  reflect  upon  this  subject,  the  firmer  is  my  persuasion,  that  the 
Americans  and  the  northern  Europeans,  from  whom  they  are  descended,  chiefly 
owe  their  success  in  arts  and  commerce  to  habitual  taciturnity.  In  silence  they 
collect,  arrange,  and  digest  their  thoughts,  and  have  leisure  to  calculate  the  future  ; 
they  eujquire  habits  of  clear  thinking  and  accurate  expression ;  and  hence  there  is 
more  decision  in  their  conduct,  both  in  public  and  domestic  exigencies ;  and  they 
at  once  see  the  way  to  their  point  more  clearly  and  pursue  it  more  directly. 

"  On  the  contrary,  the  Frenchman's  ideas  evaporate  in  ceaseless  chat ;  he  ex- 
poses himself  to  bickering  and  contradiction ;  stimulates  the  garrulity  of  his  wife 
and  sisters  ;  involves  himself  in  quarrels  with  his  neighbours ;  and  finds,  in  the 
end,  that  his  life  has  been  squandered  away  without  use  or  benefit." 

Volney  would  have  found  an  appropriate  text  to  the  foregoing  discourse  m 
this  sentence  of  Solomon  :  —  "In  all  labor  there  is  profit ;  but  the  talk  of  the  lip» 
tendeth  only  to  penury." 


560  NOTES. 


NOTE  IV.     Page  121. 

The  following  extracts  from  the  first  part  of  John  Wesley's  Journal  illustrate 
the  manners  of  himself  and  some  of  his  fellow-passengers. 

"  Now  we  begin  to  be  a  little  regular.  Our  common  way  of  living  was  this. 
From  four  of  the  morning  till  five,  each  of  us  used  private  prayer.  From  five  to 
seven,  we  read  the  Bible  together,  carefully  comparing  it  (that  we  might  not  lean 
to  our  own  understandings)  with  the  writings  of  the  earliest  ages.  At  seven,  we 
breakfast.  At  eight,  were  the  public  prayers.  From  nine  to  twelve,  I  usually 
learned  German,  and  M.  Delamotte,  Greek  ;  my  brother  writ  sermons,  and  Mr. 
Ingham  instructed  the  children.  At  twelve,  we  met  to  give  an  account  to  one 
another  of  what  we  had  done  since  our  last  meeting,  and  what  we  designed  to  do 
before  our  next.  About  one,  we  dined.  The  time  from  dinner  to  four  we  spent 
in  reading  to  those  of  whom  each  of  us  had  taken  charge,  or  in  speaking  to  them 
severally,  as  need  required.  At  four,  were  the  evening  prayers,  —  when  either 
the  second  lesson  was  explained,  or  the  children  were  catechized  and  instructed 
before  the  congregation.  From  five  to  six,  we  again  used  private  prayer.  From 
six  to  seven,  I  read  in  our  cabin  to  two  or  three  of  the  English  passengers,  and 
each  of  my  brethren  to  a  few  more  in  theirs.  At  seven,  I  joined  with  the  Ger- 
mans in  their  public  service  ;  while  Mr.  Ingham  was  reading  between  the  decks 
to  as  many  as  desired  to  hear.  At  eight,  we  met  again  to  exhort  and  instruct  one 
another.  Between  nine  and  ten,  we  went  to  bed,  where  neither  the  roaring  of 
the  sea,  nor  the  motion  of  the  ship,  could  take  away  the  refreshing  sleep  which 
God  gave  us." 

Having  described  a  storm  at  sea,  and  condemned  himself  as  unfit,  because  he 
found  himself  unwilling,  to  die,  he  thus  alludes  to  the  more  lively  and  triumphant 
faith  of  the  Moravians  :  —  "I  had  long  before  observed  the  great  seriousness  of 
their  behaviour.  Of  their  humility  they  had  given  a  continual  proof,  by  perform- 
ing those  servile  ofl[ices  for  the  other  passengers,  which  none  of  the  English 
would  undertake  ;  for  which  they  desired  and  would  receive  no  pay,  saying,  '  It 
was  good  for  their  proud  hearts,'  and  '  their  Saviour  had  done  more  for  them.' 
And  every  day  had  given  them  occasion  of  showing  a  meekness  which  no  injury 
could  move.  If  they  were  pushed,  struck,  or  thrown  down,  they  rose  again  and 
went  away ;  but  no  complaint  was  found  in  their  mouth.  There  was  now  an 
opportunity  of  trying  whether  they  were  delivered  from  the  spirit  of  fear,  as  well 
as  from  that  of  pride,  anger,  and  revenge.  In  the  midst  of  the  psalm  wherewith 
their  service  began,  the  sea  broke  over  us,  split  the  mainsail  in  pieces,  covered 
the  ship,  and  poured  in  between  the  decks,  as  if  the  great  deep  had  already  swal- 
lowed us  up.  A  terrible  screaming  began  among  the  English.  The  Germans 
calmly  sung  on.  I  asked  one  of  them  afterwards,  '  Was  you  not  afraid  ? '  He 
answered,  *  I  thank  God,  no.'  I  asked,  *  But  were  not  your  women  and  children 
afraid  ? '  He  replied  mildly,  *  No ;  our  women  and  children  are  not  afraid  to 
die.' "  At  the  time  when  the  danger  seemed  most  imminent,  and  the  vessel  was 
expected  immediately  to  founder,  an  infant  was  brought  to  Wesley  to  be  bap- 
tized. "  It  put  me  in  mind,"  he  says,  "  of  Jeremiah's  buying  the  field  when  the 
Chaldeans  were  on  the  point  of  destroying  Jerusalem,  and  seemed  a  pledge  of  the 
mercy  God  designed  to  show  us,  even  in  the  land  of  the  living." 

Of  the  manners  of  the  Germans  in  Georgia  Wesley  subsequently  gives  this 
representation:  —  "They  were  always  employed,  always  cheerful  themselves, 
and  in  good-humor  with  one  another."  He  adds  :  —  "They  met  this  day  to  con- 
sult concerning  the  affairs  of  their  church  ;  Mr.  Spangenberg  being  shortly  to  go 
to  Pennsylvania,  and  Bishop  Nitschman  to  return  to  Germany.  After  several 
hours  spent  in  conference  and  prayer,  they  proceeded  to  the  election  and  ordi- 
nation of  a  bishop.     The  great  simplicity  as  well  as  solemnity  of  the  whole 


NOTES.  5^  J 

almost  made  me  forget  the  seventeen  hundred  years  between,  and  imagine  my- 
self in  one  of  those  assemblies  where  form  and  state  were  not,  but  Paul  the  tent- 
maker  or  Peter  the  fisherman  presided,  yet  with  the  demonstration  of  the  Spirit 
and  of  power." 


NOTE  V.    Page  129. 

"  If  the  reigns  of  many  European  proprietors  of  slaves,"  says  Dr.  Moore,  the 
traveller  and  novelist,  "  were  faithfully  recorded,  it  is  much  to  be  feared  that  the 
capricious  cruelties  which  disgrace  those  of  Caligula  and  Nero  would  not  seem 
so  incredible  as  they  now  do."  Charles  Wesley,  who  visited  South  Carolina,  oa 
his  return  from  Georgia,  in  the  year  1736,  inserts  the  following  remarks  in  his 
Journal :  —  "I  had  observed  much  and  heard  more  of  the  cruelty  of  masters 
towards  their  negroes  ;  but  now  I  received  an  authentic  account  of  some  horrid 
instances  thereof.  I  saw,  myself,  that  the  giving  a  slave  to  a  child  of  its  own  age, 
to  tyrannize  over,  to  abuse  and  beat  out  of  sport,  was  a  common  practice  ;  nor  i^ 
it  strange,  that,  being  thus  trained  up  in  cruelty,  they  should  afterwards  arrive  afc 
such  perfection  in  it."  After  describing  various  modes  of  penal  torture  that  were 
inflicted  on  the  slaves,  and  even  talked  of  with  indifference  by  many  of  the  plant- 
ers, Charles  Wesley  adds :  — "  Another  much  applauded  punishment  is  drawing 
the  teeth  of  their  slaves.  It  is  universally  known  here  that  Colonel  Lynch  out  off 
the  legs  of  a  poor  negro,  and  that  he  kills  several  of  them  every  year  by  his  bar- 
barities. It  were  endless  to  recount  all  the  shocking  instances  of  diabolical  crU- 
■  elty,  which  these  men,  as  they  call  themselves,  daily  practise  upon  their  fellow- 
creatures,  and  that  upon  the  most  trivial  occasions.  I  shall  only  mention  one 
more,  related  to  me  by  an  eyewitness.  Mr.  Hill,  a  dancing-master  in  Charleston, 
whipped  a  female  slave  so  long  that  she  fell  down  at  his  feet,  in  appearance  dead ; 
when,  by  the  help  of  a  physician,  she  was  so  far  recovered  as  to  show  some  signs 
of  life,  he  repeated  the  whipping  with  equal  rigor,  and  concluded  the  punishment 
with  dropping  scalding  wax  upon  her  flesh.  Her  crime  was  over-filling  a  tea-cup. 
These  horrid  cruelties  are  the  less  to  be  wondered  at,  because  the  law  itself,  in 
effect,  countenances  and  allows  them  to  kill  their  slaves,  by  the  ridiculous  penalty 
appointed  for  it.  The  penalty  is  about  seven  pounds,  —  one  half  of  which  i6 
usually  remitted,  if  the  criminal  inform  against  himself."  MS.  Journal  of  G; 
Wesley. 

Hewit  has  drawn  a  melancholy  picture  of  the  general  treatment  of  slaves  in 
South  Carolina  at  this  period.  Extreme  and  even  wanton  cruelty  was  ordinarily 
inflicted  on  them.  The  slaves  of  humane  masters  were  often  worse  treated  than 
others,  for  they  were  abandoned  to  overseers.  Numbers  skulked  in  the  woods, 
where  they  were  hunted  and  shot  like  wild  beasts.  The  planters  withheld  from 
them  all  moral  and  religious  instruction  ;  declaring  that  negroes  were  an  inferior 
race  of  beings,  far  below  the  intellectual  stature  of  white  men.  They  indulged 
their  ostentation  in  maintaining  a  numerous  retinue  of  domestic  slaves ;  and  nothing 
was  more  common  than  for  guests  at  banquets  to  declaim  upon  the  brutality  and 
treachery  of  the  race  to  which  the  sable  attendants  standing  by  and  hearing  the 
discourse  belonged.  Yet  Hewit  extols  the  general  benevolence  and  humanity  of 
that  generation  of  the  planters  of  Carolina.  It  was  unfortunate  for  many  of  them 
that  they  had  suddenly  attained  great  wealth,  and  that  the  insolent  and  imperious 
temper  incident  to  rapid  prosperity  was  not  mitigated  by  a  liberal  education. 

After  the  American  Revolution,  the  farther  importation  of  negroes  into  South 
Carolina  was  forbidden  by  law ;  and  the  proportions  between  the  freemen  and 
the  slaves  underwent  a  change  highly  promotive  of  the  security  and  the  humanity 
of  the  one  and  of  the  comfort  and  consideration  enjoyed  by  the  other.     Indeed, 

VOL.   II.  71 


662  NOTES. 

a  law  to  the  same  effect  had  been  enacted  by  the  assembly  of  South  Carolina 
several  years  before  the  Revolution ;  but  it  was  disallowed  by  the  royal  governor, 
as  contrary  to  the  policy  and  injurious  to  the  trade  of  Great  Britain. 

Traces  of  the  cruelty  with  which  slaves  were  anciently  treated  in  South  Carolina 
have  lingered,  it  must  be  confessed,  till  a  very  late  period,  both  in  the  laws  of  this 
province  and  the  manners  of  its  inhabitants.  During  this  nineteenth  century, 
slaves  were  doomed  to  be  burned  alive  for  murder,  burglary,  or  fire-raising.  In 
the  year  1808,  two  negroes  were  actually  burned  alive  over  a  slow  fire  in  the 
market-place  of  Charleston.  Bristed's  America  and  her  Resources.  "  The  grand 
jury  of  Charleston,  for  the  term  of  January,  1816,  reported,  as  a  most  serious  evil, 
that  instances  of  negro  homicide  were  common  within  the  city  for  many  years ; 
the  parties  exercising  unlimited  control  as  masters  and  mistresses,  indulging  their 
cruel  passions  in  the  barbarous  treatment  of  slaves,"  &;c.,  &c.,  "  and  thereby 
bringing  on  the  community,  the  state,  and  the  city  the  contumely  and  reproach 
of  the  civilized  world."  Warden.  They  who  entertain  such  a  sense  of  the  evil 
will,  it  may  be  hoped,  in  time  find  a  remedy  for  it. 

We  have  seen  the  British  found  and  rear  a  settlement  of  free  negroes  at  Sierra 
Leone,  the  very  spot,  where,  two  centuries  before,  they  first  participated  in  the 
slave-trade.  And,  more  recently,  we  have  beheld  the  Americans  transport  to 
the  settlement  of  Liberia,  in  Africa,  the  emancipated  descendants  of  those  negroes 
whom  their  ancestors  had  procured  as  slaves  from  the  African  shore.  Absurd 
and  delusive,  indeed,  has  this  latter  experiment  proved. 

What  strange  inconsistencies  may  coexist  with  even  the  worst  evils  of  slavery  is 
strikingly  displayed  in  the  life  of  that  distinguished  Roman  who  united  all  the 
abstractions  and  refinements  of  the  Pythagorean  philosophy  with  the  most  odious 
inhumanity  to  his  slaves.  Plutarch's  Life  of  Marcus  Cato.  According  to  Aulus 
Gellius,  Plutarch  himself  could  insult  with  philosophical  discourse  the  slave  whom 
he  was  causing  to  writhe  under  the  torture  of  the  lash.  But  none  of  the  truly  great 
men  of  North  America  have  been  either  severe  or  even  willing  slave-masters. 
Washington,  writing  to  his  friends  Morris  and  Mercer,  in  1786,  protested  that  he 
would  never  again  purchase  a  slave,  and  that  he  ardently  desired  the  abolition  of 
negro  slavery.  Patrick  Henry  and  Jefferson,  as  we  have  seen,  entertained  the 
same  views  and  sentiments.  Franklin  attacked  the  system  of  negro  slavery  by 
an  ironical  defence  of  the  practice  of  Christian  slavery  in  Morocco.  During  the 
Revolutionary  War,  John  Jay  declared,  that,  "  Till  America  embrace  this  measure 
[abolition  of  slavery]  her  prayers  to  Heaven  for  liberty  will  be  impious."  Some 
of  the  most  distinguished  champions  of  the  Revolution  emancipated  their  slaves  by 
testamentary  bequest,  —  as  Judith,  the  deliverer  of  Israel,  prior  to  her  death, 
"  made  her  maid  free." 


NOTE  VI.     Page  142. 

The  following  description  of  a  Georgian  planter's  method  of  life  occurs  in  the 
American  Museum  for  1790. 

"  About  six  in  the  morning,  he  quits  his  bed  and  orders  his  horse  to  be  got 
ready ;  he  then  swallows  a  dram  of  bitters  to  prevent  the  ill  effects  of  the  early 
fogs,  and  sets  out  upon  the  tour  of  his  plantation.  In  this  route  he  takes  an  oppor- 
tunity to  stop  at  the  negro-houses,  and  if  he  sees  any  lurking  about  home,  whose 
business  it  is  to  be  in  the  field,  he  immediately  inquires  the  cause.  If  no  sufficient 
cause  be  given,  he  applies  his  rattan  whip  to  the  shoulders  of  the  slave,  and 
obliges  him  instantly  to  decamp.  If  sickness  be  alleged,  the  negro  is  immediately 
shut  up  in  the  sick-house,  bled,  purged,  and  kept  on  low  diet,  till  he  either  dies  or 
gets  into  a  way  of  recovery.     After  having  examined  the  overseer  relative  to  the 


NOTES.  56S 

welfare  of  the  poultry,  hogs,  cattle,  &c.,  he  proceeds  round  the  farm,  takes  a  cur- 
sory view  of  the  rice,  corn,  or  indigo  fields,  and  examines  into  the  state  of  the 
fences  and  other  inclosures.  About  the  hour  of  eight,  his  circuit  is  finished,  when, 
before  he  alights  at  his  own  door,  a  tribe  of  young  negroes  in  the  primitive  state 
of  nakedness  rush  out  to  meet  him  and  receive  the  horse. 

"  Breakfast  being  over,  he  again  mounts  a  fresh  horse,  and  rides  to  the  county- 
town  or  the  first  public-house  in  the  neighbourhood,  where  he  talks  politics,  in- 
quires the  price  of  produce,  makes  bargains,  plays  a  game  at  all-fours,  or  appoints 
days  for  horse-races  or  boxing-matches.  About  four  o'clock,  he  returns,  bringing 
with  him  some  friends  or  acquaintances  to  dinner.  If  the  company  be  lively  or 
agreeable,  he  rarely  rises  from  table  before  sunset.  If  it  be  a  wet  evening,  or 
the  weather  be  very  disagreeable,  cards  or  conversation  employ  him  till  bed-time. 
If  it  be  fair  and  no  moonlight,  after  an  early  supper,  a  fire  is  kindled  in  a  pan,  and 
two  or  three  of  them  set  out,  stored  with  some  bottles  of  brandy,  preceded  by  a 
negro  who  carries  the  fire,  in  order  to  shoot  deer  in  the  woods ;  as  those  creatures 
are  so  attracted  by  a  light,  that  they  constantly  stand  still  and  fix  their  eyes  upon 
the  blaze,  by  the  reflection  of  which  from  the  eyeball  they  are  easily  discovered 
and  shot. 

"  About  midnight,  they  return,  according  to  luck,  with  or  without  game  ;  their 
shins  and  faces  sadly  scratched,  and  themselves  fit  for  nothing  but  to  be  put  to 
bed.  This  is  the  general  routine  of  existence  among  such  of  the  Georgians  as 
live  in  the  more  retired  and  woody  parts  of  the  State.  Others  have  their  weekly- 
societies  for  sentimental  and  colloquial  amusement.  As  to  trade  and  business,  it 
is  entirely  managed  by  overseers  and  factors."     Winterbotham. 


NOTE  Vn.     Page  155. 

Some  readers,  unacquainted  with  Brainerd's  Journal^  may  be  gratified  by  the 
following  extracts  from  it,  illustrative  of  his  ministrations  among  the  Indians. 

"  I  explained  the  story  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus,  Luke  xvi.,  19.  The  word 
made  powerful  impression  upon  many,  especially  while  I  discoursed  of  the 
blessedness  of  Lazarus  in  Abraham's  bosom.  This,  I  could  perceive,  affected 
them  much  more  than  what  I  spoke  of  the  rich  man's  torments.  And  thus  it  has 
been  usually  with  them.  They  have  appeared  much  more  affected  with  the 
comfortable  than  the  dreadful  truths  of  God's  word."  "  There  were  sundry  In- 
dians newly  come  here,  who  had  frequently  lived  among  Quakers,  and,  being 
more  civilized  than  the  generality  of  the  Indians,  they  had  imbibed  some  of  the 
Quakers'  principles,  especially  this,  —  that,  if  men  would  but  live  according  to 
the  dictates  of  their  own  consciences  (or  the  light  within)^  there  is  no  doubt 
of  their  salvation.  These  persons  I  found  much  worse  to  deal  with  than  those  who 
are  wholly  under  Pagan  darkness,  who  make  no  pretences  to  knowledge  in 
Christianity,  nor  have  any  self-righteous  foundation  to  stand  upon.  However, 
they  all,  except  one,  appeared  now  convinced  that  this  was  not  suflnicient  to  sal- 
vation, since  Christ  himself  had  so  declared  in  the  case  of  the  young  man."  "  An 
Indian  woman  came  to  me,  discovering  an  unusual  joy  in  her  countenance ;  and 
when  I  inquired  the  reason  of  it,  she  replied,  that  God  had  made  her  feel  that 
it  loas  right  for  him  to  do  as  he  pleased  with  all  things^  An  Indian  conjuror, 
having  been  converted,  declared  that  he  felt  that  some  mysterious  power  which 
he  formerly  possessed  had  now  wholly  departed  from  him.  "  Another  old  Indian 
having  threatened  to  bewitch  me  and  my  people,  this  man  presently  challenged 
him  to  do  his  worst,  telling  him  that  he  himself  had  been  an  eminent  conjuror, 
and  that  notwithstanding,  as  soon  as  he  felt  the  word  of  God  in  his  heart,  his  power 
of  conjuring  immediately  left  him."     "  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  numbers  of 


564  NOTES. 

these  people  are  brought  to  a  strict  compliance  with  the  rules  of  morality  and 
sobriety,  and  to  a  conscientious  performance  of  the  external  duties  of  Christianity, 
without  having  them  frequently  inculcated,  or  the  contrary  vices  particularly  ex- 
posed. God  was  pleased  to  give  the  grand  gospel  truths  of  the  total  depravity 
of  human  nature,  and  the  glory  and  sufficiency  of  the  remedy  provided  in  Christ, 
such  an  influence  on  their  minds,  that  their  lives  were  quickly  reformed,  with- 
out my  spending  time  in  repeated  harangues  upon  external  duties."  "  When 
these  truths  were  felt  at  heart,  there  was  no  vice  unre formed,  no  external  duty 
neglected.  Drunkenness,  the  darling  vice,  was  broken  off,  and  scarce  an  instance 
of  it  known  for  months  together.  The  reformation  was  general,  and  all  springing 
from  the  internal  influence  of  divine  truths  upon  their  hearts ;  not  because  they 
had  heard  particular  vices  specifically  exposed  and  repeatedly  spoken  against. 
So  that  happy  experience,  as  v^ell  jas  the  word  of  God,  and  the  example  of  Christ 
and  his  apostles,  have  taught  me  that  the  preaching  which  is  suited  to  awaken 
in  mankind  a  lively  apprehension  of  their  depravity  and  misery,  to  excite  them 
earnestly  to  seek  after  a  change  of  heart,  and  to  fly  for  refuge  to  Christ  as  the 
only  hope  set  before  them,  is  likely  to  be  most  successful  toward  the  reformation 
of  their  external  conduct.  I  have  found  that  close  addresses,  and  solemn  appli- 
cations of  divine  truths  to  the  conscience,  strike  death  to  the  root  of  all  vice ; 
while  smooth  and  plausible  harangues  upon  moral  virtues  and  external  duties, 
at  best,  do  no  more  than  lop  ofl"  the  branches  of  corruption." 


NOTE  VIII.     Page  156. 

Cicero  inculcated  the  same  maxim,  though  he  was  unable  to  illustrate  its  efii- 
cacy  with  equal  patience  and  detail.  "  Non  intelUgimt  homines,''^  says  the  Roman 
orator,  "  quantum  vectigal  est  parsimoniay 

Franklin's  lessons  of  parsimcHiy  have  been  severely  censured  by  some  writers, 
who  charge  him  with  teaching  mankind  to  consider  the  replenishment  of  their 
purses  as  the  chief  end  of  their  being.  This  censure,  though  exaggerated,  is  not 
entirely  without  foundation.  Economy  or  parsimony,  like  the  string  of  a  neck- 
lace, derives  a  value  more  important  than  its  own  intrinsic  worth  from  the  objects 
with  which  it  is  subserviently  connected.  It  is  difficult  to  panegyrize  one  virtue, 
without  bestowing  disproportioned  praise  on  it ;  and  Franklin,  in  his  eagerness 
to  withstand  the  pernicious  influence  of  prodigality,  seems  at  times  to  have  for- 
gotten that  avarice  is  also  an  infirmity  of  human  nature. 

Even  in  America,  neither  the  genius  nor  the  character  of  Franklin  has  com- 
manded unanimous  praise.  He  is  characterized  by  a  late  American  writer,  as 
**  a  singular  composition  of  formal  gayety,  of  sprightly  gravity,  of  grave  wit,  of 
borrowed  learning,  of  vicious  morality,  of  patriotic  treachery,  of  political  folly,  of 
casuistical  sagacity,  and  republican  voluptuousness."  Marshall's  History  of  Ken- 
tucky. Of  some  of  these  expressions  I  am  unable  to  divine  the  meaning.  In  one 
sense,  all  learning  must  be  borrowed.  Of  plagiarism,  or  affectation  in  the  display 
of  his  learning  (except,  perhaps,  his  familiarity  with  the  French  language,  which 
was  the  acquisition  of  his  old  age),  Franklin  cannot  be  justly  accused.  His  theo- 
retical morality  was  not  vicious.  It  was  very  refined  and  elevated ;  though  devoid 
of  the  dignity  of  religious  origin,  and  of  the  authority  of  religious  motive.  His 
practical  morality  was  neither  lofty  nor  pure.  In  his  Memoirs  he  represents  him- 
self as  a  fugitive  in  early  life  from  his  family,  —  the  infidel  son  of  pious  parents, 
—  the  subverter  of  the  faith  of  his  friends  and  associates,  —  and  regardless  of  vir- 
tue and  honor  in  his  intercourse  with  women.  He  married  a  woman  whom  he 
had  previously  deserted,  after  gaining  her  affections,  and  who,  in  the  interval,  had 
become  the  wife  of  another  man,  of  whose  death  neither  Franklin  nor  she  pos^ 


NOTES  ^Q^ 

sessed  any  assurance.  Doubtless  he  confesses  his  faults,  —  but  with  little  more 
penitence  than  we  find  in  the  Confessions  of  Rousseau.  His  embezzlement  of 
the  money  intrusted  to  his  keeping  by  a  friend,  though  corrected  as  far  as  possible 
by  subsequent  restitution,  yet,  as  being  an  untradesmanlike  action,  seems  to  have 
given  him  more  concern  than  the  irreparable  injury  he  did  to  the  faith  and  morals 
of  several  young  men,  his  companions.  His  complaints  in  old  age  of  the  ingrati- 
tude of  his  country,  and  the  inadequate  recompense  he  received  from  it  for  ser- 
vices which  had  gained  him  immortal  fame,  are  unworthy  of  his  character  and 
genius.  Before  he  stooped  to  so  mean  a  strain,  he  had  depressed  his  view  to 
the  contemplation  and  calculation  of  the  pecuniary  value  of  his  exertions.  Many 
persons  have  read  his  Memoirs^  without  being  aware  that  the  son  to  whom  they 
are  addressed  was  not  his  legitimate  offspring. 

One  of  the  finest  tributes  that  Franklin's  fame  has  ever  received  was  rendered 
by  the  printers  of  Nantes,  in  the  year  1790,  when,  assembling  in  consequence 
of  the  intelligence  of  his  death,  they  (among  other  expressions  honorable  to  his 
memory)  embraced  by  unanimous  vote  a  resolve,  that,  as  Franklin  had  never 
printed  an  obscene  or  immoral  line,  so  they,  in  admiring  respect  and  extension  of 
such  example,  would  rather  destroy  their  types  and  printing-presses  than  ever 
prostitute  them  to  applications  unfriendly  to  the  worth  and  welfare  of  the  human 
race.     Camille  Mellinet's    Commune  et  Milice  de  Nantes,  Vol.  VI. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Franklin,  the  strenuous  advocate  of  parsimony  in  the  re- 
ward of  public  services,  and  who  even  maintained  that  the  chief  officers  of  a 
commonwealth  ought  to  serve  their  country  gratuitously,  should  have  distinguished 
himself  above  all  his  countrymen  by  the  bitterness  with  which  he  lamented  and 
condemned  the  inadequate  remuneration  of  his  own  services.  So  difficult  is  it 
for  any  man,  whether  in  sentiment  or  in  action,  to  treat  others  altogether  as  he 
would  have  others  treat  himself  Whether  America  be  really  a  loser  by  her 
parsimony  in  rewarding  public  services  is  a  question  which  it  is  much  easier  to 
discuss  ingeniously  than  to  solve  satisfactorily.  Men  of  talent,  and  of  enlarged 
rather  than  elevated  minds,  must  ever  feel  themselves  interested  in  maintaining 
the  afllirmative.  Certainly  (in  theory,  at  least)  the  American  principle  of  remune- 
ration tends  to  exalt  virtue  above  mere  talent,  and  to  purify  the  desire  of  fame. 
On  this  subject,  an  interesting  statistical  work  of  an  American  writer  presents  the 
following  observations:  —  "One  important  cause  of  the  stability  and  peace  of 
this  State  (Connecticut)  is,  that  the  salaries  annexed  to  all  public  ofliices  are  small. 
Various  causes  have  united  in  producing  this  fact.  The  inhabitants  were  at  first 
few  and  poor,  and  unable  to  give  any  other.  When  the  salaries  were  enlarged  to 
their  present  standard,  they  were  worth  three  times  their  present  value.  Now 
they  are  quite  inadequate  to  the  decent  support  of  those  who  receive  them.  After 
they  were  once  established,  there  were  always  reasons  which  could  be  conven- 
iently alleged  against  increasing  them.  To  refuse  voting  for  the  expenditure  of 
public  money  is  always  the  road  to  popularity  for  little  men ;  and  there  are  always 
men  of  a  secondary  standing  in  society,  who  hope,  that,  when  offices  are  cheap, 
they  hiay  fall  to  themselves,  because  they  will  be  declined  by  their  superiors. 
There  is,  however,  a  share  of  wisdom  in  this  scheme.  Whenever  public  offices 
are  attended  with  great  emoluments,  they  are  coveted  by  every  man  of  ambition , 
avarice,  or  pleasure.  The  sight  of  the  prize  rouses  in  every  such  man  an  energy 
which  is  excessive,  and  but  too  commonly  able  to  compass  its  object.  In  the 
early  and  sound  periods  of  their  republic,  the  Romans  pursued  the  same  policy  as 
the  Americans.  Their  public  offices  were  accompanied  by  small  emoluments. 
The  reward  held  out  to  the  candidate  was  the  esteem  of  the  community.  This 
was  a  prize  whose  value  could  be  comprehended  only  by  good  sense  and  worth." 
Dwight. 

It  has  been  said,  and  doubtless  with  some  truth,  that  republics  are  ungrateful. 
Whoever  honestly  serves  a  republic  devotes  himself  to  the  welfare  of  mankind, 

vv 


566  NOTES. 

and  ought  to  have  declined  the  service,  if,  in  addition  to  the  happiness  of  cooper- 
ating with  great  and  generous  designs,  he  cannot  be  contented  with  the  gratitude 
and  esteem  of  the  candid,  the  wise,  and  the  good.  Sallust  (Bell.  Jugurthin.)  ap- 
plauds the  republican  policy  of  cherishing  a  more  earnest  remembrance  of  inju- 
ries than  of  benefits.  Valerius  Maximus  (Lib.  V.,  Cap.  3)  apologizes  for  it,  and 
contends  that  public  is  less  blamable  than  private  ingratitude.  The  people  of 
free  states,  always  prone  to  suspect  their  conspicuous  fellow-citizens  of  encroach- 
ing ambition^  easily  conceive  jealousy,  even  of  their  acknowledged  benefactors, 
scan  the  career  of  public  officers  with  a  vigilance  of  observation  little  akin  to 
benignity,  and  gladly  reduce  and  beat  down  every  aspiring  pretension  to  supe- 
rior merit  and  national  gratitude.  The  Athenians  sickened  of  the  unceasing  praise 
of  Aristides ;  and  the  Parisians  experienced  a  similar  corruption  of  sentiment  from 
the  hyperbolical  panegyric  with  which  Mirabeau  and  his  associates,  with  diabolical 
ingenuity,  overloaded  the  character  of  La  Fayette. 


NOTE  IX.     Page  196. 

"  The  most  remarkable  circumstance  attending  the  progress  of  this  bill,  which 
made  its  way  through  both  houses  and  obtained  the  royal  assent,  was  the  number 
of  contradictory  petitions  in  favor  and  in  prejudice  of  it,  while  it  remained  under 
consideration.  The  tanners  of  leather  in  and  about  the  town  of  Sheffield,  in 
Yorkshire,  represented,  thatj  if  the  bill  should  pass,  the  English  iron  would  be 
undersold  ;  consequently  a  great  number  of  furnaces  and  forges  would  be  dis- 
continued ;  in  that  case,  the  woods  used  for  fuel  would  stand  uncut,  and  the  tan- 
ners be  deprived  of  oak  bark  sufficient  for  the  continuance  and  support  of  their 
occupation.  They,  nevertheless,  owned,  that,  should  the  duty  be  removed  from 
pig-iron  only,  no  such  consequences  could  be  apprehended  ;  because,  should  the 
number  of  furnaces  be  lessened,  that  of  forges  would  be  increased.  This  was 
likewise  the  plea  urged  in  divers  remonstrances  by  masters  of  iron-works,  gentle- 
men, and  freeholders,  who  had  tracts  of  woodland  in  their  possession.  The 
owners,  proprietors,  and  farmers  of  furnaces  and  iron-forges  belonging  to  Sheffield 
and  its  neighbourhood  enlarged  upon  the  great  expense  they  had  incurred  in 
erecting  and  supporting  iron-works,  by  means  of  which  great  numbers  of  his 
Majesty's  subjects  were  comfortably  supported.  They  expressed  apprehension, 
that,  should  the  bill  pass  into  a  law,  it  could  not  in  any  degree  lessen  the  con- 
sumption of  Swedish  iron,  which  was  used  for  purposes  which  neither  the  Amer- 
ican nor  British  iron  would  answer ;  but  that  the  proposed  encouragement,  con- 
sidering the  plenty  and  cheapness  of  wood  in  America,  would  enable  the  colo- 
nies to  undersell  the  British  iron,  a  branch  of  traffic  which  would  be  totally  de- 
stroyed, to  the  ruin  of  many  thousand  laborers,  who  would  be  compelled  to  seek 
their  livelihood  in  foreign  countries.  They  likewise  suggested,  that,  if  all  the  iron- 
manufacturers  of  Great  Britain  should  be  obliged  to  depend  upon  a  supply  of  iron 
from  the  plantations,  which  must  ever  be  rendered  precarious  by  the  hazard  of 
the  seas  and  the  enemy,  the  manufacture  would  probably  decay  for  want  of  mate- 
rials, and  many  thousand  families  be  reduced  to  want  and  misery.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  ironmongers  and  smiths  belonging  to  the  flourishing  town  of  Birming- 
ham, in  Warwickshire,  presented  a  petition,  declaring  that  the  bill  would  be  of 
great  benefit  to  the  trade  of  the  nation,  as  it  would  enable  the  colonists  to  make 
larger  returns  of  their  own  produce,  and  encourage  them  to  take  a  greater  quan- 
tity of  the  British  manufactures.  They  affirmed  that  all  the  iron -works  in  the 
island  of  Great  Britain  did  not  supply  half  the  quantity  of  that  metal  sufficient  to 
carry  on  the  manufacture  ;  that,  if  this  deficiency  could  be  supplied  from  the  col- 
onies in  America,  the  importation  from  Sweden  would  cease,  and  considerable 


NOTES.  557 

sums  of  money  be  saved  to  the  nation.  They  observed  that  the  importation  of 
iron  from  America  could  no  more  affect  the  iron-works  and  freeholders  of  the 
kingdom,  than  the  like  quantity  imported  from  any  other  country ;  but  they  prayed 
that  the  people  of  America  might  be  restrained  from  erecting  slitting  or  rolling- 
mills,  or  forges  for  plating  iron,  as  they  would  interfere  with  the  manufactures 
of  Great  Britain. 

"  Many  remonstrances  to  the  same  effect  were  presented  from  different  parts 
of  the  kingdom ;  and  it  appeared,  upon  the  most  exact  inquiry,  that  the  encour- 
agement of  American  iron  would  prove  extremely  beneficial  to  the  kingdom,  as 
it  had  been  found,  upon  trial,  applicable  to  all  the  uses  of  Swedish  iron,  and  as 
good  in  every  respect  as  the  produce  of  that  country."     Smollett. 


NOTE  X.     Page  202. 

In  the  year  1749,  a  singular  congregation  of  scattered  members  of  the  human 
race  was  occasioned  in  North  America  by  the  missionary  labors  of  the  Moravians. 
"  In  the  summer  of  this  year,"  says  the  historian  of  New  Jersey,  "  three  natives 
of  Greenland  passed  through  the  province,  dressed  in  seal-skins  with  the  hair  on, 
after  the  manner  of  their  own  country.  They  consisted  of  two  young  men  and  a 
young  woman  converted  to  the  Christian  religion  by  the  Moravian  missionaries. 
They  had  left  Greenland  about  two  years  before  in  a  Moravian  ship  (which  car- 
ried a  house  ready-framed  for  worship  to  be  erected  there,  that  country  affording 
no  wood  for  building),  and  had  since  visited  the  brethren  in  several  parts  of  Eu- 
rope, as  England,  Holland,  and  Germany.  Their  eyes  and  hair  were  black,  like 
the  Indians  here  ;  but  their  complexion  somewhat  lighter.  Two  Indian  converts 
from  the  Moravian  mission  at  Berbice,  near  Surinam,  were  also  with  them.  They 
went  together  to  the  Moravian  settlement  at  Bethlehem,  in  Pennsylvania,  where 
they  met  with  some  Delaware  and  Mohican  Indians,  converts  also  of  the  Mora- 
vians ;  and  though  their  native  lands  are  so  vastly  remote  as  the  latitude  of 
5°  41'  and  65°  North,  yet  what  they  observed  of  each  other's  eyes,  hair,  and 
complexion  convinced  them  that  they  were  all  of  the  same  race.  They  could  find, 
however,  no  similitude  in  their  several  languages."  S.  Smith.  Kalm  notices  the 
meeting  of  these  three  races,  and  adds,  "  I  had  no  opportunity  of  seeing  them  ; 
but  all  those  who  had  seen  them,  and  whom  I  conversed  with,  thought  that  they 
had  plainly  perceived  a  similarity  in  their  features  and  shape  ;  the  Greenlanders 
being  only  somewhat  smaller.  They  concluded  from  hence,  that  all  these  three 
kinds  of  Americans  were  the  posterity  of  one  and  the  same  descendant  of  Noah, 
or  that  they  were  perhaps  yet  more  nearly  related." 


NOTE  XI.     Page  209. 

"  Vermont  has  been  settled  entirely  from  the  other  States  of  New  England. 
The  inhabitants  have  of  course  the  New  England  character,  with  no  other  differ- 
ence but  what  is  accidental.  In  the  formation  of  colonies,  those  who  are  first 
inclined  to  emigrate  are  usually  such  as  have  met  with  difl[iculties  at  home. 
These  are  commonly  joined  by  persons  who,  having  large  families  and  small 
farms,  are  induced,  for  the  sake  of  settling  their  children  comfortably,  to  seek 
for  new  and  cheaper  lands.  To  both  are  always  added  the  discontented,  the  en- 
terprising, the  ambitious,  and  the  covetous.  Many  of  the  first,  and  some  of^  all 
these  classes,  are  found  in  every  new  American  country,  within  ten  years  after 
its  settlement  has  commenced.  From  this  period,  kindred,  friendship,  and  former 


568  NOTES. 

neighbourhood  prompt  others  to  follow  them.  Others  still  are  allured  by  the 
prospect  of  gain  presented  in  every  new  country  to  the  sagacious,  from  the  pur- 
chase and  sale  of  lands ;  while  not  a  small  number  are  influenced  by  the  bril- 
liant stories  which  everywhere  are  told  concerning  most  tracts  during  the  early 
progress  of  their  settlement.  A  considerable  part  of  all  who  legin  the  cultivation 
of  the  wilderness  may  be  denominated  foresters  or  pioneers.  The  business  of 
these  persons  is  no  other  than  to  cut  down  trees,  build  log-houses,  lay  open 
forested  grounds  to  cultivation,  and  prepare  the  way  for  those  who  come  after 
them.  These  men  cannot  live  in  regular  society.  They  are  impatient  of  the  re- 
straints of  law,  religion,  and  morality ;  grumble  against  the  taxes  by  which  rulers, 
ministers,  and  schoolmasters  are  supported ;  and  complain  incessantly  as  well  as 
bitterly  of  the  extortions  of  mechanics,  farmers,  merchants,  and  physicians,  to 
whom  they  are  always  indebted."  "In  the  wilderness  to  which  they  have  re- 
treated, they  must  either  work  or  starve.  They  accordingly  cut  down  some  trees, 
and  girdle  others ;  they  furnish  themselves  with  an  ill-built  log-house  and  a  worse 
barn ;  and  reduce  a  part  of  the  forest  into  fields  half-inclosed  and  half-cultivated. 
On  the  scanty  provision  thus  afforded  they  feed  a  few  cattle,  with  which,  and  the 
supplemental  produce  of  the  chase,  they  contrive  to  keep  their  families  alive. 

"  A  farm  thus  far  cleared  promises  immediate  subsistence  to  a  better  husband- 
man, who  is  induced  to  purchase  it  by  the  little  advantages  which  have  already 
been  imparted  to  it,  thoygh  he  would  not  plant  himself  in  an  absolute  wilderness. 
The  proprietor  is  always  ready  to  sell ;  for  he  loves  this  irregular,  adventurous, 
half-working,  and  half-lounging  life ;  and  hates  the  sober  industry  and  prudent 
economy  by  which  his  bush-pasture  might  be  changed  into  a  farm,  and  himself 
raised  by  thrift  to  independence.  Receiving  for  his  improvements  more  money 
than  he  ever  before  possessed,  and  a  price  for  the  soil  somewhat  enhanced  by 
surrounding  settlements,  he  willingly  quits  his  house  to  build  another  like  it,  and 
his  farm,  to  girdle  trees,  hunt,  and  saunter  in  another  place."  "  The  second  pro- 
prietor is  commonly  a  farmer ;  and,  with  an  industry  and  spirit  deserving  no  small 
commendation,  changes  the  desert  into  a  fruitful  field.  This  change  is  accom- 
plished much  more  rapidly  in  some  places  than  in  others  ;  as  various  causes, 
often  accidental,  operate.  In  some  instances,  a  settlement  is  begun  by  farmers, 
and  assumes  the  aspect  of  regular  society  from  its  commencement.  This,  to 
some  extent,  is  always  the  fact.  Yet  the  foresters  constitute  a  part,  and  frequently 
the  majority,  of  the  original  inhabitants  of  every  new  settlement."  ^ 

"  In  a  political  view,  the  emigration  of  these  foresters  is  of  very  serious  utility 
to  the  ancient  settlements.  All  countries  contain  restless  inhabitants ;  men  impa- 
tient of  labor,  and  readier  to  contract  debts  than  to  pay  them ;  who  would  rather 
talk  than  work ;  whose  vanity  persuades  them  that  they  are  wise,  and  prevents 
them  from  discovering  that  they  are  fools ;,  who  have  nothing  to  lose,  and  there- 
fore expect  to  be  gainers  by  every  scramble,  and,  of  course,  spend  their  lives  in 

*  I  have  taken  some  liberty  (as  little  as  possible)  with  the  language  of  this  author,  which, 
in  spite  of  his  sense,  talent,  and  learning,  is  invariably  prolix,  and  frequently  quaint,  vulgar, 
and  indistinct.  Dwight  possessed  all  the  strong  corporate  feelings  and  prejudices,  which,  in 
Europe,  are  so  frequently  attached  to  the  professional  scholar  and  divine ;  and  viewed  with 
little  indulgence  a  state  of  society,  in  which,  from  the  first,  a  fixed  and  liberal  provision  was 
not  made  for  cler^men  and  scnoolmasters  How  different  his  representation  of  the  batk- 
woodsmen  of  the  British  settlements  from  that  of  Volney  !  —  which,  notwithstanding,  he' 


eagerly  transcribes,  in  another  portion  of  his  work,  and  proudly  appeals  to,  as  a  confession  of 
the  moral  superiority  of  his  countrymen  to  the  colonial  progeny  of  France.  Williams,  the 
historian  of  Vermont,  thus  celebrates  the  dignity  of  that  condition  of  life  by  which  the  colo- 


s  pr 

the  bounds  of  the  solar  system  ;  but  the  new  settler  has,  in  fact,  enlarged  the  bounds  of  the 
habitable  creation.  The  philosophers  have  expanded  our  minds  with  the  ideas  and  evidence 
that  other  planets  are  inhabited  ;  but  the  simple  and  honest  farmer  has  made  the  earth  a  place 
for  more  inhabitants  than  it  ever  had  before.  And  while  the  astronomers  are  so  justly  cel- 
ebrating the  discoveries  and  the  new  planet  of  Herschel,  all  mankind  should  rejoice  that  the 
peasant  in  the  wildernesa  has  found  out  a  way  to^  make  our  planet  bear  ihore  men." 


NOTES.  5e9 

disturbing  others,  with  the  hope  of  gaining  something  for  themselves.  Under  des- 
potic governments, they  are  awed  into  quiet;  but  in  every  free  community,  they 
create,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  continual  turmoil,  and  have  often  subverted  the 
peace,  liberty,  and  happiness  of  their  fellow-citizens.  In  the  Roman  common- 
wealth, as  before  in  the  republics  of  Greece,  they  were  emptied  out,  as  soldiers, 
upon  the  surrounding  countries,  and  left  the  sober  inhabitants  in  comparative  quiet 
at  home." 

"  The  institutions  and  the  habits  of  New  England,  more,  I  suspect,  than  of  any 
other  country,  have  prevented  or  kept  down  this  noxious  disposition ;  but  they 
cannot  entirely  prevent  either  its  existence  or  its  effects.  In  mercy,  therefore,  to 
the  sober,  industrious,  and  well  disposed  inhabitants,  Providence  has  opened  in 
the  vast  western  wilderness  a  retreat  sufficiently  alluring  to  draw  them  away  from 
the  land  of  their  nativity." 

"  It  is,  however,  to  be  observed,  that  a  considerable  number  even  of  these  peo- 
ple become  sober,  industrious  citizens,  merely  by  the  acquisition  of  property. 
The  love  of  property,  to  a  certain  degree,  seems  indispensable  to  the  existence  of 
sound  morals.  I  have  never  had  a  servant  in  whom  I  could  confide,  except  such 
as  were  desirous  to  earn  and  preserve  money.  The  conveniences  and  the  char- 
acter attendant  on  the  possession  of  property  fix  even  these  restless  men  at  times, 
when  they  find  themselves  really  able  to  accumulate  it,  and  persuade  them  to  a 
course  of  regular  industry.  I  have  mentioned  that  they  sell  the  soil  of  their  iirst 
iarms  at  an  enhanced  price ;  and  that  they  gain  for  their  improvements  on  them 
■what,  to  themselves  at  least,  is  a  considerable  sum.  The  possession  of  this  monej 
removes,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  the  despair  of  acquiring  property,  and  awak- 
ens the  hope  and  the  wish  to  acquire  more.  The  secure  possession  of  property 
demands  every  moment  the  hedge  of  law,  and  reconciles  a  man,  originally  Jaw- 
less,  to  the  restraints  of  government.  Thus  situated,  he  sees  that  reputation  also 
is  within  his  reach.  Ambition  prompts  him  to  aim  at  it,  and  compels  him  to  a 
life  of  sobriety  and  decency.  That  his  children  may  obtain  this  advantage,  he  is 
obliged  to  send  them  to  school,  and  to  unite  with  those  around  him  in  supporting 
a  schoolmaster.  His  neighbours  are  disposed  to  build  a  church  and  settle  a  min- 
ister. A  regard  to  his  own  character,  to  the  character  and  feelings  of  bis  family, 
and  very  often  to  the  solicitations  of  his  wife,  prompts  him  to  contribute  to  both 
these  objects.  When  they  are  compassed,  he  is  induced  by  the  same  motives 
to  attend  the  public  warship  of  God,  and,  in  the  end,  perhaps,  becomes  a  truly 
teligious  raan."    Dwight's  Travels, 


NOTE  XII.     Page  215.  ' '^^ 

CoLLiNSON  was  particularly  distinguished  by  his  warm  regard  for  the  Ameri- 
cans, and  his  anxious  desire  to  illustrate  their  attainments  and  promote  their  im- 
provement. "  Perhaps  in  some  future  period,"  says  his  biographer,  "  the  account 
^hich  Gollinson  procured  of  the  management  of  sheep  in  Spain,  with  respect 
to  their  migrations  from  the  mountains  to  the  plains,  and  back  from  the  plains 
to  the  mountains,  may  not  be  considered  among  the  least  of  the  benefits  that  have 
Bccrued  from  his  extensive  and  inquisitive  correspondence.  ,When  x\merica  is 
better  peopled,  the  mountainous  parts  more  habitable,  the  plains  unloaded  of  their 
vast  forests,  and  cultivated,  the  finest  sheep  in  the  world  may  possibly  cover  the 
plains  of  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  East  and  West  Florida,  in  the  winter  months,  and 
retreat  to  the  mountains  as  the  summer  heats  increase  and  dry  up  the  herbage." 
Annual  Register  for  1776. 

VOL.  II.  72  ,,       .  vv* 


570  NOTES. 


-  NOTE  Xin.     Page  234. 

Franklin  retained  a  parental  partiality  for  his  plan,  notwithstanding  the  unan- 
imous disapprobation  with  which  it  was  rejected  by  his  countrymen,  and  even 
after  the  issue  of  the  American  Revolution  might  have  tempted  him  to  rejoice 
that  it  had  not  been  adopted.  His  expressions  on  this  subject  are  remarkable. 
"  The  different  and  contrary  reasons  of  dislike  to  my  plan,"  says  he,  "  make 
me  suspect  that  it  was  really  the  true  medium  ;  and  I  am  still  of  opinion^  it 
would  have  hem  happy  for  both  sides,  if  it  had  been  adopted.  The  colonies,  so 
united,  would  have  been  sufficiently  strong  to  have  defended  themselves  ;  there 
would  then  have  been  no  need  of  troops  from  England ;  of  course,  the  subsequent 
pretext  for  taxing  America,  and  the  bloody  contest  it  occasioned,  would  have 
been  avoided."     Memoirs,  Part  II. 


NOTE  XIV.     Page  250. 

"  Hendrick  had  lived  to  this  day  with  singular  honor,  and  died  fighting  with  a 
spirit  not  to  be  excelled.  He  was  at  this  time  from  sixty  to  sixty-five  years  of 
age.  His  head  was  covered  with  white  locks,  and,  what  is  uncommon  among 
Indians,  he  was  corpulent.  Immediately  before  Colonel  Williams  began  his 
march,  he  mounted  a  stage  and  harangued  his  people.  He  had  a  strong,  mas- 
culine voice,  and,  it  weis  thought,  might  be  distinctly  heard  at  the  distance  of  half 
a  mile  ;  a  fact,  which,  to  my  own  view,  has  diffused  a  new  degree  of  probability 
over  Homer's  representations  of  the  effects  produced  by  the  speeches  and  shouts 
of  his  heroes.  Lieutenant  Colonel  Pomroy,  who  was  present,  and  heard  this  ef- 
fusion of  Indian  eloquence,  told  me,  that,  although  he  did  not  understand  a  word 
of  the  language,  yet  such  was  the  animation  of  Hendrick,  the  fire  of  his  eye,  the 
force  of  his  gesture,  the  strength  of  his  emphasis,  the  apparent  propriety  of  the 
inflexions  of  his  voice,  and  the  natural  appearance  of  his  whole  manner,  that 
himself  was  more  deeply  affected  with  this  speech  than  with  any  other  which 
he  had  ever  heard.  In  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette,  September  25,  1755,  he  is 
styled  *  the  famous  Hendrick,  a  renowned  Indian  warrior  among  the  Mohawks ' ; 
and  it  is  said  that  his  son,  being  told  that  his  father  was  killed,  giving  the  usual 
Indian  groan  upon  such  occasions,  and  suddenly  putting  his  hand  on  his  left 
bre£ist,  swore  that  his  father  was  still  alive  in  that  place,  and  that  here  stood  his 
son."    Dwight's  Travels, 


NOTE  XV.     Page  253. 

"  Our  answers,  as  well  as  his  (Morris's)  messages,  were  often  tart,  and  some- 
times indecently  abusive  ;  and,  as  he  knew  I  wrote  for  the  assembly,  one  might 
have  imagined  that  when  we  met  we  could  hardly  avoid  cutting  throats.  But 
he  was  so  good-natured  a  man,  that  no  personal  difference  between  him  and  me 
was  occasioned  by  the  contest ;  and  we  often  dined  together.  One  afternoon,  in 
the  height  of  this  public  quarrel,  we  met  in  the  street.  'Franklin,'  said  he, '  you 
must  go  home  with  me  and  spend  the  evening ;  I  am  to  have  some  company  you 
will  like ' ;  and,  taking  me  by  the  arm,  led  me  to  his  house.  In  gay  conversa- 
tion over  our  wine,  after  supper,  he  told  us  jokingly,  that  he  much  admired  the 
idea  of  Sancho  Panza,  who,  when  it  was  proposed  to  give  him  a  government, 
requested  it  might  be  a  government  of  blacks ;  as  then,  if  he  could  not  agree 


NOTES.  571 

with  his  people,  he  might  sell  them.  One  of  his  friends  who  sat  next  me  said, 
*  Franklin,  why  do  you  continue  to  side  with  those  d — d  Quakers  ?  Had  you  not 
better  sell  them  ? '  '  The  governor,'  said  I,  '  has  not  yet  blacked  theni  enough.' " 
Franklin's  Memoirs.  "  Morris  had  been  trained  to  disputation  from  his  boyhood  ; 
his  father,  as  I  have  heard,  accustoming  his  children  to  dispute  with  one  another 
for  his  diversion,  while  sitting  at  table  after  dinner.  But  I  think  the  practice  was 
not  wise  ;  for,  in  the  course  of  my  observation,  these  disputing,  contradicting,  and 
confuting  people  are  generally  unfortunate  in  their  affairs."     Ibid. 


NOTE  Xyi.    Page  256. 

We  have  already  adverted  to  the  differences  of  opinion  which  existed  among 
the  Quakers  themselves  with  regard  to  the  legitimacy  of  defensive  war,  and  which, 
slumbering  in  seasons  of  peace,  have  been  always  developed  by  the  approach  of 
danger  and  hostility.  I  knew  a  Quaker  captain  of  a  trading-ship,  who  was  ex- 
communicated by  his  fellow-sectaries  in  Shields,  for  carrying  guns  in  his  vessel 
during  war.  He  was  subsequently  taken  prisoner  by  the  French,  after  an  ob- 
stinate engagement  at  sea.  On  the  restoration  of  peace,  he  contrived  by  strata- 
gem to  obtain  readmission  into  a  Quaker  society  at  London,  without  professing 
penitence  for  the  fault  which  had  occasioned  his  expulsion  from  the  brotherhood 
at  Shields.  So  far  was  he,  indeed,  from  cherishing  any  penitential  sentiments  on 
the  subject,  that  he  defended  his  conduct  to  me,  and  inveighed  with  some  con- 
tempt and  displeasure  against  the  juggling  hypocrisy  of  men  who  excommunicat- 
ed tneir  brethren  for  carrying  arms  in  self-defence,  and  yet  readily  embraced 
the  protection  of  convoy  for  their  own  vessels  at  sea,  which  he  described  as  the 
universal  practice  of  the  Quakers.  "  I  would  rather,"  said  he,  with  more  of  the 
feelings  of  an  Englishman  than  of  a  Quaker,  "  fight  in  defence  of  my  own  life 
and  livelihood  than  hire  others  to  fight  for  me." 

A  remarkable,  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  a  solitary  instance  of  offensive  war,  pro- 
moted and  conducted  by  a  Quaker,  occurred  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1758 ; 
when  Thomas  Gumming,  a  Quaker  merchant  of  London,  persuaded  the  British 
government  to  despatch  an  expedition,  which  he  accompanied,  for  the  reduction 
of  the  French  settlements  on  the  river  Senegal.  Gumming  declared  his  aversion 
to  bloodshed,  and  his  conviction  that  the  French  would  surrender,  as  they  actually 
did,  without  obliging  their  invaders  to  resort  to  such  extremity.  Smollett.  "  On 
this  occasion,"  says  Smollett,  "  Mr.  Gumming  may  seem  to  have  acted  directly 
contrary  to  the  tenets  of  his  religious  profession ;  but  he  ever  declared  to  the 
ministry,  that  he  was  fully  persuaded  his  schemes  might  be  accomplished  with- 
out the  effusion  of  human  blood ;  and  that,  if  he  thought  otherwise,  he  would  by 
no  means  have  concerned  himself  about  them.  He  also  desired,  let  the  conse- 
quence be  what  it  might,  his  brethren  should  not  be  chargeable  with  what  was  his 
own  single  act.  If  it  was  the  first  military  scheme  of  any  Quaker,  let  it  be  re- 
membered it  was  also  the  first  successful  expedition  of  this  war,  and  one  of  the 
first  that  ever  was  carried  on  according  to  the  pacific  system  of  the  Quakers, 
without  the  loss  of  a  drop  of  blood  on  either  side." 

"  In  1745,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  my  friend,  Tom  Gummmg,  the  Quaker,  said 
he  would  not  fight,  but  he  would  drive  an  ammunition  cart ;  and  we  know  that 
the  Quakers  have  sent  flannel  waistcoats  to  our  soldiers,  to  enable  them  to  fight 
t)etter."     Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson. 


W* 


gj2  NOTES. 


NOTE  XVII.     Page  258. 

"It  was  urged  in  support  of  this  act,  that  many  of  the  foreigners  settled  in^ 
America  had  served  in  foreign  countries,  and  acquired  experience  in  the  mili- 
tary profession ;  and  that  the  soldiers  who  might  enlist  from  this  class  of  people 
could  not  be  so  well  disciplined  by  any  other  persons  as  those  who  were  acquaint- 
ed with  their  language  and  manners. 

"  A  very  zealous  opposition  was  raised  to  the  act  by  many  respectable  members 
of  parliament ;  and  the  agent  for  the  province  of  Massachusetts  Bay  joined  them, 
petitioning  the  House  of  Lords  to  be  heard  against  it.  The  reasons  which  they 
urged  were,  tliat  the  bill  was  inconsistent  with  the  act  for  the  farther  settlement 
of  the  crown  and  better  securing  of  the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  subject,  which 
expressly  providied  that  no-  foreigner,  even  although  he  should  be  naturalized  or 
madle  a  denizen,  should  be  capable  of  enjoying  any  office  or  place  of  trust,  civil 
or  military ;  and  this  provision  had  been  considered  and  reverenced  as  an  essen- 
tial and  sacred  part  of  the  British  constitution  ;  —  that  the  incorporating  of  these 
emigrants  into  a  separate  regiment  [which  was  contemplated]  would  tend  to  keep 
up  their  ignorance  of  the  English  language,  and  of  the  laws,  orders,  and  usages 
of  the  country,  and  prevent  their  uniting  with  the  old  subjects ;  —  that  many  of  the 
settlers,  for  the  sate  of  whose  services  the  employment  of  foreign  officers  was 
proposed,  had  not  resided  the  full  time  requisite  to  entitle  them  to  naturalization, 
and  they  would,  without  such  residence,  be  improper  persons  to  be  made  part  of 
his  Majesty's  forces;  —  that  the  supposition,  that  these  new  subjects  would  be 
more  easily  induced  than  the  native  Americans  to  become  part  of  his  Majesty's 
standing  forces,  and  that  they  would  be  particularly  serviceable  in  garrison,  wa» 
ill-founded ;  becausie  the  cheapness  of  land,  the  high  price  of  labor,  and  the  value 
of  civil  liberty,  being  the  chief  causes  which  prevented  the  Americans  becoming 
soldiers  for  life  or  for  any  indefinite  time,  and  the  new  subjects  having  come  to 
the  colonies  with  an  intent  to  enjoy  these  great  advantages,  it  was  probable  that 
the  same  causes  would  produce  the  same  effects  upon  their  minds ;  or  if  any  of 
them  should  be  engaged  in  the  service,  it  would  probably  be  those  who  had  no 
property,  little  industry,  and  whose  motive  for  going  to  the  war  would  be  supplied 
by  their  idleness ;  —  that  such  persons  wanting  the  love  which  natural-born  subjects 
have  for  their  country,  their  fidelity  would  be  proportionally  insecure  ;  and  that 
they  would  be  particularly  unfit  to  garrison  the  forts  upon  the  frontier,  which  were 
erected  in  parts  remote  from  the  English  settlements,  and  intended  to  preserve 
and  cultivate  a  good  correspondence  and  promote  a  commerce  with  the  several 
Indian  nations  which  frequent  them,  and  where  all  circumstances  conspire  to 
make  it  necessary  that  the  garrisons,  with  every  thing  else,  appear  as  much  En- 
glish as  possible;  ^-- that  the  raising  and  disciplining  a  regiment  in  the  colonies  by 
foreign  officers  would  be  disagreeable  to  the  colonies  in  general,  and  especially 
to  those  in  which  the  chief  strength  of  his  Majesty's  arms  in  America  lay ;  to  the 
officers  at  large  in  tJfte  provincial  corps,  as  well  as  those  who,  after  distinguishing 
themselves  by  their  good  behaviour,  might  derive  the  honor  and  favor  of  receiv- 
ing those  commissions  which  were  proposed  to  be  given  to  the  foreigners ;  and 
to  the  main  body  of  the  Americans  who  were  in  arms,  whose  general  sentiments 
concerning  foreigners  were  such  that  it  would  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
reconcile  their  minds  wholly  to  this  measure."     Minot. 

Minot's  History  of  Massachusetts  (embracing  the  period  from  1749  till  1764) 
is  a  performance  creditable  to  the  sense  and  talent  of  its  author.  But  the  style  is 
frequently  careless,  and  even  slovenly  and  ungrammatical. 


NOTES.  575 

NOTE  XVIII.     Page  265. 

"  Such  are  the  connections,  dependencies,  and  relations  subsisting  between  the 
mechanical  arts,  agriculture,  and  manufactures  of  Great  Britain,  that  it  requires 
study,  deliberation,  and  inquiry  in  the  legislature,  to  discern  and  distinguish  the 
whole  scope  and  consequences  of  many  projects  offered  for  the  benefit  of  the  com- 
monwealth. The  Society  of  Merchant  Adventurers  in  the  City  of  Bristol  alleged, 
in  a  petition  to  the  House  of  Commons,  that  great  quantities  of  bar^iron  were  im- 
ported into  Great  Britain  from  Sweden,  Russia,  and  other  ports,  chiefly  purchased 
with  ready  money,  some  of  which  iron  was  exported  again  to  Africa  and  other 
places,  and  the  rest  wrought  up  by  the  manufacturers.  They  affirmed  that  bar- 
iron  imported  from  North  x\merica  would  answer  the  same  purposes  ;  and  the 
importation  of  it  tend  not  only  to  the  great  advantage  of  the  kingdom,  by  increas- 
ing its  shipping  and  navigation,  but  also  to  the  benefit  of  the  British  colonies ;  — 
that,  by  an  axjt  passed  in  the  twenty-third  year  of  his  present  Majesty's  reign,  the 
impoilation  of  bar-iron  from  America  into  the  port  of  London,  duty-free,  was  per- 
mitted ;  but  its  being  carried  coastways,  or  farther  by  land  than  ten  miles,  had 
been  prohibited  ;  so  that  several  very  considerable  manufacturing  towns  were  de- 
prived of  the  use  of  American  iron,  and  the  outports  prevented  from  employing 
it  in  their  export  commerce.  They  requested,  therefore,  that  bar-iron  might  be 
imported  from  America  into  Great  Britain,  duty-free,  by  all  his  Majesty's  subjects. 
This  request  being  reinforced  by  many  other  petitions  from  different  parts  of  the 
kingdom,  other  classes  of  men,  who  thought  several  interests  would  be  affected 
by  such  a  measure,  took  the  alarm  ;  and,  in  divers  counter-petitions,  stated  many 
ill  consequences,  which,  they  alleged,  would  arise  from  its  being  enacted  into  a 
law.  Pamphlets  were  published  on  both  sides  of  the  question,  and  violent  disputes 
were  kindled  upon  this  subject,  which  was  justly  deemed  a  matter  of  national 
importance. 

"  The  opposers  of  the  bill  which  was  solicited  observed,  that  large  quantities  of 
iron  were  yearly  produced  at  home,  and  employed  multitudes  of  poor  people, 
there  being  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  nine  forges  in  England  and  Wales,  be- 
sides those  erected  in  Scotland ;  the  whole  producing  eighteen  thousand  tons  of 
iron ;  —  that,  as  the  mines  in  Great  Britain  are  inexhaustible,  the  produce  would,, 
of  late  years,  have  been  considerably  increased,  had  not  the  people  been  kept 
under  continual  apprehension  of  seeing  American  iron  admitted  duty-free  ;  a 
supposition  which  had  prevented  the  traders  from  extending  their  works,  and  dis- 
couraged many  from  engaging  in  this  branch  of  traffic.  They  alleged  that  the 
iron-works  already  carried  on  in  England  occasioned  a  consumption  of  one  hun- 
dred and  ninety-eight  thousand  cords  of  wood,  produced  in  coppices  that  grew 
upon  barren  lands,  which  could  not  otherwise  be  turned  to  any  good  account ;  — 
that,  as  the  coppices  afford  shade,  and  preserve  a  moisture  in  the  ground,  the 
pasture  is  more  valuable  with  the  wood  than  it  would  be  if  the  coppices  were 
grubbed  up ;  consequently,  all  the  estates  where  these  now  grow  would  sink  in 
their  yearly  value  ;  —  that  these  coppices,  now  cultivated  and  preserved  for  the  use 
of  the  iron- works,  are  likewise  absolutely  necessary  for  the  manufacture  of  leather, 
as  they  furnish  bark  for  the  tanners  ;  —  and  that,  according  to  the  management  of 
these  coppices,  they  produced  a  great  number  of  timber-trees  necessary  for  the 
purposes  of  building.  They  asserted,  that  neither  the  American  iron,  nor  any 
that  had  yet  been  found  in  Great  Britain,  was  so  proper  for  converting  into  steel 
as  that  which  comes  from  Sweden,  particularly  that  sort  called  ore  ground ;  but 
as  there  are  mines  in  the  northern  parts  of  Britain,  nearly  in  the  same  latitude 
with  those  of  Sweden,  furnished  with  sufficient  quantities  of  wood,  and  rivers  for 
mills  and  engines,  it  was  hardly  to  be  doubted  but  that  people  would  find  metal- 
of  the  same  quality,  and,  in  a  few  years,  be  able  to  prevent  the  necessity  of 


574  NOTES. 

importing  iron  either  from  Sweden  or  Russia.  They  inferred  that  American  iron 
could  never  interfere  with  that  which  Great  Britain  imported  from  Sweden,  be- 
cause it  was  not  fit  for  edged  tools,  anchors,  chain-plates,  and  other  particulars 
necessary  in  ship-building  ;  nor  diminish  the  importation  of  Russian  iron,  which 
was  not  only  harder  than  the  American  and  British,  but  also  could  be  afforded 
cheaper  than  that  brought  from  our  own  plantations,  even  though  the  duty  on  this 
last  should  be  removed.  The  importation  of  American  iron,  therefore,  duty-free, 
could  interfere  with  no  other  sort  but  that  produced  in  Britain,  with  which,  by 
means  of  this  advantage,  it  would  clash  so  much,  as  to  put  a  stop,  in  a  little  time, 
to  all  the  iron- works  now  carried  on  in  the  kingdom,  and  reduce  to  beggary  a  great 
number  of  families  whom  they  support. 

"  To  these  objections  the  favorers  of  the  projected  bill  replied,  —  that,  when  a 
manufacture  is  much  more  valuable  than  the  rough  materials,  and  these  cannot 
be  produced  at  home  in  sufficient  quantities,  and  at  such  a  price  as  is  consistent 
with  the  preservation  of  the  manufacture,  it  is  the  interest  of  the  legislature  to 
admit  a  free  importation  of  these  materials,  even  from  foreign  countries,  although 
it  should  put  an  end  to  the  production  of  that  material  in  this  island ;  —  that,  as 
the  neighbours  of  Great  Britain  are  now  more  attentive  than  ever  to  their  com- 
mercial interests,  and  endeavouring  to  manufacture  their  rough  materials  at  home, 
this  nation  must  take  every  method  for  lowering  the  price  of  materials  ;  other- 
wise, in  a  few  years,  it  will  lose  the  manufacture,  and,  instead  of  supplying  other 
countries,  be  furnished  by  them  with  all  the  fine  toys  and  utensils  made  of  steel 
and  iron ;  —  that,  being  in  danger  of  losing  not  only  the  manufacture  but  the 
produce  of  iron,  unless  it  can  be  procured  at  a  cheaper  rate  than  that  for  which 
it  is  sold  at  present,  the  only  way  of  attaining  this  end  is  by  diminishing  the  duty 
payable  upon  the  importation  of  foreign  iron,  or  by  rendering  it  necessary  for  the 
undertakers  of  the  iron  mines  in  Great  Britain  to  sell  their  produce  cheaper  than 
it  has  been  for  some  years  afforded ;  —  that  the  most  effectual  method  for  this 
purpose  is  to  raise  up  a  rival,  by  permitting  a  free  importation  of  all  sorts  of  iron 
from  the  American  plantations ;  —  that  American  iron  can  never  be  sold  so  cheap 
as  that  of  Britain  can  be  afforded  ;  for  in  the  colonies  labor  of  all  kinds  is  much 
dearer  than  in  England  :  if  a  man  employ  his  own  slaves,  he  must  reckon  in  his 
charge  a  great  deal  more  than  the  common  interest  of  their  purchase-money ; 
because,  when  one  of  them  dies  or  escapes  from  his  master,  he  loses  both  inter- 
est and  principal ;  —  that  the  common  interest  of  money  in  the  plantations  is  con- 
siderably higher  than  in  England  ;  consequently,  no  man  in  that  country  will  em- 
ploy his  money  in  any  branch  of  trade  by  which  he  cannot  gain  considerably  more 
per  cent,  than  is  expected  in  Great  Britain,  where  the  interest  is  low  and  profit 
moderate  ;  a  circumstance  which  will  always  give  a  great  advantage  to  the  British 
min.er,  who  likewise  enjoys  an  exemption  from  freight  and  insurance,  which  lie 
heavy  upon  the  American  adventurer,  especially  in  time  of  war.  With  respect 
to  the  apprehension  of  the  leather-tanners,  they  observed,  that,  as  the  coppices 
generally  grow  on  barren  lands,  not  fit  for  tillage,  and  improve  the  pasturage,  no 
proprietor  would  be  at  the  expense  of  grubbing  up  the  wood  to  spoil  the  pasture, 
as  he  could  make  no  other  use  of  the  land  on  which  it  was  prodyced.  The 
wood  must  be  always  worth  something,  especially  in  counties  where  there  is  not 
plenty  of  coal,  and  the  timber-trees  would  produce  consideraWe  advantage  ;  there- 
fore, if  there  was  not  one  iron-mine  in  Great  Britain,  no  coppice  would  be  grub- 
bed up,  unless  it  grew  on  a  rich  soil,  which  would  produce  corn  instead  of  cord- 
wood  ;  consequently,  the  taxiners  have  nothing  to  fear,  especially  as  planting  hath 
become  a  prevailing  taste  among  the  landholders  of  the  island. 

"  The  committee  appointed  to  prepare  the  bill  seriously  weighed  and  canvassed 
these  arguments,  examined  disputed  facts,  and  inspected  papers  and  accounts  re- 
lating to  the  produce,  importation,  and  manufacture  of  iron.  At  length,  Mr.  John 
Pitt  reported  to  the  house  their  opinion,  implying  that  the  liberty,  granted  by  an 


NOTES.  575 

act  passed  in  the  twenty-third  year  of  his  Majesty's  reign,  of  importing  bar-iron 
from  the  British  colonies  in  America  into  the  port  of  London,  should  be  extended 
to  all  the  other  ports  of  Great  Britain.  The  house  having  approved  this  report, 
and  a  bill  being  brought  in  accordingly,  another  petition  was  presented  by  several 
noblemen,  gentlemen,  freeholders,  and  other  proprietors,  owners,  and  possessors  of 
coppices  and  woodlands  in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire,  alleging  that  a  permis- 
sion to  import  American  bar-iron  duty-free  would  be  attended  with  numberless 
ill  consequences,  both  of  a  public  and  private  nature  ;  specifying  certain  hard- 
ships to  which  they,  in  particular,  would  be  exposed  ;  and  praying,  that,  if  the  bill 
should  pass,  they  might  be  relieved  from  the  pressure  of  an  act  passed  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  the  Eighth,  obliging  the  owners  of  coppice-woods  to  preserve  them,  under 
severe  penalties ;  and  that  they  might  be  permitted  to  fell  and  grub  up  their  coppice- 
woods,  in  order  to  a  more  proper  cultivation  of  the  soil,  without  being  restrained 
by  the  fear  of  malicious  and  interested  prosecutions.  In  consequence  of  this  re- 
monstrance, a  clause  was  added  to  the  bill,  repealing  so  much  of  the  act  of  Henry 
the  Eighth  as  prohibited  the  conversion  of  coppice  or  underwoods  into  pasture  or 
tillage  :  then  it  passed  through  both  houses,  and  received  the  royal  sanction." 
Smollett. 


NOTE  XIX.     Page  274. 

As  Franklin's  Historical  Review  of  the  Constitution  of  Pennsylvania  is  not 
easily  to  be  found,  except  in  a  voluminous  edition  of  his  works,  nor  indeed  has  a 
place  in  every  edition  of  them,  some  readers  may  be  gratified  by  the  following 
transcript  of  a  few  remarkable  passages  from  it. 

"  To  obtain  an  infinite  variety  of  purposes  by  a  few  plain  principles  is  the 
characteristic  of  nature.  As  the  eye  is  affected,  so  is  the  understanding  ;  objects 
at  a  distance  strike  us  according  to  their  dimensions,  or  the  quantity  of  light 
thrown  upon  them  ;  near,  according  to  their  novelty  or  familiarity,  as  they  are  in 
motion  or  at  rest.  It  is  the  same  with  actions.  A  battle  is  all  motion  ;  a  hero  all 
glare  :  while  such  images  are  before  us,  we  can  attend  to  nothing  else.  Solon 
and  Lycurgus  would  make  no  figure  in  the  same  scene  with  the  king  of  Prussia ; 
and  we  are  at  present  so  lost  in  the  military  scramble  on  the  continent  next  us,  in 
which,  it  must  be  confessed,  we  are  deeply  interested,  that  we  have  scarce  time 
to  throw  a  glance  towards  America,  where  we  have  also  much  at  stake,  and 
where,  if  anywhere,  our  account  must  be  made  up  at  last. 

"  We  love  to  stare  more  than  to  reflect ;  and  to  be  indolently  amused  at  our 
leisure,  rather  than  commit  the  smallest  trespass  on  our  patience  by  winding  a 
painful,  tedious  maze,  which  would  pay  us  nothing  but  knowledge." 

"  A  father  and  his  family  —  the  latter  united  by  interest  and  aflfection,  the  for- 
mer to  be  revered  for  the  wisdom  of  his  instructions  and  the  indulgent  use  of  his 
authority  —  was  the  form  in  which  Pennsylvanian  society  was  first  presented. 
Those  who  were  only  ambitious  of  repose  found  it  here  ;  and  £is  none  returned 
with  an  evil  report  of  the  land,  numbers  followed :  all  partook  of  the  leaven  they 
found  ;  the  community  still  wore  the  same  equal  face  ;  nobody  aspired  ;  nobody 
was  oppressed  ;  industry  was  sure  of  profit,  knowledge  of  esteem,  and  virtue  of 
veneration. 

"  An  assuming  landlord,  strongly  disposed  to  convert  free  tenants  into  abject 
vassals,  and  to  reap  what  he  did  not  sow,  countenanced  and  abetted  by  a  few 
desperate  and  designing  dependents,  on  the  one  side  ;  and  on  the  other,  all  who 
had  sense  enough  to  know  their  rights,  and  spirit  enough  to  defend  them,  com- 
bined as  one  man  against  this  landlord  and  his  encroachments,  is  the  form  it  has 
since  assumed. 


576  NOTES. 

"  And  surely,  to  a  nation  born  to  liberty  like  this,i  bound  to  leave  it  unimpaired 
as  they  received  it  from  their  fathers  in  perpetuity  to  their  heirs,  and  interested  in 
the  conservation  of  it  in  every  appendage  of  the  British  empire,  the  particulars 
of  such  a  contest  cannot  be  wholly  indifferent. 

"  On  the  contrary,  it  is  reasonable  to  think  that  the  first  workings  of  tyranny 
against  liberty,  and  the  natural  efforts  of  honest  men  to  secure  themselves  against 
the  first  approaches  of  oppression,  must  have  a  captivating  power  over  every  man 
of  sensibility  and  discernment  among  us. 

*'  Liberty,  it  seems,  thrives  best  in  the  woods.  America  but  cultivated  what 
Germany  brought  forth." 

"  It  is  not,  indeed,  to  be  presumed-,  that  such  as  have  long  been  accustomed 
to  consider  the  colonies,  in  general,  as  only  so  many  dependencies  on  ihe  Council 
Board,  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  the  Board  of  Customs,  or  as  a  hot-bed  for  causes, 
obs,  and  pecuniary  emoluments,  and  bound  as  effectually  by  instructions  given 
to  governors  as  by  laws,  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  consider  these  patriot  rustics 
with  any  degree  of  respect.  But  how  contemptuously  soever  these  gentlemen 
may  talk  of  the  colonies,  how  cheap  soever  they  may  hold  their  assemblies,  or 
how  insignificant  the  planters  and  traders  who  compose  them,  truth  will  be  truth, 
and  principle  principle,  notwithstanding.  Courage,  wisdom,  integrity,  and  honor 
are  not  to  be  measured  by  the  sphere  assigned  them  to  act  in,  but  by  the  trials 
they  undergo,  and  the  vouchers  they  furnish  ;  and,  if  so  manifested,  need  neither 
robes  nor  titles  to  set  thexn  ofif." 

The  following  sentence  expresses  the  principle  on  which,  little  more  than  ten 
years  after,  the  revolt  of  the  colonies  from  the  dominion  of  Britain  was  justified  : 
—  "  The  birthright  of  every  British  subject  is,  to  have  a  property  of  his  own  in 
his  estate,  person,  and  reputation  ;  subject  only  to  laws  enacted  by  his  own  con- 
currence, either  in  person  or  by  his  representatives  ;  and  which  birthright  accompa- 
nies him  wheresoever  he  wanders  or  rests,  so  long  as  he  is  within  the  pale  of  the 
British  dominions  and  is  true  to  his  allegiance." 

With  grave,  yet  pungent  and  animated  satire,  Franklin  unfolds  the  changes 
which  William  Penn  gradually  introduced  into  the  constitution  of  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  dissensions  that  had  ever  since  prevailed  between  that  great  man  and  his 
descendants,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  colonists  and  provincial  assemblies,  on 
the  other.  But  it  would  be  impossible  to  do  justice  to  these  passages,  without 
transcribing  from  them  more  largely  than  my  limits  will  admit. 

"  It  is  not  necessary,  in  private  life,  to  bargain  that  those  who  purchase  for  their 
own  use  and  advantage  should  pay  the  price  out  of  their  own  pockets  ;  but  in 
public  it  is.  Persons  who  stand  on  the  same  ground  will  insist  on  the  same  rights; 
and  it  is  matter  of  wonder,  when  any  one  party  discovers  folly  or  insolence 
enough  to  demand  or  expect  any  preeminence  over  the  other  :  whereas  preroga- 
tive admits  of  no  equality,  and  presupposes  that  difference  of  place  alters  the 
use  of  language,  and  even  the  very  nature  of  things.  Hence,  though  protection 
is  the  reason,  and,  consequently,  should  be  the  end,  of  government,  we  ought  to 
be  as  much  upon  our  guard  against  our  protectors  as  against  our  enemies. 

"  Power,  like  water,  is  ever  working  its  own  way  ;  and  whenever  it  can  find  or 
make  an  opening,  is  altogether  as  prone  to  overflow  whatever  is  subject  to  it 
And  though  matter  of  right  overlooked  may  be  reclaimed  and  reassumed  at  any 
time,  it  cannot  be  too  soon  reclaimed  and  reassumed." 

"  The  true  state  of  Pennsylvania  is  now  before  us.  It  is  apparent  the  assem- 
blies of  that  province  have  acted  from  the  beginning  on  the  defensive  only.  The 
defensive  is  what  every  man,  by  the  right  and  law  of  Nature,  is  entitled  to.  Jeal- 
ousy is  the  first  principle  of  defence  :  if  men  were  not  to  suspect,  they  would 
rarely,  if  ever,  be  upon  their  guard." 

"  And  this  being  the  truth,  the  plain  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  there  i$ 
1  Britain,  where  the  work  was  published. 


NOTES.  ^Yt 

no  need  ta  direct  Ihe  censures  of  the  public,  which,  on  proper  information,  are 
always  sure  to  fall  in  the  right  place.  The  parties  before  them  are  the  two 
proprietaries  of  a  province,  and  the  province  itself.  And  who  or  what  are  these 
proprietaries  ?  In  the  province,  unsizable  subjects  and  ips^iiicient  lords.  At 
home,  gentlemen,  it  is  true,  but  gentlemen  so  very  private,  that  in  the  herd  of 
gentry  they  are  hardly  to  be  found ;  not  in  court  5  not  In  office  ;  not  in  ps^rlia- 
ment. 

,  "And  which  is  of  most  consequence  to  the  community  ;  whether  their  private 
restate  shall  be  taxed,  or  the  province  shall  be  saved  ?  whether  these  two  private, 
gentlemen,  in  virtue  of  their  absolute  proprietariship,  shall  convert  so  many  fellow- 
subjects,  born  as  free  as  themselves,  into  vassals  ;  or  whether  so  noble  and  useful 
a  province  shall  for  ever  remain  an  asylum  for  all  that  wish  to  remain  as  free  a^ 
the  inhabitants  of  it  have,  hitherto,  made  a  shift  to  preserve  themselves  ?  ^Stf^ 
judice  lis  e$ty 

This  eloquent  and  ingenious  performance  was  generally  ascribed,  at  the  time, 
in  England,  to  James  Ralph,  a  sprightly,  entertaining,  and  once  popular  writer, 
but  now  almost  entirely  forgotten.  His  birthplace  is  unknown  ;  but  he  is  sup^ 
posed  to  have  been  a  native  of  Philadelphia,  which  he  quitted  in  company  witlji 
Franklin,  in  1725^  for  England,  where  he  acquired  mvch  consideration,  ai\4 
earned  a  pension  by  his  political  and  historical  compositions,.  Ashamed  of  blame^ 
less  poverty  and  humble  usefulness,  on  his  arrival  in  England,  he  assumed  for  ^ 
while  the  name  of  his  companion,  Franklin,  whose  friendship  has  eventually  been 
the  means  of  rescuing  the  name  of  Ralph  from  entire  oblivioft.  Franklin's  Jl|e» 
moirs.     W9,t]ans's  Biographical  Dictionary, 


NOTE  XX.     Page  28^ 

"  After  the  taking  of  Fort  Duquesne,  General  Fqrbes  resolved  to  search  for 
the  relics  of  Braddock's  army.  As  the  European  soldiers  were  not  ^o  well  quali- 
fied to  explore  the  forests,  Captain  West,  the  elder  brother  of  Benjamin  West, 
the  painter,  was  appointed,  with  his  company  of  American  sharpshooters,  to  asr 
sist  in  the  execution  of  this  duty  ;  and  a  party  of  Indian  warrjors,  who  had  re-r 
turned  to  the  British  interests,  were  requested  to  conduct  him  to  the  places  where 
the  bones  of  the  slain  were  likely  to  be  found.  In  this  solemn  and  affecting  duty, 
several  officers  belonging  to  the  forty -second  regiment  aiscompanied  the  detacL 
ment,  and  with  them  Major  Sir  Peter  Halket,  who  had  lost  his  father  and  a  brother 
in  the  fatal  destruction  of  the  army.  It  might  have  been  thought  a  hopeless  task, 
ihat  he  should  be  able  to  discriminate  their  remains  from  the  common  relics  of 
the  other  soldiers  ;  but  he  was  induced  to  think  otherwise,  as  one  pf  the  Indian 
warriors  assured  him  that  he  had  seen  an  officer  fall  near  a  remarkable  tree, 
which  he  thought  he  could  still  discover ;  informing  him,  at  the  same  time,  that 
the  incident  was  impressed  on  his  memory  by  observing  a  young  subaltern,  who, 
in  running  to  the  officer's  assistance,  was  also  shot  dead,  on  his  reaching  the 
spot,  and  fell  across  the  other's  body.  The  Major  had  a  mournful  conviction  in 
fjis  own  mind  that  the  two  officers  were  his  father  and  brother;  and,  indeed,  it 
was  chiefly  owing  to  his  anxiety  on  the  subject,  that  this  pious  expedition,  the  sec- 
ond of  the  kind  that  history  records,  was  undertaken. 

"  Captain  West  and  his  companions  proceeded  through  the  woods  and  along  the 
banks  of  the  river,  towards  the  scene  of  the  battle.  The  Indians  regarded  the 
expedition  as  a  religious  service,  and  guided  the  troops  with  awe  and  in  pro- 
found silence.  The  soldiers  were  affected  with  sentiments  not  less  serious  ;  and 
as  they  explored  the  bewildering  labyrinths  of  those  vast  forests,  their  hearts 
were  often  melted  with  inexpressible  sorrow  ;  for  they  frequently  found  s^teleton^ 

VOL.   II.  73  WW 


578  NOTES. 

lying  across  the  trunks  of  fallen  trees,  —  a  mournful  proof,  to  their  imaginations, 
that  the  men  who  sat  there  had  perished  from  hunger,  while  vainly  attempting  to 
find  their  way  to  the  plantations.  Sometimes  their  feelings  were  raised  to  the  ut- 
most pitch  of  horror  by  the  sight  of  skulls  and  bones  scattered  on  the  ground,  — 
a  certain  indication  that  the  bodies  had  been  devoured  by  wild  beasts ;  and  in 
other  places  they  saw  the  blackness  of  ashes  amidst  the  relics,  —  the  tremendous 
evidence  of  atrocious  rites. 

"  At  length  they  reached  a  turn  of  the  river,  not  far  from  the  principal  scene 
of  destruction ;  and  the  Indian  who  remembered  the  death  of  the  two  officers 
stopped  :  the  detachment  also  halted.  He  then  looked  around  in  quest  of  some 
object  which  might  recall  distinctly  his  recollection  of  the  ground,  and  suddenly 
darted  into  the  wood.  The  soldiers  rested  their  arms  without  speaking.  A 
shrill  cry  was  soon  after  heard  ;  and  the  other  guides  made  signs  for  the  troops 
to  follow  them  towards  the  spot  from  which  it  came.  In  a  short  time  they  reached 
the  Indian  warrior,  who,  by  his  cry,  had  announced  to  his  companions  that  he 
had  found  the  place  where  he  was  posted  on  the  day  of  battle.  As  the  troops  ap- 
proached, he  pointed  to  the  tree  under  which  the  officers  had  fallen.  Captain 
West  halted  his  men  round  the  spot,  and,  with  Sir  Peter  Halket  and  the  other  offi- 
cers, formed  a  circle,  while  the  Indians  removed  the  leaves,  which  thickly  cov- 
ered the  ground.  The  skeletons  were  found,  as  the  Indian  expected,  lying  across 
each  other.  The  officers  having  looked  at  them  some  time,  the  Major  said,  that, 
as  his  father  had  an  artificial  tooth,  he  thought  he  might  be  able  to  ascertain  if 
they  were  indeed  his  bones  and  those  of  his  brother.  The  Indians  were  there- 
fore ordered  to  remove  the  skeleton  of  the  youth,  and  to  bring  to  view  that  of  the 
old  officer.  This  was  immediately  done  ;  and,  after  a  short  examination,  Major 
Halket  exclaimed,  *  It  is  my  father ! '  and  fell  back  into  the  arms  of  his  compan- 
ions. The  pioneers  then  dug  a  grave,  and  the  bones  being  laid  in  it  together,  a 
Highland  plaid  was  spread  over  them,  and  they  were  interred  with  the  customary 
honors. 

"  When  Lord  Grosvenor  bought  the  picture  of  the  death  of  Wolfe,  Mr.  West 
mentioned  to  him  the  finding  of  the  bones  of  Bmddock's  army,  as  a  pictorial 
subject  capable  of  being  managed  with  great  effect.  The  gloom  of  the  vast 
forest,  the  naked  and  simple  Indians  supporting  the  skeletons,  the  grief  of  the 
son  on  recognizing  the  relics  of  his  father,  the  subdued  melancholy  of  the  spec- 
tators, and  the  picturesque  garb  of  the  Pennsylvanian  sharpshooters  undoubtedly 
furnished  topics  capable  of  every  effect  which  the  pencil  could  bestow,  or  the  im- 
agination require,  in  the  treatment  of  so  sublime  a  scene.  His  Lordship  admitted, 
that,  in  possessing  so  affecting  an  incident  as  the  discovery  of  the  bones  of  the 
Halkets,  it  was  superior  even  to  that  of  the  search  for  the  remains  of  the  army 
of  Varus  ;  but  as  the  transaction  was  little  known,  and  not  recorded  by  any  histo- 
rian, he  thought  it  would  not  be  interesting  to  the  public."     Gait's  Life  of  West. 


NOTE  XXI.     Page  283. 

"  Nor  was  encouragement  refused  [in  England]  to  those  who  distinguished 
themselves  by  extraordinary  talents  in  any  branch  of  the  liberal  arts  and  sciences, 
though  no  Maecenas  appeared  among  the  ministers,  and  not  the  least  ray  of  pat- 
ronage glimmered  from  the  throne.  The  protection,  countenance,  and  gratifica- 
tion secured  in  other  countries  by  the  institution  of  academies  and  the  liberalities 
of  princes,  the  ingenious  in  England  derived  from  the  generosity  of  a  public  en- 
dued with  taste  and  sensibility,  eager  for  improvement,  and  proud  of  patronizing 
extraordinary  merit.  Several  years  had  already  elapsed  since  a  society  of  pri- 
vate persons  was  instituted  at  London,  for  the  encouragement  of  arts,  manufac- 


NOTES.  579 

tures,  Euid  commerce.  It  consisted  of  a  president,  vice-president,  secretary,  reg- 
ister, collector,  and  other  officers,  elected  from  a  very  considerable  number  of 
members,  who  paid  a  certain  yearly  contribution  for  the  purposes  of  the  institu- 
tion."— "  The  funds  thus  contributed,  after  the  necessary  expense  of  the  society 
had  been  deducted,  were  expended  in  premiums  for  planting  and  husbandry  ; 
for  discoveries  and  improvements  in  chemistry,  dyeing,  and  mineralogy ;  for 
promoting  the  ingenious  arts  of  drawing,  engraving,  casting,  painting,  statuary, 
and  sculpture  ;  for  the  improvement  of  manufactures  and  machines,  in  the  vari- 
ous articles  of  hats,  crapes,  druggets,  mills,  marbled  paper,  ship-blocks,  spin- 
ning-wheels, toys,  yarn,  knitting,  and  weaving.  They  likewise  allotted  sums 
for  the  advantage  of  the  British  colonies  in  America^  and  bestowed  premiums 
on  those  settlers  who  should  excel  in  curing  cochineal,  planting  logwood-trees, 
cultivating  olive-trees,  producing  myrtle-weix,  making  potash,  preserving  raisins, 
curing  safflower,  making  silk  and  wines,  importing  sturgeon,  preparing  isinglass, 
planting  hemp  and  cinnamon,  extracting  opium  and  the  gum  of  the  persimmon- 
tree,  collecting  stones  of  the  mango,  which  should  be  found  to  vegetate  in  the 
West  Indies,  raising  silk  grass,  and  laying  out  provincial  gardens."     Smollett. 


NOTE  XXn.     Page  283. 

"  In  the  legal  history  of  a  commercial  country,  the  fortune  of  the  only  bankrupt 
law  which  could  ever  be  obtained  becomes  a  matter  of  curiosity.  This  law,  hav- 
ing been  laid  before  the  king  for  the  royal  approbation,  agreeably  to  the  charter, 
was  referred  to  the  Lords  of  Trade.  After  mature  consideration,  they  gave  it  as 
their  opinion,  that,  although  a  bankrupt  law  be  just  and  equitable  upon  its  abstract 
principle,  yet  it  had  always  been  found  in  its  execution  to  afford  such  opportu- 
nities for  fraudulent  practices,  that,  even  in  England,  where,  in  most  ceises,  the 
whole  number  of  creditors  were  resident  on  the  spot,  it  might  well  be  doubted 
whether  the  fair  trader  did  not  receive  more  detriment  than  benefit  from  such  a 
law.  But  if  a  like  law  should  take  place  in  a  colony,  where  (as  they  were  in- 
formed) not  above  one  tenth  part  of  its  creditors  were  resident,  and  where  that 
small  proportion  of  the  whole,  both  in  number  and  value,  might  (as  under  the 
present  act  they  might),  upon  a  commission  being  issued,  get  possession  of  the 
bankrupt's  effects,  and  proceed  to  make  a  dividend,  before  the  merchemts  in 
England,  who  composed  the  other  nine  tenths  of  the  bankrupt's  creditors,  could 
even  be  informed  of  such  bankruptcy  ;  it  was  easy  to  foresee  that  such  a  law 
would  be  beneficial  to  the  very  small  part  of  the  creditors  resident  in  the  colony 
only,  and  that  the  rest  of  them,  who  resided  in  England,  would  be  exposed  to 
frauds  and  difficulties  of  every  sort,  and  might  be  greatly  injured  in  their  proper- 
ties. This  opinion  prevailed,  and  the  law  was  accordingly  disapproved  by  the 
king,  to  the  great  inconvenience  of  many  debtors,  who  had  actually  surrendered 
their  effects  under  it."     Minot. 


NOTE  XXIII.     Page  285. 

On  this  occasion,  the  assembly  of  Massachusetts  presented  the  following  ad- 
dress to  Governor  Pownall,  who  had  communicated  to  them  the  wishes  and  so- 
licitations of  Amherst.  It  is  a  curious  and  interesting  document  to  the  student 
of  American  history. 

"  The  several  reasons  and  motives  which  your  Excellency  has  from  time  to 
tim»  laid  before  the  two  houses,  in  order  to  induce  an  augmentation  of  the  forces 


m6\  NOTES. 

for  ih^  Sfervfcfe  of  the  present  year,  have  betti  maturely  weighed  and  considered' 
by  lis. 

"  \Ve  have  liicewise  had  an  opporftinify,  in  the  recess  of  the  Court,  of  ac- 
quainting ourselves  with  the  state  of  the  several  parts  of  the  province,  and  its  abil- 
ity for  raising  an  additional  number  of  men.  We  acknowledge  with  gratitude,  that 
the  interest  and  ease  of  the  people  has  been  considered  by  your  Excellency  in 
ftiaking  the  last  levy,  as  far  as  could  consist  with  his  Majesty's  service,  and  the 
purposes  for  which  the  men  are  raised.  The  distress  brought  upon  the  inhabit- 
ants is,  notwithstanding,  extremely  great.  The  number  of  men  raised  this  year, 
we  are  sensible,  is  not  equal  to  that  <yf^  the  last.  'The  assembly  then  made  the 
greatest  effort  that  has  ever  been  known  in  the  province.  They  looked  upon  it 
fo  be  their  last  effort ;  they  had  no  expectations  that  it  would  be  repeated  ;  and 
it  Was  really  so  great  as  to  render  it  impracticable  for  us  to  mak-e  the  like  a  sec- 
ond time,  llhe  niimber  d(  our  inhabitants  is,  since  then,  much  lessened  :  some 
were  killed  in  battle  ;  many  died  by  ^ckness  while  they  were  in  service,  or  soon 
after  their  l«eturn  home ;  and  great  numbers  have  enlisted  in  his  Majesty's  reg- 
ular forces. 

"  The  unprecedented  charge  of  the  last  year  also  tends  to  increase  the  dis- 
tress of  the  province.  The  expense  of  the  regiments  raised  for  his  Majesty's 
service  amounted  to  nearly  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  pounds  sterling  : 
besides  this,  the  inhabitants  of  the  seveittl  towns  in  the  province,  by  fines  or  by 
voluntary  contributions,  to  procure  men  for  the  service,  paid  at  least  sixty  thou- 
sand pounds  sterling  more  ;  which  was,  in  all  respects,  as  burdensome  as  if  it 
had  been  raised  as  a  tax  by  the  government.  The  defence  of  our  own  frontiers, 
and  the  other  ordinary  charges  of  government,  amount  to  at  least  thirty  thousand 
pounds  sterling  more. 

"  Because  the  province  last  year  raised  seven  thousand  men,  it  is  inferred  that 
it  is  able  to  raise  the  same  number  this  year,  and  no  allowance  is  made  for  its 
being  so  much  reduced  in  its  estate  and  number  of  inhabitants. 

"  We  have  generally  been  the  first  in  proposals  for  public  service,  and  have 
determined  what  force  We  would  employ  ;  other  governments  have  followed  after 
us,  in  just  what  proportion  they  pleased ;  and  we  wish  it  had  been  an  equal 
one.  We  are  now  lessened,  and  they  are  increased  ;  and  we  are  yet  urged  to 
Continue  the  same  proportions.  We  have  always  chosen  to  avoid  entering  into  the 
consideration  of  quotas  or  proportions  ;  but  we  seem  now  obliged  to  do  it.  We 
conceive,  that,  in  order  to  determine  a  just  proportion,  the  wealth,  the  number 
of  inhabitants,  and  the  charges  of  .each  government  for  its  immediate  defence  are 
all  to  come  under  consideration.  If  this  be  allowed  to  be  a  just  rule  to  deter- 
mine by,  we  are  sure,  that,  not  only  in  all  past  years,  but  in  this  present  year 
also,  we  have  done  more,  in  proportion,  to  the  general  service,  than  any  one  gov- 
ernment Upon  the  continent. 

*'  We  know  of  no  quota  settled  fOr  each  colony.  The  agreement  made  at  Al- 
bany, hy  the  commissioners,  m  the  year  1754,  has  been  generally  urged  as  a 
rule  of  proportion  since  that  time.  But  it  was  agreed  by  the  same  commission- 
ers, that  regard  should  always  be  had  to  the  special  services  of  any  colony  for 
its  immediate  defence.  We  are  obliged  to  keep  six  hundred  men  in  pay,  for  the 
defence  of  our  frontiers  and  seacoasts.  This  charge  some  of  the  other  govern- 
ments are  wholly  free  from,  and  the  rest  subject  to  in  a  very  small  degree. 
Exclusive  of  these  six  hundred  men,  we  have  already  raised  five  thousand  men, 
for  the  general  service.  Connecticut  has  raised  in  proportion^  to  the  five  thou- 
sand only,  according  to  the  Albany  plan,  without  any  regard  to  the  six  hundred. 
Every  other  government  falls  short  even  of  that :  so  that  we  have  this  year 
already  done  more  in  proportion  than  any  of  our  neighbours. 

'  This  statement  was  made,  apparently,  before  Connecticut  finally  consented  herself  to  raise 
five  thousand  men.  *  .,  4,,i^ 


"  We  are  told  that  we  are  the  leading  province  ;  we  have  been  so  for  many 
years  past,  and  we  have  been  as  long  unequally  burdened.  We  have  borne  it  pa- 
tiently, although  we  have  seen  our  people  leaving  us,  and  removing  to  other  gov- 
emmenis,  in  order  to  live  more  free  from  taxes.  A  few  years  ago,  for  this  rea- 
son alone,  four  of  our  principal  to^ns  refused  any  longer  to  submit  to  our  juris- 
diction ;  and  another  government  *  found  a  pretence  for  receiving  them,  and  they 
are  not  yet  returned  to  us. 

"  Under  these  distresses,  we  are  still  willing  to  afford  every  reasonable  aid  in 
our  power.  A  farther  impress  would  distress  and  discourage  the  people  to  such 
a  degree,  that,  as  well  in  faithfulness  to  the  service,  as  to  the  particular  interest 
of  this  province,  we  are  bound  to  decline  it.  But,  great  as  our  burdens  are,  we 
have  now  proposed  a  bounty  more  than  double  what  has  ever  yet  been  given  by 
the  province,  in  order  to  procure  a  voluntary  enlistment  of  fifteen  hundred  men, 
over  and  above  the  five  thousand  already  raised ;  and  we  have  reason  to  hope  that 
this  Wunty  will  be  sufficient,  and  have  the  effect  your  Excellency  desires."   Minot. 


NOTE  XXIV.     Page  288. 

"  NiAGAHA  is,  without  exception,  the  most  important  post  in  America,  and 
secures  a  greater  number  of  communications,  through  a  more  extensive  country, 
than,  perhaps,  any  other  pass  in  the  world  ;  for  it  is  situated  at  the  very  entrance 
of  a  strait  by  which  Lake  Ontario  is  joined  to  Lake  Erie,  which  is  connected 
with  the  other  three  great  lakes  by  the  course  of  the  vast  river  St.  Lawrence,  which 
runs  through  them  all,  and  carries  their  superfluous  waters  to  the  ocean."  — 
"  From  the  time  when  the  French  were  first  acquainted  with  this  place,  they 
were  fully  sensible  of  its  importance,  both  with  respect  to  trade  and  dominion. 
They  made  several  attempts  to  establish  themselves  here  ;  but  the  Indians  con- 
stantly opposed  it,  and  obliged  them  to  relinquish  a  fort  which  they  had  built,  and 
gtiarded  this  spot  for  a  long  time  with  a  very  severe  and  prudent  jealousy.         " 

"But  whilst  we  neglected  to  cultivate  the  love  of  the  Indians,  the  French  omit- 
ted no  endeavours  to  gain  these  savages  to  their  interest ;  and  prevailed  at  last,  un- 
der the  name  of  a  trading-house,  to  erect  a  strong  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  strait. 
This  advantage  was  obtained  for  his  country  by  a  French  officer  of  an  entei-prising 
genius,  who  had  been  a  prisoner  among  the  Iroquois  (one  of  the  tribes  of  the 
Six  Nations)  for  a  long  time,  and,  according  to  their  custom,  was  naturalized, 
and  became  very  popular  among  them."  —  "The  trading-house  which  he  obtained 
leave  to  build,  extended  and  strengthened  by  various  additions,  at  last  became  a 
regular  fortress,  which  had  ever  since  awed  the  Six  Nations  and  checked  our 
colonies." 

"  As  to  these  immense  lakes,  which  are  all,  in  a  manner,  commanded  by  this 
fort,  the  reader  need  only  cast  his  eyes  on  the  map  of  North  America  to  be  con- 
vinced of  their  importance.  They  afford  by  far  the  most  extensive  inland  navi- 
gation in  the  whole  universe.  Whoever  is  master  of  them  must,  sooner  or 
later,  command  that  whole  continent.  They  are  all  surrounded  by  a  fine,  fruit- 
ful country,  in  a  temperate,  pleasant  climate.  The  day  may  possibly  come,  when 
this  noble  country,  which  seems  calculated  for  universal  empire,  will  sufficiently 
display  its  own  importance.'''*     Wynne. 

'  Connecticut.  —  See  Chap.  II.,  anfe. 

-       WW* 


582  NOTES. 


NOTE  XXV.     Page  321. 

"  Mr.  Otis,  at  the  first  town-meeting  of  Boston  after  the  peace,  having  been 
chosen  moderator,  addressed  himself  to  the  inhabitants  in  a  speech,  which  he 
caused  to  be  printed  in  the  newspapers,  to  the  following  effect :  — '  We  in  America 
have  certainly  abundant  reasons  to  rejoice.  Not  only  are  the  heathen  driven  out, 
but  the  Canadians,  much  more  formidable  enemies,  are  conquered  and  become 
fellow-subjects.  The  British  dominion  and  power  may  now  be  said,  literally,  to 
extend  from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  great  river  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  And 
we  may  safely  conclude,  from  his  Majesty's  wise  administration  hitherto,  that 
liberty  and  knowledge,  civil  and  religious,  will  be  coextended,  improved,  and 
preserved  to  the  latest  posterity.  No  other  constitution  of  civil  government  has 
yet  appeared  in  the  world,  so  admirably  adapted  to  these  great  purposes,  as  that 
of  Great  Britain.  Every  British  subject  in  America  is,  of  common  right,  by 
acts  of  parliament,  and  by  the  laws  of  God  and  nature,  entitled  to  all  the  essen- 
tial privileges  of  Britons.  By  particular  charters  there  are  peculiar  privileges 
granted,  as  iii  justice  they  might  and  ought,  in  consideration  of  the  arduous  under- 
taking to  begin  so  glorious  an  empire  as  British  America  is  rising  to.  Those 
jealousies,  which  some  weak  and  wicked  minds  have  endeavoured  to  infuse  with 
regard  to  the  colonies,  had  their  birth  in  the  blackness  of  darkness ;  and  it  is 
great  pity  they  had  not  remained  there  for  ever.  The  true  interests  of  Great 
Britain  and  her  plantations  are  mutual ;  and  what  God  in  his  providence  has 
uriited,  let  no  man  dare  attempt  to  pull  asunder.'  "     Hutchinson. 


NOTE  XXVI.     Page  331. 

"  In  few  of  the  hard-fought  battles  and  signal  victories  of  Europe,  which  are 
celebrated  with  so  much  eclat,,  is  there  such  an  exhibition  of  obstinate,  perse- 
vering fortitude,  and  of  military  skill,  as  appeared  in  this  action."     Trumbull. 

"  Those  who  have  experienced  only  the  severities  and  dangers  of  a  campaign 
in  Europe  can  scarcely  form  an  idea  of  what  is  to  be  done  and  endured  in  an 
American  war.  To  act  in  a  country  cultivated  and  inhabited,  where  roads  are 
made,  magazines  are  established,  and  hospitals  provided  ;  where  there  are  towns 
to  retreat  to,  in  case  of  misfortune,  or,  at  the  worst,  a  generous  enemy  to  yield  to, 
from  whom  no  consolation  except  the  honor  of  victory  can  be  wanting  ;  —  this 
may  be  considered  as  the  exercise  of  a  spirited  and  adventurous  mind,  rather  than 
a  rigid  contest,  where  all  is  at  stake,  and  mutual  destruction  the  object ;  and  as  a 
contention  between  rivals  for  glory,  rather  than  a  deadly  struggle  between  san- 
guinary enemies.  But  in  an  American  campaign  every  thing  is  terrible  ;  the 
face  of  the  country,  the  climate,  the  enemy.  There  is  no  refreshment  for  the 
healthy,  nor  relief  for  the  sick.  A  vast  inhospitable  desert  surrounds  the  troops, 
where  victories  are  not  decisive,  but  defeats  are  ruinous,  and  simple  death  is  the 
least  misfortune  which  can  happen  to  a  soldier.  This  forms  a  service  truly  criti- 
cal, in  which  all  the  firmness  of  the  body  and  the  mind  is  put  to  the  severest  trial, 
and  all  the  exertions  of  courage  and  address  are  called  out.  If  the  actions  of 
these  rude  campaigns  are  of  less  dignity,  the  adventures  in  them  are  more  inter- 
esting to  the  heart,  and  more  amusing  to  the  imagination,  than  the  events  of  a 
more  regular  war."     Annual  Register  for  1763. 

Yet  only  a  few  years  after  this  period,  a  philosopher  no  less  distinguished  than 
Adam  Smith  ventured  to  assert,  in  the  plenitude  of  learned  ignorance  and  in- 
genious error,  that  "  Nothing  can  be  more  contemptible  than  an  Indian  war  in 
North  America."     Smith  estimated  the  importance  of  war  by  a  very  vulgar  test. 


NOTES.  583 

if  he  regarded  only  the  number  of  men  actually  slain  or  exposed  to  slaughter. 
His  ideas  of  the  Indians  and  their  hostility  would  perhaps  have  been  very  differ- 
ent, if,  instead  of  being  kidnapped  in  his  infancy  for  a  few  hours,  by  a  gang  of 
roguish  Scottish  Gypsies,  he  had  been  scalped  by  the  tomahawk  of  a  Cherokee 
or  Delaware  Indian.  Colonel  Barre,  who  had  served  in  America,  declared,  in 
his  celebrated  speech  in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  upon  American  taxa- 
tion, in  the  year  1765,  that  the  Indians  were,  as  enemies,  "  the  most  subtile  and 
the  most  formidable  of  any  people  upon  the  face  of  God's  earth."  This  tes- 
timony of  an  experienced  officer  outweighs  the  opinions  of  a  thousand  such 
presumptuous  penmen  as  Smith  and  Chalmers. 


NOTE  XXVII.     Page  346. 

It  is  remarkable,  that  the  same  idea,  long  before  promulgated  by  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  and  Bishop  Berkeley,  of  the  westward  progress  of  national  dominion  and 
glory,  with  especial  reference  to  the  prospects  of  America,  was  also  expressed  in 
the  year  1760,  by  an  Italian  improvvissatore,  who,  meeting  West,  the  American 
painter,  at  Rome,  where  he  had  gone  to  study  the  fine  arts,  was  moved  to  display 
his  peculiar  genius  in  a  poetical  effusion  of  the  following  tenor. 

"  He  sung  the  darkness  which  for  so  many  ages  veiled  America  from  the  eyes 
of  science.  He  described  the  fulness  of  time,  when  the  purposes  for  which 
America  was  raised  from  the  deep  were  to  be  manifested.  He  painted  the 
seraph  of  knowledge  descending  from  heaven,  and  directing  Columbus  to  under- 
take the  discovery  ;  and  he  related  the  leading  incidents  of  the  voyage.  He 
invoked  the  fancy  of  his  auditors  to  contemplate  the  wild  magnificence  of  moun- 
tain, lake,  and  wood,  in  the  new  world  ;  and  he  raised,  as  it  were,  in  vivid  per- 
spective, the  Indians  in  the  chase,  and  at  their  horrible  sacrifices.  '  But,'  he  ex- 
claimed, '  the  beneficent  spirit  of  improvement  is  ever  on  the  wing,  and,  like  the 
ray  from  the  throne  of  God,  which  inspired  the  conception  of  the  Virgin,  it  has 
descended  on  this  youth  ;  and  the  hope  which  ushered  in  its  new  miracle,  like  the 
star  that  guided  the  Magi  to  Bethlehem,  has  led  him  to  Rome.  Methinks  1  be- 
hold in  him  an  instrument  chosen  by  Heaven  to  raise  in  America  the  taste  for 
those  arts  which  elevate  the  nature  of  man,  —  an  assurance  that  his  country  will 
afford  a  refuge  to  science  and  knowledge,  when,  in  the  old  age  of  Europe,  they 
shall  have  forsaken  her  shores.  But  all  things  of  heavenly  origin,  like  the  glori- 
ous sun,  move  westward  ;  and  Truth  and  Art  have  their  periods  of  shining  and  of 
night.  Rejoice,  then,  O  venerable  Rome,  in  thy  divine  destiny !  for,  though 
-darkness  overshadow  thy  seats,  and  though  thy  mitred  head  must  descend  into  the 
dust,  as  deep  as  the  earth  that  now  covers  thy  ancient  helmet  and  imperial  dia- 
dem, thy  spirit,  immortal  and  undecayed,  already  spreads  towards  a  new  world, 
where,  like  the  soul  of  man  in  paradise,  it  will  be  perfected  in  virtue  and  beauty 
more  and  more.'  "     Gait's  Life  of  West. 


NOTE  XXVm.     Page  353. 

"  The  idea  that  the  works  of  the  artists  were  public  was  so  deeply  fixed  among 
the  Greeks,  that  it  could  not  be  eradicated  even  by  the  profanations  of  the  Ro- 
mans. The  works  of  art,  according  to  this  idea,  belong  not  to  individuals,  but 
to  the  cultivated  part  of  mankind.  They  should  be  a  common  property.  Even 
in  our  times,  when  individuals  are  permitted  to  possess  them,  censure  is  incurred, 
if  others  are  not  also  allowed  to  enjoy  them.     But  even  where  this  privilege  is  con- 


58¥  NOTES. 

ceded,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  an  individual  or  the  nation  is  tho 
possessor.  The  respect  shown  to  the  arts  by  the  nation,  in  possessing  their  pro- 
ductions, confers  a  higher  value  on  the  labors  of  the  artists.  How  much  more 
honored  does  the  artist  feel,  how  much  more  freely  does  he  breathe,  when  he 
knows  that  he  is  exerting  himself  for  a  nation  which  will  account  its  glory  in- 
creased by  his  works,  instead  of  toiling  to  obtain  the  money  and  gratify  the 
caprices  of  individuals  !  Such  was  the  condition  of  the  arts  in  Greece.  When 
emulation  arose  among  the  cities,  to  be  distinguished  by  the  possession  of  works 
of  art,  a  field  was  opened  for  a  Phidias  and  Polygnotus,  for  a  Praxiteles  and  Par- 
rhasius.  They  were  better  rewarded  by  glory  than  by  money.  Some  of  them 
never  worked  for  pay."  Heeren's  Reflections  on  the  Politics  of  Ancient  Greece 
(Bancroft's  translation). 


NOTE  XXIX.    Page  360. 

A  FEW  extracts  from  this  work  may  be  acceptable  to  some  readers,  who  either 
cannot  procure  it,  or  are  deterred  by  its  bulk  from  perusing  it. 

"  No  extensive  plan  was  originally  aimed  at ;  but  the  instructions  given  to  the 
missionaries  by  Count  Zinzendorf  were  nearly  to  the  following  effect :  — '  That 
they  should  silently  observe  whether  any  of  the  heathen  had  been  prepared  by 
the  grace  of  God  to  receive  and  believe  the  word  of  life.  If  even  only  one  were 
to  be  found,  then  they  should  preach  the  gospel  to  him ;  for  God  must  give  the 
heathen  ears  to  hear  the  gospel  and  hearts  to  receive  it,  otherwise  all  the  labor 
bestowed  upon  them  would  be  vain.  He  also  recommended  them  to  preach 
chiefly  to  such  heathen  as  had  never  heard  the  gospel ;  adding,  that  we  were  not 
called  to  build  upon  foundations  laid  by  others,^  nor  to  disturb  their  work,  but  ta 
seek  the  outcast  and  forsaken.'  " 

An  Indian  convert  thus  related  his  experience :  —  "  Brethren,  I  have  been 
an  heathen,  and  have  grown  old  amongst  the  heathen ;  therefore  I  know  how 
heathen  think.  Once  a  preacher  came  to  us,  and  began  to  explain  that  there  was 
a  God.  We  answered,  '  Dost  thou  think  us  so  ignorant  as  not  to  know  that  ? 
Go  back  to  the  place  whence  thou  camest.'  Then,  again,  another  preacher 
came,  and  began  to  teach  us,  and  to  say,  '  You  must  not  steal,  nor  lie,  nor  get 
drunk.'  We  answered,  '  Thou  fool !  dost  thou  think  that  we  do  n't  know  that  ? 
Learn,  first,  thyself,  and  then  teach  the  people  to  whom  thou  belongest,  to  leave 
off  these  things.  For  who  steals,  or  lies,  or  who  is  more  drunken  than  thine 
own  people  ? '  And  thus  we  dismissed  him.  After  some  time,  Brother  Rauch 
came  into  my  hut,  and  sat  down  by  me :  he  spoke  to  me  nearly  as  follows  :  —  'I 
come  to  you  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  :  he  aeuds  to  let  you 
know  that  he  will  make  you  happy,  and  deliver  you  from  the  misery  in  which 
you  lie  at  present.  To  this  «nd,  he  became  a  man,  gave  his  life  a  ransom  for 
man,  and  shed  his  blood  for  him,'  &c.,  &c.  When  he  had  finished  his  dis-r 
course,  he  lay  down  upon  a  board,  fatigued  by  the  journey,  and  fell  into  a  sound 
sleep.  I  then  thought,  *  What  kind  of  man  is  this  ?  There  he  lies,  and  sleeps. 
I  might  kill  him,  and  throw  him  out  into  the  wood  ;  and  who  would  regard  it .?  But 
this  gives  him  no  concern.'  However,  I  could  not  forget  his  words  ;  they  con- 
stantly recurred  to  my  mind.  Even  when  I  was  asleep,  I  dreamt  of  that  blood 
which  Christ  shed  for  us.  I  found  this  to  be  something  different  from  what  I 
had  ever  heard,  and  I  interpreted  Rauch's  words  to  the  other  Indians,  Thus, 
through  the  grace  of  God,  an  awakening  took  place  amongst  us,    J  say,  therefore, 

^  In  conformity  with  this  advice,  the  Moravian  missionaries  withdrew  from  a  place  wher* 
they  fijuud  that  Brajaerd  was  teaching.    Of  him  and  his  iabojs  tfeey  e^tpj^ssed  *  bigh  admira- 


NOTES.  585 

brethren,  preach  Christ  our  Saviour,  and  his  sufferings  and  death,  if  you  would 
have  your  words  to  gain  entrance  among  the  heathen." 

"  The  Indian  convert  Jonathan,  meeting  some  white  people  who  had  entered 
into  so  violent  a  dispute  about  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Communion,  that  they  at 
last  proceeded  to  blows,  — '  These  people,'  said  he,  '  know  certainly  nothing  of 
our  Saviour  ;  for  they  speak  of  him  as  we  do  of  a  strange  country.' " 

"  A  trader  was  endeavouring  to  persuade  the  Indian  convert  Abraham  that  the 
brethren  were  not  privileged  teachers.  He  answered, '  They  may  be  what  they 
will ;  but  I  know  what  they  have  told  me,  and  what  God  has  wrought  within  me. 
Look  at  my  poor  countrymen  there,  lying  drunk  before  your  door.  Why  do 
you  not  send  privileged  teachers  to  convert  them,  if  they  can  ?  Four  years  ago, 
I  also  lived  like  a  beast,  and  not  one  of  you  troubled  himself  about  me  ;  but  when 
the  brethren  came,  they  preached  the  cross  of  Christ,  and  1  have  experienced  the 
power  of  his  blood  according  to  their  doctrine  ;  so  that  I  am  freed  from  the  do- 
minion of  sin.     Such  teachers  we  want.'  " 

"  The  Indian  convert  Daniel  was  now  asked  upon  his  death-bed,  whether 
he  was  contented  to  die.  To  this  he  answered,  with  a  smile,  '  that  he  was 
satisfied  with  whatever  our  Saviour  should  do  with  him.'  During  his  whole 
illness,  he  preached  the  gospel  to  his  countrymen  ^  and  his  happy  departure  to 
the  Lord  produced  a  great  emotion  in  the  hearts  of  all  present." 

"  An  European  man,  being  once  present  as  a  spectator  when  the  Sacrament 
was  administered  to  the  Indian  congregation,  declared  afterwards,  that,  though  he 
had  received  the  Communion  many  hundred  times,  yet  he  had  never  till  now  per- 
ceived its  powerful  effect  on  the  heart ;  adding,  that  this  was  truly  the  Supper  of 
the  Lord,  and  that,  whilst  he  lived,  he  should  never  lose  the  impression  it  had 
made  upon  him." 

"  Meanwhile,  the  persecutions  against  the  brethren  engaged  in  the  mission  did 
not  cease  ;  and  sometimes  they  were  even  cruelly  treated.  Nor  can  it  be  denied 
that  some  occasion  was  given  by  the  inconsiderate  zeal  of  the  awakened  Indians. 
They  would  often  boldly  reprove  the  white  people  for  their  sinful  way  of  life  ; 
and  whenever  they  were  interrogated,  spoke  the  truth  without  any  reserve  or 
caution.  For  instance,  a  Dutch  clergyman  in  Westenhuck  asked  an  Indian 
whom  he  had  baptized  if  he  had  been  at  Shekomeko  (the  scene  of  one  of  the 
Moravian  missions),  and  if  he  had  heard  the  missionary  preach,  and  how  he 
liked  him.  The  Indian  answered,  '  I  have  been  there,  and  attended  to  the  mis- 
sionary's words,  and  like  to  hear  them.  I  would  rather  hear  the  missionary  than 
you ;  for,  when  he  speaks,  it  is  as  though  his  words  laid  hold  of  my  heart,  and  a 
voice  within  said.  That  is  truth;  but  you  are  always  playing  about  the  truth,  and 
never  come  to  the  point.  You  have  no  love  for  our  souls  ;  for,  when  you  have 
once  baptized  us,  you  let  us  run  wild,  without  troubling  yourself  any  further 
about  us.  You  act  much  worse  than  one  who  plants  Indian  corn  ;  for  the  planter 
sometimes  goes  to  see  whether  his  corn  grows  or  not.'  Upon  another  occasion, 
a  white  man  asked  John,  the  Indian,  '  whether  the  brethren  were  Papists.'  John 
desired  to  know  who  the  Papists  were ;  and  when  he  heard  of  the  worship  of 
images,  he  answered,  '  that  he  supposed  those  people  were  more  like  Papists, 
who  worshipped  their  cows,  horses,  and  plantations.'  The  white  man  replied, 
*  But  why  are  the  people  so  enraged  against  the  brethren.?'  John  answered, 
'  Why  did  the  people  crucify  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  throw  Paul  bound  into  prison  }  ' " 

"  An  Indian  woman  from  Menissing  paid  a  visit  to  John,  and  told  him,  that,  as 
soon  as  she  had  a  good  heart,  she  also  would  turn  to  the  Lord  Jesus.  '  Ah,' 
replied  John,  '  you  want  to  walk  on  your  head  !  How  can  you  get  a  good  heart, 
unless  you  come  first  to  Jesus  .=* '" 

"  Samuel,  the  Indian,  endeavoured  likewise  to  speak  to  his  own  brother,  in 
regard  to  his  conversion,  but  received  this  unexpected  answer :  '  My  ancestors 
are  all  gone  to  the  devil ;  and  where  they  are  I  will  be  likewise.' " 

vol..   II.  74 


5SSv  NOTES. 

"  The  missionaries  were  repeatedly  removed  from  station  to  station ;  tra 
brethren  being  of  opinion  that  frequent  changes  of  ministers  might  be  useful  in. 
preventing  too  strong  an  attachment  to  and  dependence  upon  men,  and  fixing  the 
hope  of  the  Indians  more  upon  God  alone." 

"  The  missionaries  praised  God,  especially,  for  the  unreserved  manner  in 
which  the  Indians  owned  their  defects  and  asked  advice.  One  of  them  said, 
*"  that  he  was  in  doubt  how  he  should  behave  in  future  ;  his  heart  being  as  un- 
broken as  a  stubborn  horse.'  He  added,  *  A  man  may  have  a  very  wild  horse ; 
but  if  he  can  only  once  make  it  eat  salt  out  of  his  hand,  then  it  will  always  come 
to  him  again  :  but  I  am  not  so  disposed  towards  our  Saviour,  who  is  continually 
offering  me  his  grace.  I  have  once  tasted  grace  out  of  his  hand,  and  yet  my 
heart  still  runs  away,  even  when  he  holds  out  his  grace  unto  me.  Thus  we  In- 
dians are  so  very  stupid,  that  we  have  not  even  the  sense  of  beasts.' "     Loskiel. 

It  is  unhappily  the  fault  of  most  religious  memoirs  and  reports,  that  they  are 
a  great  deal  too  long.  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles^  the  first  and  the  best,  are  also 
the  shortest  Missionary  Reports  that  have  ever  been  published. 


NOTE  XXX.     Page  439. 

FRANittiir,  in  a  letter  written  from  London  to  America,  in  May,  1768,  thus 
describes  the  situation  of  affairs  in  the  parent  state  :  —  "  Even  this  capital,  the 
residence  of  the  king,  is  now  a  daily  scene  of  lawless  riot  and  confusion.  Mobs 
patrolling  the  streets  at  noon-day ;  some  knocking  all  down  that  will  not  roar  for 
Wilkes  and  Liberty.  Courts  of  justice  afraid  to  give  judgment  against  him;  coal- 
heavers  and  porters  puUing  down  the  houses  of  coal -merchants  that  refuse  to  give 
them  more  wages  ;  sawyers  destroying  saw-mills  ;  sailors  unrigging  all  the  out- 
ward-bound ships,  and  suffering  none  to  sail  till  merchants  agree  to  raise  their 
pay  ;  watermen  destroying  private  boats  and  threatening  bridges  ;  soldiers  firing 
among  the  mobs,  and  killing  men,  women,  and  children  :  which  seems  only  to 
have  produced  an  universal  suUenness,  that  looks  like  a  great  black  cloud  coming 
on,  ready  to  burst  in  a  general  tempest.  What  the  event  will  be  God  only 
knows.  But  some  punishment  seems  preparing  for  a  people  who  are  ungrate- 
fully abusing  the  best  constitution  and  the  best  king  any  nation  was  ever  blessed 
with  ;  intent  on  nothing  but  luxury,  licentiousness,  power,  places,  pensions,  and 
plunder  ;  while  the  ministry,  divided  in  their  counsels,  with  little  regard  for  each 
other,  worried  by  perpetual  opposition,  in  continual  apprehension  of  danger,  in- 
tent on  securing  popularity  in  case  they  should  lose  favor,  have,  for  some  years 
past,  had  little  time  or  inclination  to  attend  to  our  small  affairs,  whose  remote- 
ness makes  them  appear  still  smaller."  Some  of  the  opinions  expressed  by 
Franklin  in  the  foregoing  letter  gradually  underwent  a  material  change.  In 
subsequent  letters,  he  declares  his  conviction  that  all  the  arbitrary  measures  of 
the  British  government  originated  from  the  individual  will  and  character  of  the 
king.  The  first  hint  of  this  occurs  in  a  letter  written  to  his  son,  Governor  Frank- 
lin, in  1773,  wherein  he  says  :  "  The  late  measures  have  been,  I  suspect,  very 
much  the  king's  own  ;  and  he  has,  in  some  cases,  a  great  share  of  what  his 
friends  call  firmness^  In  writing  to  La  Fayette,  in  the  year  1779,  he  remarks, 
that  it  may  be  reckoned  certain  that  the  English  nation,  in  their  conduct  to  other 
states,  will  omit  whatever  is  prudent,  and  do  whatever  is  imprudent,  "  at  least  while 
the  present  ministry  continues,  or,  rather,  while  the  present  madman  has  the 
choice  of  ministers."  The  senseless  conduct  of  George  the  Third,  in  expelling 
Franklin's  electrical  conductors  from  the  palace  of  Buckingham  House,  doubtless 
contributed  to  persuade  the  philosopher  that  the  monarch  was  a  madman. 

In  the  year  1767,  we  have  seen  Franklin  characterize  the  French  as  "  that  ia- 


NOTES.  537 

triguing  nation,''^  to  whose  insidious  policy  he  wished  that  no  scope  might  be 
afforded.  Twelve  years  afterwards,  we  find  him  declaring  that  "  the  Spaniards 
are,  by  common  opinion,  supposed  to  be  cruel,  the  English  proud,  the  Scotch 
insolent,  and  the  Dutch  avaricious  ;  but  I  think  the  French  have  no  national  vice 
ascribed  to  them.  They  have  what  may  be  called  follies,  perhaps  (\),  but  not 
vices  ;  and,  in  short,  there  is  nothing  wanting  in  the  character  of  a  Frenchman, 
which  belongs  to  that  of  an  agreeable  and  worthy  man."  Franklin's  Private 
Correspondence. 

Franklin  has  noticed,  with  just  contempt,  the  attribute  of  firmness  (always  ex- 
erted in  opposition  to  generous  and  liberal  principles)  which  George  the  Third 
affected,  and  loved  to  have  ascribed  to  him.  One  Nowell,  a  Tory  clergyman, 
who  preached  the  anniversary  sermon  in  commemoration  of  the  death  of  Charles 
the  First  before  the  House  of  Commons,  on  the  30th  January,  1772,  compared 
the  living  to  the  beheaded  prince,  and  the  house  (on  account  of  some  opposition 
to  illiberal  measures  of  the  court)  to  the  band  of  English  regicides.  The  house, 
as  usual,  passed  a  vote  of  thanks  to  the  preacher ;  but  had  so  negligently  attended 
to  his  discourse,  that,  only  a  month  after,  on  hearing  some  passages  of  it  recited 
from  a  published  copy,  they  unanimously  commanded  the  vote  of  thanks  to  be 
expunged  from  their  journals.     Annual  Register  for  1772. 


NOTE  XXXI.     Page  449. 

*♦  Of  all  men,  saving  Svlla  the  man-slayer, 

Who  passes  for  m  life  and  death  most  lucky 

Of  the  great  names  which  in  our  faces  stare. 
The  General  Boon,  backwoodsman  of  Kentucl^, 

Was  happiest  among  mortals  anywhere  j 
For,  killing  nothing  but  a  bear  or  buck,  he 

Enjoyed  the  lonely,  vigorous,  harmless  days 

Of  his  old  age  in  wilds  of  deepest  maze. 

*'  Crime  came  not  near  him,  —  she  is  not  the  child 
Of  solitude  ;  health  shrank  not  from  him,  —  for 

Her  home  is  in  the  rarely  trodden  wild, 

Where  if  men  seek  her  not,  and  death  be  more 

Their  choice  than  life,  forgive  them,  as  beguiled 
By  habit  to  what  their  own  hearts  abhor 

In  cities  caged.     The  present  case  in  point  I 

Cite  is,  that  Boon  lived  hunting  up  to  ninety  j 

**  And,  what  's  still  stranger,  left  behind  a  name 
For  which  men  vainW  decimate  the  throng,  — 

Not  only  famous,  but  of  that  good  fame 
Without  which  glory  's  but  a  tavern  song,  — 

Simple,  serene,  the  antipodes  of  shame. 

Which  hate  nor  envy  e'er  could  tinge  with  wrong, 

An  active  hermit,  even  in  age  the  child 

Of  nature,  or  the  Man  of  Ross  run  wild. 

"  'T  is  true  he  shrank  from  men  even  of  his  nation, 
When  they  built  up  unto  his  darling  trees,  — 

He  moved  some  hundred  miles  off  for  a  station 
Where  there  were  fewer  houses  and  more  ease  j 

The  inconvenience  of  civilization 

Is  that  you  can  neither  be  pleased  nor  please ; 

But  where  he  met  the  individual  man, 

He  showed  himself  as  kind  as  mortal  can. 

**  He  was  not  all  alone :  around  him  grew 
A  sylvan  tribe  of  children  of  the  chase, 
Whose  young,  unwakened  world  was  ever  new, 
Nor  sword  nor  sorrow  yet  had  left  a  trace 


588  NOTES. 

On  her  unwrinkled  brow,  nor  could  you  view 

A  frown  on  Nature's  or  on  human  face ; 
The  free-born  forest  found  and  kept  them  free, 
And  fresh  as  is  a  torrent  or  a  tree. 

"  And  tall,  and  strong,  and  swift  of  foot  were  they, 
Beyond  the  dwarfing  city's  pale  abortions, 

Because  their  thoughts  had  never  been  the  prey 

Of  care  or  gain  :  the  green  woods  were  their  portions; 

No  sinking  spirits  told  them  they  grew  grey. 
No  fashion  made  them  apes  of  her  distortions  ; 

Simple  they  were,  not  savage  ;  and  their  rifles. 

Though  very  true,  were  not  yet  used  for  trifles. 

"  Motion  was  in  their  days,  rest  in  their  slumbers, 
And  cheerfulness  the  handmaid  of  their  toil ; 

Nor  yet  too  many  nor  too  few  their  numbers  ; 
Corruption  could  not  make  their  hearts  her  soil ; 

The  lust  which  stings,  the  »plendor  which  encumbers, 
With  the  free  foresters  divide  no  spoil ; 

Serene,  not  sullen,  were  the  solitudes 

Of  this  unsighing  people  of  the  woods."  —  Lord  Byron 


NOTE  XXXII.     Page  474. 

"  The  people  of  Boston  are  characteristically  distinguished  by  a  lively  im- 
agination, an  ardor  easily  kindled,  a  sensibility  soon  excited  and  strongly  ex- 
pressed ;  a  character  more  resembling  that  of  the  Greeks  than  that  of  the 
Romans.  They  admire,  when  graver  people  would  only  approve  ;  detest,  when 
cooler  minds  would  only  dislike  ;  applaud  a  performance,  when  others  would 
listen  in  silence  ;  and  hiss,  when  a  less  susceptible  audience  would  only  frown. 
This  character  renders  them  sometimes  more,  sometimes  less  amiable,  usually 
less  cautious.  From  this  cause,  their  language  is  frequently  hyperbolical,  and 
their  pictures  of  objects  in  any  way  interesting  highly  colored.  Hence,  also, 
their  enterprises  are  sudden,  bold,  and  sometimes  rash.  The  tea  shipped  to 
Boston  by  the  ^ast  India  Company  was  destroyed.  At  New  York  and  Phil- 
adelphia, it  was  stored  (i.  e.  locked  up  from  use).  From  the  same  source, 
also,  both  persons  and  things  are  suddenly,  strongly,  and  universally  applauded 
or  censured.  Individuals  of  distinction  command  a  popularity  which  engrosses 
the  public  mind  and  runs  to  enthusiasm.  Their  observations  and  their  efforts  are 
cited  with  wonder  and  delight ;  and  such  as  do  not  join  in  the  chorus  of  applause 
incur  the  suspicion  of  being  weak,  envious,  or  malevolent.  When  the  sympa- 
thetic ardor  is  terminated,  the  persons  who  have  received  this  homage  are,  with- 
out any  change  of  character,  regarded,  perhaps  through  life,  as  objects  deserving 
of  no  peculiar  esteem  or  attachment."     Dwight's  Travels. 

Whatever  claims  to  credit  this  sketch  may  possess,  it  derives  none  from  the 
allusion  to  the  transactions  with  regard  to  the  East  India  Company's  tea.  The 
difference  of  circumstances  sufficiently  accounts  for  the  different  conduct  of 
New  York  and  Boston.  If  the  people  of  Boston  threw  a  cargo  of  tea  into  the 
water,  the  people  of  New  York  threw  a  cargo  of  stamps  into  the  fire. 

The  destruction  of  the  tea  at  Boston,  and  other  events  that  arose  out  of  the 
controversy  between  Britain  and  America,  are  celebrated  by  Burns,  in  his  song 
beginning, 

"  When  Guilford  good  our  pilot  stood,"  &c. 


NOTES.  588^ 


NOTE  XXXIII.     Page  476. 

In  a  letter  to  his  son,  dated  in  October,  1773,  Franklin,  after  expressing  his 
own  final  opinion,  that  the  British  parliament  had  no  right  to  enact  any  law 
obligatory  upon  America,  adds,  "  I  know  your  sentiments  differ  from  mine  on 
these  subjects.  You  are  a.  thorough  government  man  ;  which  I  do  not  wonder 
at ;  nor  do  I  aim  at  converting  you.  I  only  wish  you  to  act  uprightly  and  steadi- 
ly, avoiding  that  duplicity  which  in  Hutchinson  adds  contempt  to  indignation.  If 
you  can  promote  the  prosperity  of  your  people,  and  leave  them  happier  than 
you  found  them,  whatever  your  political  principles  are,. your  memory  will  be 
honored."  Franklin's  Private  Correspondence^  Part  II.  Governor  Franklin, 
thus  encouraged,  persisted  in  adhering  to  the  British  government  during  the  whole 
of  the  Revolutionary  War ;  and  it  was  by  his  orders,  as  president  of  a  board  of 
associated  loyalists  at  New  York,  that  one  of  the  foulest  atrocities  that  distin- 
guished the  war  (the  murder  of  Captain  Huddy,  an  American  officer,  at  the  very 
close  of  the  struggle)  was  committed.  Ramsay.  That  the  father  did  not  expect 
the  war,  or  that,  notwithstanding  the  foregoing  expressions,  he  was  not  prepared 
for  a  steady  and  inflexible  adherence  of  his  son  to  the  political  principles  which 
the  young  man  espoused,  appears  from  the  terms  of  the  letter  in  which  he  an- 
swered an  overture  of  reconciliation  from  the  unfortunate  ex-governor  in  the  year 
1784.  "  Nothing  has  ever  hurt  me  so  much,"  he  then  declared,  "  or  affected  me 
with  such  keen  sensations,  as  to  find  myself  deserted  in  my  old  age  by  my  only 
son  ;  and  not  only  deserted,  but  to  find  him  taking  up  arms  against  me  in  a 
cause  wherein  my  good  fame,  fortune,  and  life  were  all  at  stake."  —  "  There 
are  natural  duties,"  he  adds,  "  which  precede  political  ones,  and  cannot  be 
extinguished  by  them."     Franklin's  Memoirs. 

It  is  certain  that  "  a  man  cannot  serve  two  masters  "  whose  views  and  interests 
are  irreconcilably  distinct ;  but  he  may  long  delude  himself  with  the  hope  of 
reconciling  their  views  and  blending  their  interests.  Franklin  himself  was  so 
desirous  of  preserving  the  integrity  of  the  British  empire,  that,  while  a  seeming 
hope  or  even  possibility  of  this  remained,  the  superior  force  of  his  attachment 
to  American  liberty  was  unknown  alike  to  himself  and  to  his  friends  and  asso- 
ciates, —  some  of  whom  were,  doubtless,  surprised  by  the  violent  flow  of  his 
passions  when  only  one  channel  remained  for  them.  Soon  after  the  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,  Franklin  thus  wrote  to  his  ancient  and  intimate  friend,  the  king's 
printer  at  London  :  "  Mr.  Strahan  !  You  are  a  member  of  parliament,  and  one 
of  that  majority  that  has  doomed  my  country  to  destruction.  Look  at  your 
hands.  Sir  !  They  are  red  with  the  blood  of  your  countrymen.  You  were 
once  my  friend.  Now,  you  are  my  enemy  ;  and  I  am  yours,  B.  Franklin." 
With  much  philosophic  calmness  and  composure  of  general  demeanour,  relieved 
by  occasional  indulgence  of  playful  wit,  Franklin  combined  a  wonderful  force  of 
action  and  warmth  of  zeal. 


NOTE  XXXIV.     Page  489. 

Yet  the  Americans  possessed  at  this  time  many  warm  friends  in  England, 
whose  zeal  broke  forth  in  some  remarkable  demonstrations.  In  the  month  of 
February,  1775,  a  pamphlet  published  at  London,  defending  the  conduct  of 
Britain,  with  arguments  that  struck  at  the  very  foundation  of  British  constitutional 
liberty,  was  complained  of  by  a  peer  of  Whiggish  principles  to  the  House  of 
Lords,  by  whom  it  was  ordered  to  be  burned  by  the  hands  of  the  common  ex 
ecutioner.     A  few  days  after,  on  the  complaint  of  a  Tory  peer,  the  House  of 

XX 


590  NOTES. 

Lords  ordered  the  same  treatment  to  be  inflicted  on  some  of  the  writings  of 
Thomas  Paine,  in  defence  of  the  Americans  and  reprobation  of  the  British  king, 
which  had  been  republished  in  England.  The  populace  of  London  endeavoured 
to  obstruct  this  latter  ceremonial ;  and,  immediately  after  its  performance,  publicly 
burned,  with  marks  of  strong  displeasure  and  contempt,  a  recent  parliamentary 
address  on  American  affairs.     Annual  Register  for  1775. 

These  demonstrations  of  popular  feeling,  however^  seem  to  have  been  inspired 
rather  by  dislike  of  the  ministers,  than  hearty  sympathy  with  the  Americans. 
Lord  Chatham,  in  proof  of  the  insolence  with  which  his  countrymen  were  ani- 
mated against  that  people,  relates  that  even  the  lowest  of  the  populace  of  Lon- 
don habitually  talked  of  "  our  American  subjects  "  ! 

When  the  Boston  Port  Bill  was  passed,  a  political  society  at  London,  calling 
itself  the  Supporters  of  the  Bill  of  Rights,  voted  a  contribution  of  five  hundred 
pounds  to  relieve  the  distress  occasioned  by  the  bill  to  the  people  of  Boston. 
Annual  Register  for  1775. 

On  the  7th  of  June,  1775,  a  number  of  gentlemen,  members  of  a  political  club 
called  the  Constitutional  Society  of  London,  united  in  a  declaration  of  abhor- 
rence of  the  attack  upon  the  Americans  at  Lexington.  They  subscribed  a  sum 
of  money  which  they  expressly  appointed  "  to  be  applied  to  the  relief  of  the 
widows,  orphans,  and  aged  parents  of  our  beloved  American  fellow-subjects, 
who,  faithful  to  the  character  of  Englishmen,  and  preferring  death-  to  slavery, 
were,  for  that  reason  only,  inhumanly  murdered  by  the  king's  troops,  at  or 
liear  Lexington,  in  the  province  of  Massachusetts,  on  the  19th  of  last  April." 
This  proceeding,  which  was  chiefly  promoted  by  the  celebrated  scholar,  philoso- 
pher, and  politician,  John  Home  Tooke,  was  published  by  him  in  the  newspapers 
of  London.  Home  Tooke  was  consequently  tried  for  a  libel ;  and,  notwithstand- 
ing a  most  ingenious  and  spirited  defence,  found  guilty,  and  sentenced  to  a  pecu- 
niary fine  and  a  year's  imprisonment.     Howell's  State  Trials. 

In  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  October,  1775,  Governor  Johnstone, 
one  of  the  members,  thus  expressed  himself:  — "  To  a  mind  that  loves  to  con^ 
template  the  glorious  spirit  of  freedom  no  spectacle  can  be  more  affecting  than 
the  action  at  Bunker's  HilL  To  see  an  irregular  peasantry,  commanded  by  a 
physician,  inferior  in  numbers,  opposed  by  every  circumstance  of  cannon  and 
bombs  that  could  terrify  timid  minds,  calmly  waiting  the  attack  of  the  gallant 
Howe,  leading  on  the  best  troops  in  the  world,  with  an  excellent  train  of  artillery, 
and  twice  repulsing  those  very  troops  who  had  often  chased  the  battalions  of 
France,  and  at  last  retiring  for  want  of  ammunition,  but  in  so  respectable  a 
manner  that  they  were  not  even  pursued,  —  who  can  reflect  on  such  scenes  and 
not  adore  the  constitution  of  government  which  could  breed  such  men  ? " 

In  the  month  of  July,  1776,  Lord  Chatham  prosecuted  Woodfall,  the  printer 
of  a  London  newspaper,  for  a  lihel^  in  having  asserted  that  his  Lordship's  sen- 
timents coincided  with  those  of  the  British  ministry,  and  were  unfavorable  to 
the  Americans.  A  technical  error  in  the  requisite  formalities  of  legal  procedure 
caused  this  action  to  terminate  in  a  nonsuit.     Annual  Register  for  1776. 


NOTE   XXXV.     Page  518. 

Can  tyrants  but  by  tyrants  concjuered  be, 

And  Freedom  nnd  no  champion  and  no  child, 
Such  as  Columbia  saw  arise,  when  she 

Sprung  forth  a  Pallas,  armed  and  undefiled  ?  , 

Or  must  such  minds  be  nourished  in  the  wild,  "^ 

Deep  in  the  unpruned  forest, 'midst  the  roar  ''        .'^ 

Of  cataracts,  where  nursing  Nature  smiled  -  ,       .    •  . 

On  infant  Washington  ?    Has  ^earth  no  more 
Such  seeds  within  her  breast,  or  Europe  no  such  shore?  "  — Lord  Bjrron. 


NOTES.  591 

**  Great  men  have  always  scorned  great  recompenses : 
Epaminondas  saved  his  Thebes,  and  died, 
Not  leaving  even  his  funeral  expenses : 
''  George  Washington  had  thanks,  and  naught  beside, 

Except  the  all-cloudless  glory  (which  few  men's  b) 
To  free  his  country."  —  Ibid. 

"  There  is  something  charming  to  me  "  —  thus  John  Adams  wrote  at  the 
time  to  his  friend  Elbridge  Gerry,  of  Massachusetts  —  "  in  the  conduct  of  Wash- 
ington. A  gentleman  of  one  of  the  first  fortunes  upon  the  continent,  leaving  his 
delicious  retirement,  his  family  and  friends,  sacrificing  his  ease,  and  hazarding  all 
in  the  cause  of  his  country.     His  views  are  noble  and  disinterested." 

"  Washington,"  said  General  Henry  Lee,  on  learning  his  death  (and  all  Amer- 
ica reechoed  the  declaration),  "  was  first  in  war,  first  in  peace,  first  in  the  hearts 
of  his  countrymen."  His  popularity,  however,  was  not  always  uninterrupted. 
During  his  second  presidency,  it  was  deemed,  with  ungrateful  injustice,  by  a 
numerous  body  of  his  countrymen,  that  he  had  died  to  all  his  former  glory.  But, 
superior  even  to  this  keen  mortification,  he  possessed  his  great  soul  in  uncom- 
plaining patience.  If  Pericles  was  supported  by  the  fortune  of  Athens,  Wash- 
ington with  greater  glory  supported  the  fortune  of  America. 

There  has  recently  been  given  to  the  world  the  following  sketch  of  Washing- 
ton's character,  by  the  pen  of  one  of  his  most  illustrious  friends  :  —  "  His  judg- 
ment was  slow  in  operation,  being  little  aided  by  invention  or  imagination,  but 
sure  in  conclusion  ;  hence  the  common  remark  of  his  officers  of  the  advantage  he 
derived  from  councils  of  war,  where,  hearing  all  suggestions,  he  selected  whatever 
was  best;  and  certainly  no  general  ever  planned  his  battles  more  judiciously. 
His  integrity  was  the  most  pure,  his  justice  the  most  inflexible,  I  have  ever 
known.  His  temper  was  naturally  irritable  and  high-toned  ;  but  reflection  and 
resolution  had  obtained  a  firm  and  habitual  ascendency  over  it.  If  ever,  how- 
ever, it  broke  its  bounds,  he  was  most  tremendous  in  his  wrath.  On  the  whole, 
k  may  truly  be  said,  that  never  did  nature  and  fortune  combine  more  perfectly 
to  make  a  man  great,  and  to  place  him  in  the  same  constellation  with  whatever 
worthies  have  merited  from  man  an  everlasting  remembrance."  Jefferson's 
Memoirs. 

Jefferson,  Franklin,  and  various  other  asso<?iates  and  eulogists  of  Washington, 
were  incapable  of  appreciating  principles  that  were  strangers  to  their  own  souls. 
But  the  claim  of  Washington  to  "  the  highest  style  of  man  "  has  been  successful- 
ly vindicated  in  the  recent  work  of  Mr.  McGuire.  It  is  there  satisfactorily  shown 
that  religion  not  merely  engaged  the  attention  of  Washington's  mind,  but  capti- 
vated the  deep  affection  of  his  calm,  steadfast  heart.  From  various  anecdotes  re- 
lated in  this  interesting  performance  I  select  the  following.  In  the  summer  of 
1779,  Washington,  exploring  alone  one  day  the  position  of  the  British  forces  on 
the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  ventured  too  far  from  his  own  camp,  and  was  compelled 
by  a  sudden  storm  and  the  fatigue  of  his  horse  to  seek  shelter  for  the  night  in 
the  cottage  of  a  pious  American  peasant,  who,  greatly  struck  with  the  manners 
and  language  of  his  guest,  and  listening  at  the  door  of  his  chamber,  overheard 
the  following  prayer  from  the  father  of  his  country  :  — "  And  now.  Almighty 
Father,  if  it  is  thy  holy  will  that  we  shall  obtain  a  place  and  a  name  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  grant  that  we  may  be  enabled  to  show  our  gratitude  for  thy 
goodness  by  our  endeavours  to  fear  and  obey  thee.  Bless  us  with  wisdom  in 
our  councils,  success  in  battle,  and  let  all  our  victories  be  tempered  with  humani- 
ty. Endow  also  our  enemies  with  enlightened  minds,  that  they  may  become 
sensible  of  their  injustice,  and  willing  to  restore  our  liberty  and  peace.  Grant  the 
petition  of  thy  servant,  for  the  sake  of  Him  whom  thou  hast  called  thy  beloved 
Son ;  nevertheless,  not  my  will,  but  thine  be  done."  McGuire's  Religious 
Opinions  and  Character  of  Washington. 

There  is  a  strange  disregard  of  propriety  and  congmity  in  the  complimentary 


592  NOTES. 

terms  of  Franklin's  testamentary  bequest  to  Washington.  "  I  leave  to  General 
Washington  my  gold-headed  stick,  surmounted  by  the  cap  of  Liberty.  If  it 
were  a  sceptre,  he  would  become  it,  and  has  deserved  it."  But  Washington's 
glory  is  for  ever  associated  with  the  triumph  of  republican  authority  over  sceptred 
and  monarchical  sway.  He  caused  the  populi  fasces  to  prevail  over  the  purpura 
regum. 


NOTE  XXXVI.     Page  536. 

All  the  information  conveyed  in  this  paragraph  of  the  text  is  derived  from 
conversations  which  I  had  the  honor  and  advantage  of  holding  with  La  Eayette, 
at  his  house  in  Paris,  in  the  month  of  May,  1829.  Though  the  sequel  of  his 
communications  is  hardly  pertinent  to  the  object  of  the  present  work,  I  think  it 
far  too  interesting  to  be  omitted  ;  and  accordingly  transcribe,  as  follows,  from 
the  manuscript  journal,  which  I  enlarged  after  every  conversation  with  La  Fayette, 
and  the  accuracy  of  which  I  ascertained  by  subsequent  personal  correspondence 
with  himself. 

La  Fayette,  brooding  over  the  design  suggested  to  him  by  the  language  of 
the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  entered,  soon  after,  into  communication  with  Silas  Deane, 
and  subsequently  with  Dr.  Franklin,  when  the  Doctor  arrived  at  Paris  as  com- 
missioner from  America  to  France.  On  learning  the  first  successes  of  the  British 
army,  which  followed  shortly  after  the  American  declaration  of  independence, 
both  Franklin  and  Deane  protested  that  they  could  not  encourage  La  Fayette  to 
pursue  his  romantic  purpose,  as  they  feared  that  the  cause  of  American  liberty 
was  irretrievably  lost.  Undeterred  by  this  remonstrance,  he  resolved  to  perse- 
vere ;  and,  awaiting  the  completion,  which  Franklin  undertook  to  superintend,  of 
an  equipment  of  various  articles  which  he  was  to  take  with  him  to  America,  he 
paid  a  visit  to  England,  where  his  uncle,  De  Noailles,  a  timid,  circumspect  man, 
resided  as  ambassador  from  France.  Noailles  presented  his  nephew  to  the  British 
king,  who  (aware  of  Franklin's  negotiations  at  Paris,  and  desirous  of  cultivating 
friendly  relations  with  the  French)  said  to  La  Fayette,  "  I  hope  you  mean  to  stay 
some  time  in  Britain."  La  Fayette  answered,  that  this  was  not  in  his  power. 
"  What  obliges  you  to  leave  us  ?  "  asked  the  king.  "  Please  your  Majesty,"  re- 
plied La  Fayette,  "  I  have  a  very  particular  engagement,  which  if  your  Majesty 
were  aware  of,  you  would  not  desire  me  to  stay."  The  king  subsequently 
expressed  displeasure  at  that  reply,  when  the  events  that  ensued  disclosed  its 
hidden  import.  La  Fayette  was  invited  to  attend  the  review  of  a  detachment  of 
British  troops,  prepared  to  embark  for  America.  He  declined,  under  pretence 
of  sickness  ;  thinking  it  would  be  dishonorable  thus  to  inspect  the  condition  of 
troops  with  whose  enemies  he  purposed  to  unite  himself,  *'  But,"  he  remarked  to 
me,  with  some  animation,  "  I  met  them  six  months  after  at  Brandywine."  One 
night,  at  an  entertainment  given  by  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  at  which  La  Fayette 
was  present,  the  Duke  of  Dorset  unexpectedly  entered,  having  just  arrived  from 
Paris.  He  announced  as  news,  that  the  French  court  had  commanded  the 
American  commissioners  to  depart  from  France  ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  delivered 
to  La  Fayette  some  letters,  which  he  had  brought  over  for  him.  They  were  from 
Franklin,  and  stated  both  that  his  own  negotiation  with  the  French  court  was 
prospering,  and  that  the  equipment  for  La  Fayette's  voyage  was  completed. 
La  Fayette  immediately  repaired  to  his  uncle,  and  announced  his  instant  depart- 
ure for  France.  Noailles,  after  remonst|"ating  ineffectually  against  this  manifes- 
tation of  indifference  to  the  British  monarch's  civilities,  demanded  if  his  nephew 
would  soon  return  to  London.  La  Fayette  answered,  that  he  did  not  know. 
"  Well,"  said  the  ambassador,  "  shall  I  conceal  your  departure,  and  tell  the  king, 


NOTES.  593 

when  he  next  inquires  for  you,  that  you  are  unwell  ?  "  La  Fayette  was  struck 
with  this  proposition,  and,  eagerly  seizing  the  opportunity  it  presented  of  advanc- 
ing a  point  he  had  greatly  at  heart,  of  embroiling  the  courts  of  France  and 
Britain,  replied, "  My  dear  uncle,  I  could  not  have  asked  you  to  do  that ;  but, 
since  you  have  offered,  I  shall  really  be  glad  if  you  will  do  it."  So  the  ambas- 
sador consequently  did ;  and  the  British  ministers,  on  learning,  soon  after,  the 
departure  of  La  Fayette  for  America,  behaved  to  Noailles  in  a  manner  that  showed 
them  fully  persuaded  of  his  accession  to  his  nephew's  designs.  Neither  he  nor 
the  court  of  France,  however,  knew  any  thing  about  them,  till  after  La  Fayette 
had  embarked  ;  and  then  the  French  government  despatched  two  vessels,  in 
good  earnest,  to  pursue  the  gallant  adventurer,  with  the  purpose  of  intercepting 
his  expedition  to  America,  and  bringing  him  forcibly  back.  Several  years  after, 
when  Noailles,  then  ambassador  at  Vienna,  received  a  visit  from  his  nephew,  he 
said  to  him,  with  a  significant  look,  "  Now,  La  Fayette,  I  hope  you  have  not 
come  here  to  play  me  another  such  trick  as  you  did  at  London." 

The  conduct  of  the  French  court  towards  the  Americans,  La  Fayette  re- 
marked, was  fluctuating  and  indecisive,  and,  towards  Britain,  "  of  a  very  Austrian 
complexion,"  —  the  reverse  of  upright  and  honorable.^  That  great  statesman, 
Turgot,  in  1775,  presented  a  memorial  to  his  colleagues  in  the  French  cabinet, 
representing  the  impolicy  of  openly  aiding  the  Americans ;  Necker  (according  to 
his  daughter,  Madame  de  Stael,  —  Considerations  sur  la  Revolution  Frangaise) 
gave  similar  counsel  to  Louis  the  Sixteenth  ;  and  in  effect  it  was  long  before  the 
French  government  consented  publicly  and  decisively  to  espouse  the  cause  of 
American  independence.  They  preferred  the  middle  course  of  affording  secret 
succours  to  the  Americans  ;  till  the  displeasure  and  reproaches  of  England  and 
the  strong  current  of  public  sentiment  and  opinion  in  France  overbore  the  scruples 
of  the  French  monarch  to  declare  himself  the  unprovoked  enemy  of  the  king  of 
Britain,  and  the  ally  of  a  revolted  people  and  republican  commonwealth.  Even 
then  it  was  manifest  to  all  discerning  eyes,  that  what  the  French  court  immedi- 
ately and  distinctly  desired  was  to  render  the  British  and  the  Americans  the  in- 
struments of  each  other's  destruction  ;  and  that,  as  the  final  issue  of  a  long  and  ex- 
hausting warfare,  that  court  would  have  preferred  the  dear-bought  success  of 
Britain  to  the  establishment  of  American  independence.  A  few  years  before, 
when  Corsica  revolted  from  the  sway  of  the  Genoese,  France  purchased  and 
pursued  the  claims  of  defeated  tyranny. 

Spain,  La  Fayette  remarked,  was  reluctantly  dragged  into  the  quarrel  by 
France.  2  During  the  war,  an  American  plenipotentiary  resided  at  Madrid,  but 
was  not  received  at  court ;  and  even  after  the  peace  of  1783,  and  the  recognition 
by  Britain  of  American  independence,  the  Spanish  court,  from  a  reasonable  ap- 
prehension of  the  security  of  its  own  colonial  dominion  in  South  America,  refused 
for  a  while  to  unite  in  that  recognition,  or  to  receive  Carmichael,  the  ambassador 

'  And  yet,  when  Lord  Carlisle,  and  the  other  commissioners  appointed  by  Britain  in  the 
year  1778,  made  a  representation  to  this  effect  in  one  of  their  addresses  to  the  American  con- 
gress, La  Fajette,  transported  by  zeal  and  passion  beyond  the  usual  consistency  and  ingenu- 
ousness of  his  character,  charged  Lord  Carlisle  with  insulting  his  country,  and  challenged  him 
to  single  combat.  At  a  more  advanced  period  of  his  life.  La  Fayette  exhibited  in  all  his  con- 
duct and  behaviour  a  peculiar  remoteness  from  stratagem,  intrigue,  and  duplicity  ;  and  graced 
a  generous  ardor,  which  years  and  experience  could  never  chill,  with  that  dignity  of  disposition 
which  in  noble  minds  corresponds  with  the  growth  of  an  illustrious  reputation.  We  have 
seen  Britain,  in  the  year  1836,  nobly  return  good  for  evil,  and  by  her  mediation  enable  France 
to  escape  from  an  unjust  and  dangerous  contest  which  she  had  provoked  with  North  America. 

2  In  the  month  of  October,  1776,  the  Spanish  monarch,  by  a  public  proclamation,  announced, 
"that,  in  consequence  of  the  amity  subsisting  between  himself  and  the  king  of  Great  Britain, 
he  should  maintain  a  perfect  neutrality  during  the  present  war  ;  that  he  should  not  give  any 
aid  to  the  Americans;  but  that  he  should  not  refuse  their  admission  into  any  ports  of  his  do- 
minions, while  they  conformed  to  the  Spanish  laws."  See  Anderson's  History  of  Commerce^ 
and  ^nnual  Register  for  1776.  Yet  the  inost  Catholic,  in  imitation  of  the  policy  of  the  most 
Christian  king,  had  already  secretly  contributed  both  arms  and  money  in  aid  of  the  Americans. 

VOL.  II.  75  XX  * 


694  NOTES. 

of  the  United  States,  in  his  diplomatic  capacity.  La  Fayette,  who  was  then  at 
Cadiz,  repaired  to  Madrid  at  the  request  of  Carmichael ;  and,  after  some  nego- 
tiation, informed  the  Spanish  minister.  Count  Florida  Blanca,  that  Carmichael 
would  quit  Spain,  if  he  were  not  acknowledged  before  a  certain  day,  —  adding, 
that  in  such  case  it  would  be  long  enough  before  Spain  would  see  another  ambas- 
sador from  America*     Thereupon  the  Spanish  court  acknowledged  Carmichael. 

La  Fayette  has  contributed  to  elucidate  the  history  as  well  as  to  promote  the 
liberty  of  America.  Botta  informed  me  that  some  of  the  most  valuable  part  of 
his  historic  narrative  was  derived  from  information  and  materials  furnished  to 
him  by  La  Fayette. 


NOTE  XXXVII.     Page  550. 

The  late  William  Dillwyn  of  Walthamstow  informed  me  that  the  British  gov- 
ernment remitted  ten  thousand  pounds  to  his  brother,  a  pious  and  respectable 
Quaker  inhabitant  of  New  Jersey,  to  be  distributed  among  the  families  of  the 
two  Quakers  who  were  hanged. 

Garden,  in  his  Anecdotes  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  mentions  an  occasion  on 
which  a  party  of  Quakers,  hastening  to  tender  a  congratulatory  address  to  the 
British  on  a  victory  which  they  had  obtained,  unluckily  accosted  Colonel  Lee  at  the 
head  of  a  troop  of  American  dragoons,  whom  the  Quakers  mistook  for  a  neigh- 
bouring British  detachment  commanded  by  Colonel  Tarleton.  Under  this  im- 
pression, they  delivered  their  address  to  the  very  persons  whose  cause  it  loaded 
with  reproach  and  was  intended  to  injure  ;  and  had  scarcely  concluded,  when  one 
of  the  dragoons  with  a  pistol  shot  the  leader  of  the  party  through  the  head.  The 
others,  however,  were  spared  and  dismissed  by  the  humane  interposition  of  Lee. 

Some  Quakers  have  indulged  their  favorite  strain  of  declamation  in  complaints 
of  the  persecution  which  their  American  brethren  underwent  from  their  own 
countrymen,  during  the  Revolutionary  War.  But  these  complaints  have  awakened 
little  sympathy  ;  and  impartial  men  have  been  more  disposed  to  partake  the  in- 
dignation which  was  kindled  against  the  Quakers,  and  to  admire  the  forbearance 
which  these  sectaries  experienced.  While  America  was  a  prey  to  all  the  misery 
and  horror  of  a  war  conducted  with  the  most  barbarous  license  and  savage  cruel- 
ty, the  voice  of  Quaker  thanksgiving  was  heard  to  celebrate  every  additional 
disaster  that  befell  her  arms,  and  every  increase  of  peril  that  menaced  her  liberty. 

The  American  Quakers,  however,  were  not  universally  the  friends  of  their" 
country's  foes  and  oppressors.  Lydia  Darrah,  a  female  Quaker  inhabitant  of 
Philadelphia,  having  detected  a  project  of  General  Howe  to  surprise  and  destroy 
Washington  and  his  army  by  a  nocturnal  attack,  contrived  to  defeat  the  scheme 
by  conveying  intelligence  of  it  to  Washington,  under  whom  her  own  son  was 
serving  at  the  time  as  an  officer.     American  Quarterly  Review. 

Brissot,  whose  unbounded  admiration  of  the  American  Quakers  has  betrayed 
him  into  some  remarks  upon  their  conduct  more  encomiastic  than  correct,  relates, 
that  Washington,  during  the  Revolutionary  War,  partook  the  prevailing  prejudice 
and  animosity  of  his  countrymen  against  the  Quakers ;  but  that  he  afterwards 
adopted  very  different  sentiments,  and  assured  Brissot  that  he  considered  their 
simplicity  of  manners,  good  morals,  economy,  and  general  reasonableness,  a 
powerful  support  to  the  new  government  which  the  Revolution  had  established  in 
America.  The  simplest  and  most  intelligible  explanation  of  this  change  of  sen- 
timent seems  to  be,  that  Washington  disliked  the  Quakers  when  he  was  strug- 
gling against  established  monarchical  power,  for  the  same  reason  for  which  he 
liked  them  when  he  was  administering  established  republican  authority,  —  that 
is,  for  their  peaceable  and  unresisting  submission  to  existing  forms  of  govern- 
ment. Their  weight  against  him  in  the  one  case  became  weight  in  his  favor  in 
the  other. 


NOTES.  595 


NOTR  XXXVIII.     Page  551. 

It  is  melancholy  to  remark  the  inefficiency  (not  to  say  the  pernicious  efficien- 
cy) of  the  schemes  that  have  been  devised  to  eradicate  or  even  mitigate  all  or  any 
of  the  varied  and  abominable  evils  involved  in  the  system  of  negro  slavery. 
Once  planted,  the  root  of  this  tree  of  bitterness  seems  to  be  fatally  permanent. 
The  Quakers  and  other  citizens  of  America  manumitted  their  slaves  ;  but  they 
could  not,  or  at  least  they  did  not,  make  them  more  than  nominally  free,  or  pro- 
mote them  to  the  condition  of  a  happy  and  respected  portion  of  the  community. 
In  proportion  as  the  manumitted  negroes  have  increased  in  number  has  been 
the  increase  of  their  social  degradation,  till  their  treatment  has  finally  become, 
if  possible,  even  more  inhuman  than  that  of  the  portion  of  their  race  that  con- 
tinues enslaved.  La  Fayette,  during  his  last  visit  to  America,  expressed  a  deep 
and  painful  surprise  at  the  increase  which  the  prejudice  of  the  whites  against  the 
blacks  and  mulattoes  had  undergone  since  the  Revolutionary  War,  when,  in  the 
season  of  general  danger,  soldiers  of  every  hue  partook  their  meals  together. 

With  the  professed  design  of  extirpating  this  evil,  and  of  laying  a  foundation 
for  the  total  abolition  of  negro  slavery,  a  project  of  colonizing  a  part  of  Africa 
(which  has  been  called  Liberia)  with  freed  negroes  from  America  was  engen- 
dered by  a  coalition  between  deluded  philanthropy  and  active  fraud,  injustice,  and 
hypocrisy  ;  and  has  produced  only  aggravated  misery  to  the  freed  negroes,  and 
more  confirmed  and  rigorous  bondage  to  the  slaves.  See  An  Inquiry  into  the 
Character  and  Tendency  of  the  American  Colonization  and  American  Anti-slavery 
Societies,  by  William  Jay,  —  a  work  which  every  man  who  desires  the  welfare 
and  happiness  of  the  African  race  ought  carefully  to  peruse. 

The  justest  and  most  liberal  tribute  ever  rendered  by  municipal  authority  in 
America  to  the  rights  of  the  African  race  was  a  statute  enacted  (March,  1780) 
in  the  middle  of  the  Revolutionary  War  by  the  legislature  of  Pennsylvania,  — 
the  preamble  of  which  I  shall  here  transcribe,  because  the  sentiments  it  expresses 
are  such  as  ought  to  inhabit  and  predominate  in  the  breast  of  every  American 
who  owns  allegiance  to  God  and  professes  attachment  to  his  country  and  her 
freedom. 

"  When  we  contemplate  our  abhorrence  of  the  condition  to  which  the  arms  and 
tyranny  of  Great  Britain  were  exerted  to  reduce  us,  —  when  we  look  back  on 
tiie  variety  of  dangers  to  which  we  have  been  exposed,  and  how  miraculously 
our  wants  in  many  instances  have  been  supplied  and  our  deliverances  wrought, 
when  even  hope  and  human  fortitude  have  become  unequal  to  the  conflict, — 
we  are  unavoidably  led  to  a  serious  and  grateful  sense  of  the  manifold  blessings 
which  we  have  undeservedly  received  from  the  hand  of  that  Being  from  whom 
every  good  and  perfect  gift  cometh.  Impressed  with  these  ideas,  we  conceive 
that  it  is  our  duty,  and  we  rejoice  that  it  is  in  our  power,  to  extend  a  portion 
of  that  freedom  to  others  which  hath  been  extended  to  us,  and  a  release  from  that 
state  of  thraldom  to  which  we  ourselves  were  tyrannically  doomed,  and  from 
which  we  have  now  every  prospect  of  being  delivered.  It  is  not  for  us  to  inquire 
why,  in  the  creation  of  mankind,  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  parts  of  the  earth 
were  distinguished  by  a  difference  in  feature  or  complexion.  It  is  sufficient  to 
know  that  all  are  the  work  of  an  almighty  hand.  We  find  in  the  distribution 
of  the  human  species,  that  the  most  fertile  as  well  as  the  most  barren  parts  of  the 
earth  are  inhabited  by  men  of  complexions  different  from  ours  and  from  each 
other  ;  from  whence  we  may  reasonably  as  well  as  religiously  infer,  that  He  who 
placed  them  in  their  various  situations  hath  extended  equally  his  care  and  pro- 
tection to  all,  and  that  it  becometh  not  us  to  counteract  his  mercies.  We  esteem 
it  a  peculieir  blessing  granted  to  us,  that  we  are  enabled  in  this  day  to  add  one 
more  step  to  universal  oiviliiation,  by  removing,  as  much  as  possible,  the  sorrows 


S^'  NOTES. 

of  those  who  have  lived  in  undeserved  bondage,  and  from  which,  by  the  assumed 
authority  of  the  kings  of  Great  Britain,  no  effectual  legal  relief  could  be  obtained. 
Weaned  by  a  long  course  of  experience  from  those  narrow  prejudices  and  par- 
tialities we  had  imbibed,  we  find  our  hearts  enlarged  with  kindness  and  benevo- 
lence toward  men  of  all  conditions  and  nations ;  and  we  conceive  ourselves,  at 
this  particular  period,  extraordinarily  called  upon,  by  the  blessings  which  we  have 
received,  to  manifest  the  sincerity  of  our  profession,  and  to  give  a  substantial 
proof  of  our  gratitude. 

"  And  whereas  the  condition  of  those  persons  who  have  heretofore  been  de- 
nominated negro  and  mulatto  slaves  has  been  attended  with  circumstances  which 
not  only  deprived  them  of  the  common  blessings  that  they  were  by  nature  entitled 
to,  but  has  cast  them  into  the  deepest  afflictions  by  an  unnatural  separation  and 
sale  of  husband  and  wife  from  each  other  and  from  their  children,  —  an  injury, 
the  greatness  of  which  can  only  be  conceived  by  supposing  that  we  were  in  the 
same  unhappy  case :  —  In  justice,  therefore,  to  persons  so  unhappily  circum- 
stanced, and  who,  having  no  prospect  before  them  whereon  they  may  rest  their 
sorrows  and  hopes,  have  no  reasonable  inducement  to  render  the  service  to  soci- 
ety which  otherwise  they  might ;  and  also  in  grateful  commemoration  of  our  own 
happy  deliverance  from  that  state  of  unconditional  submission  to  which  we  were 
doomed  by  the  tyranny  of  Britain,  —  Be  it  enacted,  that  no  child  born  hereafter 
shall  be  a  slave,"  &c.     Gordon. 

A  forcible  and  excellent,  yet  calm  and  temperate,  exposition  of  the  evil  and 
unrighteousness  of  slavery  has  lately  been  given  to  the  world  by  the  accomplished 
Dr.  Channing,  of  Massachusetts.  Most  American  writers  who  have  ventured  to 
bear  testimony  against  slavery  appear  to  handle  the  subject  as  if  they  dreaded 
to  burn  their  fingers.  Their  confusion  and  timidity  contrast  strikingly  with  the 
distinctness  and  audacity  of  the  advocates  for  the  vile  institution. 


NOTE  XXXIX.     Page  552. 

In  the  historical  portion  of  the  Annual  Register  for  the  year  1772,  which  was 
written  by  the  illustrious  Edmund  Burke,  this  great  statesman,  after  condemning 
the  impolitic  tameness  with  which  Britain  and  France  forbore  to  withstand  the 
partition  of  Poland,  thus  contrasts  the  sickly  state  of  liberty  in  Europe  with  its 
happier  condition  and  brighter  prospects  in  America  :  —  "  In  a  word,  if  we  seri- 
ously consider  the  mode  of  supporting  great  standing  armies,  which  becomes 
daily  more  prevalent,  it  will  appear  evidently  that  nothing  less  than  a  convulsion 
that  will  shake  the  globe  to  its  centre  can  ever  restore  the  European  nations  to  that 
liberty  by  which  they  were  once  so  much  distinguished.  The  western  world  was 
the  seat  of  freedom,  until  another  more  western  was  discovered  ;  and  that  other 
will  probably  be  its  asylum,  when  it  is  hunted  down  in  every  other  part.  Happy 
it  is  that  the  worst  of  times  may  have  one  refuge  still  left  for  humanity."  These 
remarkable  words  (which  it  is  interesting  to  compare  with  a  passage  from  Smol- 
lett, cited  in  a  note  near  the  end  of  Book  X.,  Chap.  I.,  ante)  amount  very  nearly 
to  a  prophecy  of  the  triumph  of  liberty  in  America,  and  of  the  connection  of  this 
triumph  with  the  explosion  of  the  French  Revolution. 


;  J  NOTE  XL.     Page  553. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  pictures  that  ever  were  painted   is  that  noble 
composition  of  Trumbull,  the  American  artist,  which  represents  the  members 


NOTES.  597 

of  this  congress  in  the  act  of  adopting  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  It  is 
impossible  to  survey  the  countenances  there  delineated,  without  acknowledging 
that  these  are  men  worthy  of  the  great  transaction  in  which  they  are  engaged, 
and  whom  their  country  may  well  be  proud  of  having  produced.  No  affectation 
appears  in  their  looks,  —  no  coarseness,  no  dramatic  extravagance,  no  turbid 
passion,  no  effeminate  refinement ;  but  a  graceful  plainness  and  simplicity, 
manly  sense,  deliberate  thought  and  courage,  and  calm,  determined  possession 
of  noble  purpose.  Comparing  this  picture  with  the  corresponding  French  one, 
representing  the  Serment  du  Jeu-de-Pmmie  (as  I  earnestly  did  one  day  in  the 
house  of  La  Fayette  at  Paris,  while  this  great  man  directed  my  attention  to  them 
both),  we  behold  a  striking  illustration  of  the  contrasted  character  of  the  two 
nations.  What  fiery,  turbid,  theatrical  aspect  and  gestures  the  French  artist 
has  ascribed  to  his  countrymen  !  The  one  ceremony  appears  a  fleeting,  fantas- 
tic, extravagant  dramatic  show.  In  the  other  we  seem  to  behold  the  edifice  of 
national  liberty  considerately  erected  on  solid,  durable,  and  respectable  founda- 
tions. The  pictured  aspect  of  the  American  statesmen  is  in  perfect  harmony 
with  the  style  and  tone  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  Of  this  immortal 
manifesto,  which  no  praise  can  exalt  and  no  criticism  depreciate,  it  has  been  most 
justly  observed,  that,  if  it  had  been  more  argumentative,  it  would  have  shown 
a  want  of  confidence  in  the  justice  of  its  cause  ;  and  that,  if  it  had  been  less  so, 
it  would  have  been  inconsistent  with  the  respect  it  professed  for  the  opinion  of 
mankind. 


Since  the  foregoing  note  was  written,  the  Second  French  Revolution  (of  1830) 
has  occurred,  and  produced  scenes  of  which  the  remembrance  will  constitute  the 
pride  and  glory  of  France,  and  the  pictorial  representations  will  teach  a  grand 
and  animating  lesson  to  all  the  world. 


NOTE  XLI.     Page  555. 

"  I  AM  well  aware,"  says  John  Adams,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  "  of  the  toil, 
blood,  and  treasure  that  it  will  cost  us  to  maintain  this  declaration  and  support  and 
defend  these  States.  Yet,  through  all  the  gloom,  I  can  see  the  rays  of  ravishing 
light  and  glory.  I  can  see  that  the  end  is  worth  more  than  all  the  means;  and 
that  posterity  will  triumph  in  that  day's  transaction,  even  although  we  should  rue 
it,  —  which  I  trust  in  God  we  shall  not."  Letters  of  John  Adams,  published  by 
his  Grandson,  C.  F.  Adams. 

"  I  will  not,"  says  the  greatest  poet  and  one  of  the  most  admirable  men  that 
Scotland  has  ever  produced,  "  I  cannot,  enter  into  the  merits  of  the  cause,  —  but 
I  dare  say  the  American  congress  in  1776  will  be  allowed  to  be  as  able  and  as  en- 
lightened as  the  English  convention  in  1688  ;  and  that  their  posterity  will  cele- 
brate the  centenary  of  their  deliverance  from  us  as  duly  and  sincerely  as  we  do 
ours  from  the  oppressive  measures  of  the  wrong-headed  House  of  Stuart." 
Burns's  Letters,  1788. 

Proud,  the  Quaker  historian  of  Pennsylvania,  deemed  the  American  Revolution 
the  certain  cause  and  commencement  of  the  decline  of  national  virtue  and  pros- 
perity in  America.  See  Note  XXIX.,  at  the  end  of  Volume  I.,  and  a  note  to  Book 
X.,  Chap.  I.  Paine,  who  judged  and  felt  very  differently,  thus  beautifully  ponders 
on  a  more  distant  eclipse  of  American  glory :  —  "A  thousand  years  hence,  per- 
haps in  less,  America  may  be  what  Britain  now  is.  The  innocence  of  her  char- 
acter, that  won  the  hearts  of  all  nations  in  her  favor,  may  sound  like  a  romance, 
and  her  inimitable  virtue  as  if  it  had  never  been.     The  ruins  of  that   liberty 


598  NOTES. 

whicli  thousands  bled  to  obtain  may  just  furnish  materials  for  a  village  tale,  or 
extort  a  sigh  from  rustic  sensibility  ;  while  the  fashionable  of  that  day,  enveloped 
in  dissipation,  shall  deride  the  principle  and  deny  the  fact.  When  we  contem- 
plate the  fall  of  empires,  and  the  extinction  of  the  nations  of  the  ancient  world, 
we  see  but  little  more  to  excite  our  regret  than  the  mouldering  ruins  of  pompous 
palaces,  magnificent  monuments,  lofty  pyramids,  and  walls  and  towers  of  the 
most  costly  workmanship  :  but  when  the  empire  of  America  shall  fall,  the  subject 
for  contemplative  sorrow  will  be  infinitely  greater  than  crumbling  brass  or  marble 
can  inspire  ;  it  will  not  then  be  said,  Here  stood  a  temple  of  vast  antiquity, 
here  rose  a  Babel  of  invisible  height,  or  there  a  i)alace  of  sumptuous  extrava- 
gance ;  but.  Here,  ah,  painful  thought !  the  noblest  work  of  human  wisdom, 
the  greatest  scene  of  human  glory,  the  fair  cause  of  freedom,  rose  and  fell." 
Paine's  Letter  to  Washington,  1796. 


THE    EITD. 


ri^: 


INDEX 


Abercrombie,  general,  loses  the  battle  of  Ti- 
conderoga,  ii.  280  ;  is  recalled,  282. 

Acadia,  conquest  of,  ii.  29 ;  ceded  to  the 
French,  237  ;  reverts  to  France,  283. 

Adams,  Samuel,  his  zeal  in  the  cause  of  Inde- 
pendence, ii.  493,  note;  establishes  com- 
mittees of  correspondence,  495 ;  a  free  par- 
don  offered  to  the  revolutionists,  excepting 
Samuel  Adams  and  John  Hancock,  510. 

Agriculture,  state  of  in  the  middle  States,  ii.  205. 

Albemarle,  Duke  of,  encourages  Phips'  pro- 
ject of  removing  treasures  from  wrecks  of 
Spanish  vessels,  i.  263 ;  his  success,  261 ; 
settlement  named  after  him,  362. 

Alexander,  a  chief  of  the  Narragansets,  i. 
239  ;  dies  of  mortification  at  the  failure  of 
his  plans,  239. 

Allen,  Ethan,  his  energetic  conduct  in  the 
taking  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point, 
ii.  509. 

Alsop,  George,  his  account  of  the  colony  in 
Maryland,  i.  319. 

America,  discovered  by  Christopher  Columbus, 
i.  25 ;  Cabot's  discoveries,  27 ;  neglect  of 
his  discoveries,  29  ;  Spanish  conquests,  31 ; 
maritime  adventures  under  Elizabeth,  33 ; 
rise  of  the  slave  trade,  35 ;  project  of  a  co- 
lony under  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  37 ;  co- 
lony at  Roanoke,  39  ;  further  attempts  at 
colonization,  41 ;  Gosnold's  voyage,  43 ;  the 
London  and  Plymouth  Companies,  45  ;  co- 
lonial code  of  James  I.,  47 ;  sufferings  of 
the  colonists,  49 ;  Smith's  adventures  in 
Virginia,  50;  influence  over  the  Indians, 
51 ;  exploration  of  Chesapeake,  53 ;  Smith's 
administration,  55;  Lord  Delaware  ap- 
pointed governor,  57 ;  anarchy  and  famine 
at  Jamestown,  59  ;  administration  of  Lor4 
Delaware,  61 ;  expeditions  against  Port 
Royal  and  New  York,  65  ;  first  representa- 
tive legislature  in  America,  67 ;  migration 
of  young  women  to  Virginia,  69 ;  Indian 
conspiracy,  71 ;  massacre  of  the  colonists, 
73 ;  dissensions  of  the  London  Company, 
75 ;  dissolves  itself,  77 ;  effect  of  its  disso- 
lution, 79 ;  Governor  Harvey's  tyrannical 
conduct,  81 ;  the  king  assumes  the  govern- 
ment of  the  colony,  82 ;  provincial  liberty 
restored,  83;  Virginia  espouses  the  royal 
cause  in  the  troubles  of  Charles  I.,  85; 
navigation  system  of  England,  87 ;  revolt 
of  Virginia,  89;  the  navigation  act,  91; 
impolicy  of  the  exclusive  system,  93 ;  the 
navigation  acta  grievance,  95 ;  Indian  in- 
.  surrection  and  war,  97 ;  Bacon's  rebellion, 
■  99 ;  death  of  Bacon,  101 ;  rigorous  punish- 
"  ment  of  the  rebels,  103 ;  commissioners 
criminate  Berkeley,  105 ;  tyranny  and  rapa- 
city  of  Effingham,  107 ;  effect  of  the  British 


revolution,  109 ;  civil  and  domestic  state  of 
Virginia,  111 ;  futile  attempt  at  coloniza- 
tion in  the  north,  123 ;  policy  and  religious 
views  of  James  I.,  139  ;  project  of  coloniza- 
tion by  the  Puritans,  143;  sufferings  of  the 
Plymouth  colony,  145 ;  charter  of  the  Ply- 
mouth colony,  147  ;  tyrannical  civil  policy 
of  Charles  I.,  151 ;  charter  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  153 ;  intolerance  of  the  settlers, 
159;  transfer  of  the  Massachusetts  charter, 
161;  active  emigration,  163;  representative 
government,  169 ;  settlement  of  Connecti- 
cut, 171;  the  Pequod  war,  173;  treatment 
of  the  Indians,  175;  restraints  on  em igra- 
tion,  183;  surrender  of  the  charter  de- 
manded, 185 ;  domestic  slate  of  New  Eng- 
land, 187;  sides  with  the  parliament,  191  ; 
New  England  confederacy,  193 ;  coinage 
of  money  by  Massachusetts,  195  ;  impeach- 
ment and  defence  of  Winthrop,  197 ;  mis- 
sionary labours  among  the  Indians,  201 ; 
synod  of  the  New  England  churches,  203 ; 
favour  of  Cromwell  to,  205  ;  projects  for  re- 
moval of  the  colony  to  Jamaica,  207 ;  the 
Quakers  persecuted,  211;  Massachusetts 
asserts  her  rights,  221 ;  royal  letter  to,'223; 
Rhode  Island  charter,  225 ;  common  inte- 
rest of  the  New  England  States,  227 ;  ap- 
pointment of  commissioners  for  New  Eng- 
land, 229  ;  petition  of  Massachusetts  to  the 
king,  231  ;  views  of  allegiance  in  Massa- 
chusetts, 233 ;  disputes  with  the  commis- 
sioners, 235 ;  cession  of  Acadia  to  France, 
237 ;  Indian  conspiracy,  239 ;  king  Phi- 
lip's war,  241 ;  invasion  of  Connecticut  by 
Andros,  243 ;  royal  governor  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, 245 ;  laws  of  England  deemed  inope- 
rative in  America,  247 ;  parties  in  Massa- 
chusetts, 249 ;  portents  in  the  same,  250 ; 
Quo  Warranto  threatened,  251 ;  is  issued 
against  Massachusetts,  253  ;  Kirk  appointed 
governor,  255 ;  Andros  captain-general,  257 ; 
surrender  of  Rhode  Island  charter,  259  ; 
oppressive  government  of  Andros,  261  ;  Sir 
William  Phips,  263;  insurrection  against 
Andros,  265 ;  war  with  France,  conquest 
of  Acadia,  267 ;  chicanery  of  the  court  in 
the  case  of  Andros,  269 ;  new  charter  of 
Massachusetts,  271 ;  administration  of  Sir 
William  Phips,  273 ;  the  witchcraft  delu- 
sion, 275 ;  war  with  the  French  Indians, 
283;  treaty  of  peace.  Earl  of  Bellamont 
governor,  285 ;  character  of  the  early  set- 
tlers, 287 ;  early  histories  of  New  England, 
289  ;  general  diffusion  of  knowledge,  291 ; 
political  condition  and  sentiments,  293 ; 
state  of  religion,  295  ;  society  and  manners, 
297;  reward  of  public  services,  298;  slave, 
ry,  299 ;  charter  of  Maryland,  301 ;  condi* 
(500) 


600 


INDEX. 


tion  of  the  English  Catholics,  305 ;  opposi- 
tion of  Virginia,  307 ;  legislative  code,  309  ; 
discontent  of  Virginia  quieted,  311 ;  act 
concerning  religion,  313 ;  acts  for  security 
of  political  freedom,  315;  overthrow  of  reli- 
gious liberty,  317;  general  prosperity  of 
the  colony,  319  ;  severe  pressure  of  the  na- 
vigation  act,  321  ;  transportations  of  felons 
to  Maryland,  323 ;  charges  against  Lord 
Baltimore,  325;  pretensions  of  William 
Penn,  327  ;  professions  of  regard  by  James 
II.,  329 ;  formation  of  a  Protestant  associa- 
tion,  421 ;  review  of  the  proprietary  ad  mi- 
nistration,  333  ;  oppression  of  the  Catholics, 
335 ;  civil  and  domestic  state  of  Maryland, 
337;  early  attempts  of  French  and  Spa- 
niards  in  colonizing  North  and  South  Caro- 
lina, 340;  Coligny's  attempts  at  coloniza- 
tion, 341 ;  grant  of  Carolina  to  Clarendon 
and  others,  143;  settlement  at  Albemarle, 
345 ;  second  charter  of  South  Carolina, 
347  ;  constitution  of  Albemarle,  349  ;  fun- 
damental constitutions,  351 ;  old  Charleston 
founded,  357  ;  hostile  intrigues  of  the  Spa- 
niards, 359  ;  dissatisfaction  of  the  proprie- 
taries, 361 ;  factious  proceedings  in  Albe- 
marle, 363 ;  insurrection  under  Culpepper, 
365 ;  temporizing  policy  of  the  proprieta- 
ries, 367 ;  administration  of  West,  369 ; 
sale  of  Indians  into  slavery,  371 ;  discords 
in  South  Carolina,  373 ;  dealings  with  the 
buccaneers,  375 ;  resistance  to  the  navi- 
gation acts,  377;  Colleton  appointed  go- 
vernor, 379 ;  martial  law  proclaimed,  381 ; 
jealousies  in  regard  to  the  Huguenots,  383 ; 
Archdale  appointed  governor,  385  ;  his  suc- 
cessful administration,  387  ;  neglect  of  re- 
ligi'on  and  education,  389;  laws  against 
Dissenters  declared  null,  39 1 ;  civil  and 
domestic  state  of  Carolina,  393 ;  Hudson's 
discovery  of  New  York,  387 ;  Dutch  West 
India  Company,  399  ;  contentions  with  the 
English,  401 ;  Swedish  settlement  in  Dela- 
ware,  403  ;  mutual  jealousies  of  the  Dutch 
and  English,  405 ;  conquests  of  the  Swedes 
in  Delaware,  407 ;  feeble  policy  of  the 
Dutch  company,  409 ;  hostile  designs  of 
Charles  II.,  461  ;  noble  spirit  of  Stuyvesant, 
413  ;  capitulation  of  New  Amsterdam,  415 ; 
administration  of  Nichols,  417  ;  reconquest 
of  New  York  by  the  Dutch,  421 ;  arbitrary 
administration  of  Andros,  423 ;  a  legisla- 
tive assembly  granted,  425 ;  colonel  Don- 
gan's  administration,  427  ;  the  Five  Indian 
nations,  429 ;  missionary  labours  of  the 
Jesuits,  431 ;  treaty  with  the  native  nations, 
433 ;  New  York  annexed  to  New  England, 
e  435 ;  general  dissatisfaction  in  New  York, 
437 ;  Leisler's  usurpation,  439  ;  scheme  for 
the  invasion  of  Canada,  441 ;  renewal  of  the 
treaty  with  the  Five  Nations,  443  ;  spirit 
of  the  Connecticut  people,  445 ;  temper  of 
Fletcher's  administration,  447  ;  Lord  Bella- 
mont  appointed  governor,  449 ;  captain 
Kidd,  451 ;  factions  in  New  York,  453  ; 
administration  of  Lord  Cornbury,  455 ; 
civil  and  domestic  state  of  New  York,  457  ; 
sale  of  the  territory  of  New  Jersey  by  the 


Duke  of  York  to  Berkeley  and  Carteret, 
461 ;  Carteret  assumes  the  government, 
465  ;  fraudulent  views  of  the  Duke  of  York, 
467 ;  the  Quakers,  469  ;  sale  of  New  Jer- 
sey to  Fenwick  and  Bylling,  473 ;  consti- 
tution of  West  Jersey,  475  ;  pretensions  of 
the  Duke  of  York,  477  ;  first  assembly  of 
West  Jersey,  479 ;  domestic  state  of  East 
Jersey,  481 ;  incitement  to  emigration,  483  ; 
surrender  of  the  East  Jersey  patent,  485 ; 
constitution  of  New  Jersey,  487  ;  civil  and 
domestic  state  of  New  Jersey,  489  ;  Penn- 
sylvania, first  settlement  of,  492  ;  birth  and 
character  of  William  Penn,  493  ;  solicits  a 
grant  of  territory,  499  ;  charter  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, 501 ;  preliminary  terms  to  settlers, 
503  ;  first  settlers,  505 ;  Penn's  first  frame 
of  government,  507  ;  grant  of  Delaware  to 
Penn,  509;  first  assembly  of  Pennsylvania, 
511  ;  controversy  with  Lord  Baltimore  re- 
specting the  Delaware  grant,  513 ;  Penn's 
treaty  with  the  Indians,  515;  second  assem- 
bly of  Pennsylvania,  517  ;  Penn's  return  to 
England,  519  ;  his  favour  at  the  court  of 
James  II.,  521  ;  his  letter  of  complaint, 
523 ;  rumoured  conspiracy  of  the  Indians, 
525 ;  conduct  of  Penn  at  the  revolution  in 
1688,  527;  schism  under  George  Keith, 
529  ;  adverse  circumstances  of  Penn,  533  ; 
third  frame  of  government,  535 ;  second 
visit  of  Penn  to  his  domain,  537  ;  efforts  in 
favour  of  slaves  and  Indians,  539  ;  fourth 
frame  of  government,  541 ;  Penn's  final 
return  to  England,  543 ;  complaints  against 
Penn,  545  ;  civil  condition  of  Pennsylvania 
and  Delaware,  547  ;  domestic  state  of  Penn- 
sylvania, 549  ;  state  and  prospects  of  the 
North  American  provinces  at  the  close  of 
the  17th  century,  551 ;  American  pro- 
vinces disappointed  with  the  fruits  of  the 
British  revolution  of  1688,  ii.  1 ;  popular 
acts  of  Nicholson,  governor  of  Virginia, 
5 ;  his  ambitious  schemes,  7 ;  politic  ap- 
pointments in  Massachusetts,  9 ;  popular 
administration  of  Lord  Bellamont,  1 1  , 
Dudley's  effort  to  extend  the  royal  preroga- 
tive, 13  ;  Queen  Anne's  war,  17  ;  attack  on 
the  Connecticut  charter,  19 ;  charges  against 
Connecticut,  21 ;  progress  of  the  war  in 
New  England,  23  ;  expedition  against  Port 
Royal,  25  ;  projected  invasion  of  Canada, 
27 ;  capture  of  Port  Royal  and  Acadia,  29  ; 
expedition  against  Canada,  31  ;  disastrous 
results  of  the  expedition,  33  ;  Hunter  and 
the  New  York  assembly,  35 ;  peace  of 
Utrecht,  37  ;  evil  consequences  of  the  war, 
39  ;  Earl  of  Orkney  governor  of  Virginia, 
41  ;  Dudley  superseded  in  Massachusetts, 
43 ;  bill  to  abolish  New  England  charter. 
45 ;  the  Yamassee  war,  47 ;  Gookin  and 
the  Pennsylvania  Quakers,  49  ;  Sir  William 
Keith's  administration,  51 ;  piracy  on  the 
American  coast,  53  ;  Theach,  or  Blackbeard 
the  pirate,  55;  chief  justice  Trott,  57  ;  re- 
volt  of  South  Carolina,  59  ;  trade  between 
New  York  and  Canada,  61  ;  John  Law's 
Mississippi  scheme,  64 ;  administration  of 
Shuts  in  Massachusetts,  65 ;  violent  opposi- 


INDEX. 


601 


tion  to,  67 ;  intrigues  of  Rasles,  69 ;  lieu- 
tenant-governor Dummer,  71 ;  war  with  the 
Eastern  Indians,  73  ;  explanatory  charter 
of  Massachusetts,  75 ;  Burnet,  governor  of, 
77 ;  Belcher,  governor  of,  79  ;  French  Fort 
erected  at  Crown  Point,  81 ;  the  Carolina* 
surrendered  to  the  crown,  83  ;  Thomas  and 
John  Fenn,  their  visit  to  Pennsylvania, 
85  ;  Bishop  Berkeley's  project,  87 ;  state  of 
affairs  in  Virginia,  91;  in  New  England, 
93;  in  Maryland,  99;  in  South  Carolina, 
103 ;  in  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Delaware,  105 ;  general  state  of  the  colo- 
nies,  107 ;  unpeopled  and  defenceless  state  of 
the  southern  frontier  of  South  Carolina,  109 ; 
colonization  of  Georgia  projected.  111; 
royal  charter  of  Georgia,  113;  treaty  with 
the  Creek  Indians,  115;  fundamental  laws 
of  Georgia,  117;  John  Wesley  and  his  bro- 
ther visit  the  province,  119  ;  emigration  of 
Scotch  Highlanders,  121 ;  intrigues  against 
the  Wesleys,  123;  hostile  preparations  of 
the  French,  125 ;  difficulties  with  Spain, 
127  ;  intrigues  of  the  Spaniards,  129  ;  Ogle- 
thorpes  invasion  of  Florida,  131  ;  unhappy 
result  of  the  invasion,  133;  Spanish  inva- 
sion of  Georgia,  135 ;  triumph  of  Ogle- 
thorpe, 137;  prosperity  of  South  Carolina, 
139  ;  condition  of  Georgia,  141 ;  progress 
of  the  States  of  America  till  the  peace 
of  Paris,  in  1763;  aiFairs  of  New  York, 
143 ;  Zenger's  trial,  145 ;  prosperity  of 
Connecticut,  147 ;  boundary  questions  in 
Massachusetts,  149  ;  intrigues  against  Bel- 
cher, 151;  parties  in  Pennsylvania,  157; 
military  organization  in,  159  ;  Indian  griev- 
ances, 161;  war  with  France,  163;  pro- 
jected reduction  of  Louisburg,  165  ;  prepa- 
rations for  the  expedition,  169  ;  siege  of 
Louisburg,  171 ;  capture  of,  173  ;  general 
rejoicing  in  the  provinces,  175;  emigration 
of  Scotch  Highlanders,  177;  preparations 
for  invading  Canada,  179 ;  formidable  French 
fleet,  its  dispersion,  181;  ravages  of  the 
French  and  Indians,  183;  naval  impress- 
ment, 185 ;  impressment  and  tumult  at 
Boston,  187;  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  189; 
British  Dominion  in  Nova  Scotia,  191 ;  bill 
abolishing  American  charters,  193 ;  scheme 
of  an  Episcopal  establishment,  195  ;  policy 
of  importing  slaves  into  America,  197 ; 
scheme  of  a  federal  league,  199;  state  of 
affairs  in  Pennsylvania,  201 ;  in  New  York, 
203  ;  agriculture  in  the  middle  States,  205 ; 
in  the  State  of  New  England,  207 ;  origin 
of  Vermont,  209;  German  emigrants  in 
Massachusetts,  21 1 ;  the  Ohio  company,  213  ; 
sciences  and  literature  in  America,  215; 
collision  of  the  French  and  English,  219  ; 
French  pretensions  in  the  Ohio  valley,  227  ; 
mission  oi:  Washington  to  the  French,  229; 
the  Albany  plan  of  union,  233;  Franklin 
and  Shirley's  correspondence,  235 ;  provin- 
cial  dissensions,  237  ;  preparations  for  war, 
239 ;  the  Frencli  neutrals  of  Nova  Scotia, 
241 ;  Braddock's  expedition,  243 ;  his  de- 
feat, 245 ;  ravages  on  the  Virginia  frontier, 
247  ;  expedition  against  Crown  Point,  249 ; 
Vol.  iL  76 


abandonment  of  the  expedition,  259 ;  Morris 
and  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly,  253  ;  re- 
signation of  civil  power  by  the  Quakers, 
255;  war  declared  between  France  and 
England,  257  ;  French  success  at  Oswego, 
259 ;  recall  of  Shirley,  261 ;  Loudoun's 
fruitless  schemes,  263 ;  success  of  the 
French,  265  ;  Loudoun's  dispute  with  Mas- 
sachusetts,  267 ;  state  of  parties  in  Massa- 
chusetts, 269  ;  Pitt  appointed  Prime  Minis- 
ter, 271  ;  Franklin's  mission  to  England, 
273 ;  political  views  of  Pitt  and  Franklin, 
275  ;  siege  of  Louisburg,  277  ;  repulse  at 
Ticonderoga,  279  ;  reduction  of  Fort  Du- 
quesne,  281 ;  salt  manufacture,  282  ;  bank- 
rupt law,  283  ;  reluctance  of  New  England 
to  further  levies,  285 ;  battle  of  Niagara, 
287 ;  siege  of  Quebec,  289 ;  battle  of  the 
heights  of  Abraham,  293 ;  death  and  cha- 
racter of  General  Wolfe,  295 ;  apprehended 
restoration  of  Canada,  297  ;  dislike  of  titu- 
lar honours  by  the  Americans,  299 ;  pro- 
gress of  hostilities,  300  ;  entire  conquest  of 
Canada,  302 ;  war  with  the  Cherokees,  303 ; 
affairs  of  Massachusetts,  307 ;  conclusion 
of  the  Cherokee  war,  309  ;  discontents  in 
Massachusetts,  313  ;  affairs  of  North  Caro- 
lina, 316;  treaty  of  Paris,  319;  general  re- 
joicing,  321  ;  Indian  war,  325  ;  treaty  of 
peace  with  the  Indians,  333  ;  Franklin's  se- 
cond mission  to  England,  335 ;  affairs  in 
Virginia,  337  ;  in  New  England,  341 ;  in 
Maryland,  and  the  Carolinas,  343 ;  in  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  and  Georgia,  345 ; 
schemes  of  taxation  first  broached,  347  ;  of 
an  Episcopal  hierarchy,  349  ;  unpopularity 
of  the  British  troops,  351 ;  Indian  affairs, 
355;  system  of  commercial  restrictions, 
365  ;  extension  and  aggravation  of  control, 
367  ;  foreign  colonial  trade,  369  ;  project  of 
a  domestic  tax,  371 ;  proposed  stamp  duties, 
373 ;  confused  counsels  in  New  England, 
375  ;  views  of  internal  and  external  taxation, 
377;  intrigue  of  Hutchinson,  372;  colonial 
petitions  against  the  proposed  tax,  38 1 ;  par- 
liamentary debates  on  the  stamp  act,  383  ; 
passage  of,  385  ;  New  York  manifesto,  387  ; 
resolutions  of  the  Virginia  Assembly,  389  ; 
general  ferment,  391 ;  riots  in  Boston,  393 ; 
in  Rhode  Island,  395  ;  convention  at  New 
York,  397 ;  political  clubs,  399 ;  Massachu- 
setts declaration  of  rights,  401  ;  non-impor- 
tation agreement,  403 ;  the  stamp  act  set  at 
defiance,  405 ;  its  injunctions  disobeyed, 
406 ;  Franklin's  examination,  407  ;  declara- 
tory act,  409  ;  repeal  of  the  stamp  act,  411 ; 
compensation  to  sufferers  by  the  riots,  415 ; 
American  popular  leaders,  417  ;  resentment 
against  the  abettors  of  the  stamp  act,  421  ; 
act  imposing  a  duty  on  tea,  423 ;  act  sus- 
pending the  New  York  Assembly,  425 , 
French  emissaries  —  De  Kalb,  427  ;  non- 
importation agreement  renewed,  429  ;  cir- 
cular letter  of  Massachusetts,  431  ;  rigorous 
enforcement  of  the  trade  laws,  433;  Massa- 
chusetts refuses  to  rescind  her  circular,  435  : 
convention  in  Massachusetts,  437;  violent 
proceedings  in  the  British  parliament,  439 ; 
zz 


602 


INDEX. 


resolutions  of  the  Virginia  Assembly,  441 ; 
of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly,  443  ;  im- 
policy of  the  British  measures,  449  ;  affray 
with  the  troops  in  Boston,  453 ;  partial  re- 
peal of  the  tea-duty  act,  455  ;  project  of  an 
Episcopal  hierarchy  renewed,  457 ;  writers 
on  the  American  controversy,  459 ;  insur- 
rection in  North  Carolina,  465 ;  affair  of  the 
Gasper,  in  Rhode  Island,  467 ;  governor 
Hutchinson's  royal  salary,  469  ;  committees 
of  correspondence,  471 ;  attempt  to  enforce 
the  tea-duty  act,  473 ;  disclosures  in  Hutch- 
inson's letters,  475 ;  question  of  conquering 
America,  479  ;  emigration  to  America,  481 ; 
Boston  Port  Bill,  483 ;  innovations  on  Mas- 
sachusetts charter,  485 ;  effects  of  the  re- 
cent acts,  487  ;  operation  of  the  Boston 
Port  Bill,  489;  determined  obstruction  of 
the  British  measures,  491 ;  first  Continental 
Congress,  493 ;  proceedings  of  Congress, 
495  ;  defensive  measures  of  Massachusetts, 
497 ;  proceedings  in  parliament,  499 ; 
Quincy  urges  resistance,  501 ;  acts  restrain, 
ing  trade,  503  ;  attempted  seizure  of  mili- 
tary stores  in  Salem,  505;  affair  of  Lexing- 
ton, 507 ;  capture  of  Ticonderoga  and 
Crown  Point,  509 ;  battle  of  Bunker's  Hill, 
511;  address  of  Congress  to  the  British 
people,  515;  Washington  chosen  com- 
mander-in-chief, 517;  Georgia  accedes  to 
the  Union,  519 ;  violent  proceedings  of 
Lord  Dunmore,  521 ;  ravages  by  British 
cruisers,  523f;  Richard  Penn's  examination 
on  American  affairs  at  the  bar  of  the  House 
of  Lords,  525  ;  invasion  of  Canada,  527  ; 
popular  and  public  policy  in  America,  530 ; 
progress  of  independence,  531 ;  European 
interest  in  the  cause  of  America,  533  ;  ne- 
gociations  with  France,  535 ;  condition  of 
the  American  army,  537 ;  ravages  of  Lord 
Dunmore  on  the  Virginia  coast,  539 ;  the 
British  evacuate  Boston,  541 ;  the  Indian 
alliances  of  Britain,  543 ;  German  mercena- 
ries, 545 ;  defection  from  the  British  service, 
547  ;  conduct  of  the  Quakers,  549 ;  eman- 
cipation of  slaves  by  the  Quakers,  551 ;  De- 
claration of  Independence,  553. 

Amherst,  general,  takes  Fort  Ticonderoga,  ii. 
286  ;  conduct  in  the  Canadian  war,  290. 

Andros,  appointed  Captain-general  and  Vice- 
admiral  of  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire, 
Maine,  &c.,  i.  257 ;  his  tyranny,  261 ;  is 
seized  and  imprisoned,  265;  sent  to  Eng- 
land to  answer  the  charges  preferred  against 
him,  267. 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  supersedes  Lord  Balti- 
more  as  Governor  of  Maryland,  i.  333  ;  his 
severity  and  rapacity,  334 ;  claims  for  the 
Duke  of  York  part  of  the  Connecticut  terri- 
tory, and  marches  upon  it,  243  ;  is  opposed, 
and  abandons  the  enterprise,  243 ;  his 
claims  to  New  Hampshire  and  Maine,  244 ; 
his  change  of  character  and  deportment,  ii. 
6 ;  promotes  the  interest  of  the  colony,  6. 

Annapolis,  substituted  for  St.  Mary's,  as  the 
capital  of  Maryland,  i,  337. 

Anson,  Capt.  (afterwards  Lord),  keeps  off  a 
Spanish  armament  from  Carolina,  ii.  60. 


Archdale,  John,  a  Quaker,  made  governor  of 
Carolina,  with  fuller  powers  than  had  before 
been  granted,  i.  385 ;  proves  himself  worthy 
of  the  trust,  385 ;  receives  an  address  of 
thanks  from  the  body  of  proprietors,  386. 

Argal,  Captain,  conspires  against  the  liberties 
of  Virginia,  i.  75. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  assists  in  the  seizure  of 
Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  ii.  509. 

Arundel  and  Surrey,  Earl  of,  makes  prepara- 
tions for  forming  a  colony  in  Carolina,  i. 
343. 

Ashley,  Lord,  (afterwards  Earl  of  Shaftesbury) 
obtains,  with  others,  a  charter  for  Carolina, 
i.  343  ;  draws  up  the  Fundamental  Consti- 
tution of  the  colony,  351. 

Augustine,  St.,  garrison  of,  established  in  Flo- 
rida by  the  Spaniards,  i.  359. 

Ayscue,  Sir  George,  commands  an  expedition 
against  the  Virginian  royalists,  i.  86 ;  enters 
the  Chesapeake,  and  overcomes  the  resist- 
ance opposed  to  him  by  Berkeley,  87. 

Bacon,  Nathaniel,  his  history,  i.  98 ;  his  re- 
bellion, 99  ;  and  death,  101. 

Baltimore,  Lord,  Secretary  of  State  to  James 
I.,  and  one  of  the  original  members  of  the 
Virginia  company,  i.  301 ;  first  founds  the 
settlement  of  Ferryland,  in  Newfoundland, 
301 ;  obtains  from  Charles  II.  a  grant  north- 
ward of  the  Potomac,  and  determines  to 
settle  it  with  Catholics,  302 ;  his  project  in- 
terrupted  by  death,  but  resumed  by  his  son, 
302. 

Baltimore,  Cecilius,  son  of  the  above,  carries  out 
his  father's  project  of  erecting  his  grant  into 
an  asylum  for  the  Catholic  faith,  i,  302 ; 
names  his  province  Maryland,  in  honour  of 
the  Queen  of  Charles  I,,  302  ;  tenor  of  the 
charter,  303  ;  first  emigrants  come  over  in 
a  vessel  named  The  Ark  and  the  Dove^  com- 
manded by  Leonard  Calvert,  306;  Lord 
Baltimore's  wise  administration,  307 ;  op- 
position of  Virginia,  307  ;  finds  a  competitor 
in  Clayborne,  308 ;  triumphs  over  his  arts, 
309  ;  forms  a  legislative  code,  309  ;  quiets 
the  discontent  in  Virginia,  311  ;  pacifies  the 
Indians,  312 ;  draws  up  his  memorable 
"  Act  concerning  Religion,"  by  which  entire 
religious  toleration  is  established,  313;  his 
acts  for  the  security  of  political  freedom, 
315;  his  wise  plans  counteracted,  and 
his  religion  maligned,  317  ;  reposes  confi- 
dence in  Feudal,  surrenders  the  administra- 
tion into  his  hands,  and  is  betrayed,  318 ; 
dies  at  a  venerable  age,  322. 

Baltimore,  Charles,  succeeds  his  father  as  pro- 
prietary, i.  323  ;  carries  out  his  views  of 
religious  toleration,  323;  has  a  conference 
with  William  Penn  relative  to  settlement  of 
boundaries,  327  ;  sees  the  territory  now 
composing  the  State  of  Delaware  dismem- 
bered from  Maryland,  328 ;  is  accused  of 
obstructing  the  Navigation  Acts,  328  ;  the 
Protestant  party  seek  a  cause  of  quarrel 
with  him,  i.  330  ;  rumours  of  a  Popish  plot, 
331  ;  formation  of  a  Protestant  Association, 
331 ;  countenanced  by  King  William,  332  ; 
Lord  Baltimore  surrenders  the  powers  of 


INDEX. 


603 


government,  and  is  cited  before  the  privy 
council,  332  ;  is  superseded  by  Sir  Edmund 
Andres,  333. 

Barclay,  David,  a  Quaker,  descendant  of  the 
celebrated  Barclay,  labours  to  adjust  the 
differences  between  England  and  America, 
ii.  500. 

Barre,  Colonel,  opposes  the  British  measures 
agtiinst  America,  ii.  485 ;  his  eloquent  ap- 
peal against,  486. 

Bavington,  governor  of  North  Carolina,  a 
weak,  intemperate  man,  ii.  82. 

Bartram,  John,  a  Pennsylvania  Quaker,  esta- 
blishes the  first  botanical  garden  in  Ame- 
rica, ii.  216. 

Bartram,  William,  his  botanical  tour  in  the 
southern  states,  ii.  480. 

Belcher,  governor  of  New  Jersey,  an  active 
and  efficient  officer,  ii.  345. 

Bellamont,  Earl  of,  appointed  governor  of 
New  York^  Massachusetts,  and  New  Hamp- 
shire, i.  285  ;  his  wise  and  equitable  ad- 
ministration, 286 ;  his  popular  career,  ii. 
11 ;  dies  in  New  York,  12, 

Bellamy,  CapU,  a  noted  pirate,  is  wrecked  off 
Cape  Cod,  and  bis  accomplices  who  escape 
are  executed  at  Boston,  ii.  54. 

Berkeley,  Sir  William,  governor  of  Virginia, 
i.  83;  ameliorates  the  condition  of  the 
colony,  84 ;  is  obliged  to  yield  to  the  forces 
sent  by  Cromwell  against  the  royalists,  87 ; 
obtains,  with  others,  a  charter  for  Carolina, 
343 ;  nominates  a  President  and  Council, 
345. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  his  project  of  improving 
the  education  of  the  colonists,  and  convert- 
ing the  Indians,  ii.  87;  visits  America, 
where  he  composes  his  *  Alciphron,  or  Mi- 
nute Philosophie,'  88;  presents  his  library 
to  Yale  College,  and  returns  to  England, 
89  ;  his  prophecy,  89,  note. 

Bernard,  governor  of  New  Jersey,  concludes  a 
treaty  of  friendship  with  the  Indians,  ii. 
283. 

Berry,  Sir  John,  sent  with  an  armament  firom 
England  against  Bacon,  i.  101. 

Betcher,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  ii.  79  ; 
his  pompous  vanity,  79. 

Blake,  Humphrey,  arrives  with  a  colony  of 
dissenters  in  Carolina,  i.  372. 

Bland,  advocates  the  cause  of  American  liber- 
ty, ii.  459. 

Blunt,  Sir  John,  originator  of  the  South  Sea 
Company,  ii.  64;  ruinous  consequences  of 
the  failure  of  the  project,  65. 

Bolland,  agent  for  the  provinces  of  America, 
presents  a  petition  to  the  Parliament,  ii. 
499. 

Bonnet  and  Worley,  two  pirate  chiefs,  form  a 
stronghold  at  the  mouth  of  Cape  Fear  River, 
are  compelled  to  surrender,  and  are  executed 
at  Charleston,  ii.  54. 

Boston,  first  dramatic  entertainment  in  Bos- 
ton, ii.  207  ;  creates  a  disturbance,  and 
leads  to  an  act  of  the  Legislature  against 
theatrical  entertainments,  207 ;  general  fer- 
ment caused  by  the  Stamp  Act,  385  ;  riots, 
393 ;  political  clubs,  399  ;  compensations  to 


sufferers  by  the  riots,  415 ;  non-importation 
agreement,  403 ;  the  Stamp  Act  disobeyed, 
405;  repeal  <jf  the  Stamp  Act,  411;  re- 
sentment  against  the  abettors  of,  421 ;  non- 
importation  agreement  renewed,  429  ;  act 
imposing  duties  on  tea,  423  ;  affray  with 
the  English  troops,  453 ;  partial  repeal  of 
tea-duty  act,  455 ;  attempt  to  enforce  the 
tea-duty  act,  473;  the  Port  Bill,  483;  its 
operation,  489  ;  fresh  troops  and  armaments 
are  continually  poured  into  Boston,  491  ; 
jealousies  excited  by,  491 ;  popular  meet- 
ings,  492;  General  Gage's  threats  to  dis- 
perse them  are  despised,  492  ;  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Suffolk  county  declare  that  '  no 
obedience  is  due  to  the  recent  acts  of  Par- 
liament,'  492  ;  acts  restraining  trade,  503 ; 
progress  of  the  public  discontent,  510 ;  at- 
tempted seizure  of  military  stores  at  Salem, 
505;  battle  of  Bunker's  Hill,  511  ;  ravages 
by  British  cruisers,  523 ;  the  British  eva- 
cuate Boston,  541 ;  progress  of  the  cause  of 
independence,  542  ;  declaration  of,  553. 

Bouquet,  Colonel,  his  address  in  foiling  the 
Indians,  and  saving  Pittsburg  from  their 
fury,  ii.  329. 

Braddock,  General,  his  expedition,  ii.  243; 
his  defeat,  245 ;  dies  of  his  wounds,  246. 

Bradstreet,  Colonel,  attacks  Fort  Frontignac, 
ii.  280 ;  success  of  his  gallant  enterprise, 
280. 

Brainerd,  David,  his  talents  and  character,  ii. 
154. 

Branford,  town  of,  settled  by  Davenport, 
Eaton,  and  others,  i.  172. 

Bray,  Dr.  Thomas,  promotes  the  establish- 
ment of  free  schools  and  public  libraries  in 
Maryland,  i.  335. 

Brooke,  Lord,  projects  a  settlement  in  Con- 
necticut, i.  171. 

Brown,  a  merchant  of  Providence,  attacks 
with  a  party  in  whale-boats  the  Gasper  war 
schooner,  boards  her,  and  sets  her  on  fire, 
ii.  467. 

Brownists,  rise  of,  i.  135 ;  persecution  of,  137. 

Buccaneers,  a  race  of  pirates,  infest  the  Ame- 
rican coast,  i.  374 ;  law  against  them,  375  ; 
Sir  Robert  Holmes  despatched  to  suppress 
them,  375. 

Buchan,  Earl  of,  colonizes  Port  Royal  Island 
with  a  body  of  his  countrymen,  i.  372. 

Bull,  Stephen,  Surveyor^eneral  of  Carolina, 
assigns  lands  to  the  Dutch  emigrants,  i. 
361. 

Burke,  Edmund,  eloquently  opposes  the  British 
measures  against  America,  ii.  485;  his 
project  for  conciliating  Americans,  504. 

Burnet,  William,  son  of  the  celebrated  bishop 
and  historian,  is  made  governor  of  New 
York  and  New  Jersey,  ii.  60 ;  labours  to 
promote  the  welfare  of  the  province,  60  ;  is 
superseded  by  Colonel  Montgomery,  and 
transferred  to  the  government  of  Massachu- 
setts, 76  ;  honours  paid  him,  76  ;  quarrels 
respecting  salary,  77;  dies,  and  his  faults 
forgotten  in  his  good  qualities,  78. 

Beverley,  his  History  of  Virginia,  i.  115. 

Byron,  Captain,  destroys  the  last  French  na. 


m 


INDEX. 


val  force  sent  for  the  recapture  of  Canada, 
ii.  303  ;  dismantles  two  batteries  at  the 
Bay  of  Chaleurs,  303. 

Cabot,  Sebastian,  despatched  by  Henry  VII., 
visits  the  coast  of  North  America,  i.  26; 
his  discoveries,  27 ;  neglect  of  his  discove- 
ries by  Henry  VII.,  29  ;  commercial  enter- 
prise under  Henry  VIII.,  30. 

Calvert,  Leonard,  commands  The  Ark  and  the 
Dove,  the  vessel  that  brought  over  the  Mary- 
land  pilgrims,  i.  306. 

Calvert,  Charles,  appointed  resident  governor 
of  Maryland,  i.  320 ;  conciliates  the  Indians, 
320;  removes  the  Dutch  intruders,  and 
takes  possession  of  Cape  Henlopen,  320; 
first  frames  a  law  for  the  naturalization  of 
aliens,  321. 

Camden,  Lord,  advocates  in  the  house  the 
cause  of  the  Americans,  ii.  410. 

Campbell,  Captain  Lachlan,  transports  to 
New  York  a  colony  of  Highland  families, 
ii.  146 ;  experiences  the  bad  faith  of  the 
governor,  147. 

Canada,  expedition  against,  ii.  31 ;  disastrous 
results  of,  33 ;  preparations  for  invading, 
179 ;  formidable  French  fleet  sent  for  its 
protection,  but  are  dispersed,  181  ;  progress 
of  the  war,  182;  ravages  of  the  French  and 
Indians,  183;  naval  impressment,  184;  peace 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  188;  idea  of  abandoning 
it  entertained,  317  ;  Earl  of  Bath  earnestly 
recommends  its  retention,  318;  Franklin 
publishes  a  pamphlet  recommending  the 
same,  318;  its  final  cession  by  the  treaty 
of  Paris,  319. 

Carolina,  North  and  South.  Coligni's  attempts 
at  colonization,  i.  341 ;  grant  of  Carolina  to 
Clarendon  and  others,  343;  settlement  at 
Albemarle,  345 ;  second  charter  of  South 
Carolina,  347 ;  constitution  of  Albemarle, 
349  ;  the  fundamental  constitutions,  351 ; 
old  Charlestown  founded,  357 ;  hostile  in- 
trigues of  the  Spaniards,  359  ;  dissatisfac- 
tion  of  the  proprietaries,  361 ;  factious  pro- 
ceedings in  Albemarle,  363  ;  insurrection 
under  Culpepper,  365 ;  temporizing  policy 
of  the  proprietaries,  367;  administration  of 
West,  369  ;  sales  of  Indians  into  slavery, 
371 ;  discords  in  South  Carolina,  373  ;  deal- 
ings  with  the  buccaneers,  375 ;  resistance 
to  the  navigation  acts,  377 ;  Colleton  ap- 
pointed governor,  379 ;  martial  law  pro- 
claimed, 381 ;  jealousy  in  regard  to  the 
Huguenots,  383 ;  Archdale  appointed  go- 
vernor,  385 ;  Archdale's  successful  adminis- 
tration, 387  ;  neglect  of  religion  and  educa- 
tion, 389 ;  law  against  dissenters  declared 
null,  391 ;  civil  and  domestic  state  of  Caro- 
lina, 393  ;  the  Yamassee  war,  ii.  47  ;  piracy 
upon  the  coasts,  53  ;  Theach,  or  Blackbeard, 
the  pirate,  55  ;  Chief  Justice  Trott,  57  ;  re- 
volt of  South  Carolina,  59  ;  the  Carolinas 
surrendered  to  the  crown,  83 ;  state  of  in 
1730,  101;  prosperity  of  South  Carolina, 
139;  war  with  the  Cherokees,  303;  conclu- 
sion of  the  Cherokee  war,  309  ;  state  of  in 
1765,  343;  population  130,000,  343. 

Carolina,  North,  a  ccJnspiracy  of  the  Cortt 


and  Tuscarora  Indians,  ii.  34 ;  insurrec- 
tion, 465 ;  the  first  Congress  rejects  the 
plan  of  federal  association,  5'^0 ;  afterwards 
comes  heartily  into  the  measure,  550 ;  re- 
jects the  proposition  of  separation  from  the 
mother  country,  520;  Martin,  governor, 
causes  his  house  to  be  surrounded  by  can- 
non, plrt  of  which  is  seized  by  the  people, 
522 ;  Colonel  Ashe  espouses  the  cause  of  the 
people,  and  the  governor  is  forced  to  fly  the 
province,  522  ;  progress  of  the  cause  of  In- 
dependence, 53.3  ;  Declaration  of,  553. 

Carolina,  South,  expedition  of  the  Spaniards 
against,  ii.  22 ;  vigorous  measures  of  go- 
vernor Johnson,  and  departure  of  the  squa- 
dron, 23 ;  project  of  invasion  by  Great 
Britain  and  Spain,  ii.  58;  martial  law  pro- 
claimed,  59  ;  the  Spanish  fleet  proceeds  to 
New  Providence,  where  they  are  repulsed 
by  Commodore  Rogers,  and  afterwards  dis- 
persed in  a  storm,  60  ;  John  Rutledge  is 
elected  governor,  548 ;  in  an  address  to 
Lord,  William  Campbell,  the  new  governor, 
declares  its  adhesion  to  the  British .  crown, 
though  taking  arms  against  tyranny,  520 ; 
population  in  1700,  5506;  in  1723,  it  had 
risen  to  32,000,  ii.  100 ;  in  1730,  the  rice  ex- 
ported, during  the  ten  preceding  years,  was 
264,488  barrels,  100 ;  in  1730,  the  negro 
population  amounted  to  28,000,  and  were 
detected  in  a  plot  for  a  general  massacre  of 
the  whites,  100 ;  printing  introduced  in 
1730,  and  a  newspaper  established  in  1734, 
101 ;  a  religious  frenzy  among  some  fami- 
lies of  the  French  refugees,  leading  to  fright- 
ful disorders,  101. 

Carr,  Sir  Robert,  is  sent  as  one  of  the  com- 
missioners for  the  reduction  of  New  York, 
229. 

Carroll,  Charles,  of  Carrollton,  advises  burn- 
ing the  tea  in  Baltimore,  ii.  497. 

Carteret,  Sir  George,  obtains,  with  others,  a 
charter  for  Carolina,  i.  343. 

Cary,  collector  of  the  proprietary  quit-rents  in 
Carolina,  aflTords  an  early  example  of  the 
repudiation  system,  i.  392  ;  he  and  his  par- 
tizans  obliged  to  fly  the  colony,  392. 

Catholics,  on  occasion  of  the  rebellion  of  the 
Pretender,  they  are  accused  of  conspiracy 
in  his  cause,  i.  177. 

Catholic  priests  doomed  by  the  New  England 
laws  to  punishment,  and  to  death  in  case  of 
return,  i.  188. 

Catholics,  English,  condition  of,  i.  305 ;  emi- 
gration of  to  Maryland,  306 ;  act  concern- 
ing religion,  307  ;  opposition  of  Virginia^ 
307;  discontent  of  Virginia  quieted,  311; 
overthrow  of  religious  liberty,  317 ;  profes- 
sions of  regard  to  the  Catholics  by  James 
II.,  329 ;  formation  of  a  Protestant  Associa- 
tion, 331  ;  oppression  of  the  Catholics,  335  ; 
are  excluded  from  the  act  of  toleration, 
336 ;  persecution  of,  336. 

Chalmers,  George,  advocates  the  prerogative 
of  Britain,  ii.  459. 

Chauncey,  Charles,  flies  from  persecution, 
and  joins  the  colony  at  Massachusetts,  i. 
181. 


INDEX. 


605 


Charleston,  foundation  of,  i.  370 ;  named  in 
honour,  of  Charles  II.,  370. 

Chase,  Samuel,  is  characterized  as  the  Samuel 
Adams  of  Maryland,  ii.  494,  note. 

Cherokees,  seven  of  tlieir  chiefs  conducted  to 
England  by  Sir  Alexander  Camming,  ii. 
83  ;  the  attentions  paid  them,  83 ;  war  with, 
303  ;  their  ravages,  304 ;  besiege  Fort  Prince 
George,  304;  lay  siege  to  Fort  Loudoun, 
305  ;  their  treachery,  305  ;  vain  attempts  to 
conciliate,  306 ;  mediation  of  the  chief  Lit- 
tle Carpenter,  309  ;  Captain  Kennedy  pro- 
ceeds against  them,  drives  them  back,  and 
reduces  to  ashes  their  principal  town,  Ete- 
hoe,  310;  they  sue  for  peace,  310;  a  depu- 
tation of  Cherokee  chiefs  invited  to  Eng- 
land, 354. 

Cbicheley,  Sir  Henry,  governor  of  Virginia, 
i.  106 ;  his  prudence  and  inactivity,  106. 

Christison,  Wenlock,  a  Quaker,  condemned  to 
death  by  the  laws  of  New  England,  but 
escapes  with  flogging  and  exile,  i.  217. 

Chubb,  commander  of  Fort  Pemmaquid,  his 
obstinate  defence,  i.  284. 

Church,  Captain,  distinguishes  liimself  in  the 
war  of  Philip,  i.  242. 

Church,  Colonel,  his  services  in  the  war  with 
the  Five  Nations,  ii.  18. 

Clarendon,  Lord  Chancellor,  obtains,  with 
others,  a  charter  for  Carolina,  i.  343  ;  his 
inconsistency  in  regard  to  toleration,  344. 

Clarke,  Dr.  John,  succeeds  in  obtaining  a 
charter  for  Rhode  Island,  i.  225. 

Clay  borne,  William,  secretary  of  the  province 
of  Virginia,  i.  308 ;  his  opposition  to  Lord 
Baltimore,  308;  is  defeated,  309;  renewed 
intrigues,  312  ;  espouses  the  cause  of  Crom- 
well,  316. 

Clinton,  George,  governor  of  New  York,  ii. 
147. 

Colden,  of  New  York,  an  accomplished  scho- 
lar and  philosopher,  ii.  345. 

Coligni,  admiral,  equips  two  vessels,  and, 
landing  at  the  mouth  of  Albemarle  river, 
names  the  country  Carolina,  after  his  sove- 
reign Charles  IX.,  i.  341 ;  settles  the  coun- 
try  with  Huguenots,  342 ;  massacre  of  the 
same  by  the  Spaniards,  342;  retaliation 
upon  the  Spaniards,  342. 

Colleton,  Sir  John,  obtains,  with  others,  a 
charter  for  Carolina,  i.  343. 

Colleton,  James,  replaces  Moreton  in  the  go- 
vernment of  Carolina,  i.  379 ;  proclaims 
martial  law,  381 ;  is  impeached  and  banish- 
ed, 382. 

Compton,  Bishop  of  London,  his  zeal  for  sup- 
plying religious  instruction  to  the  colonies 
in  America,  i.  389  ;  misrepresents  the  state 
of  the  Catholic  religion  in  Maryland,  325. 

Congress,  first  continental,  assembled  at  Phila- 
delphia, ii.  493  ;  proceedings  of,  495  ;  pub- 
lishes an  address  to  the  people,  505;  dis- 
solves, and  advises  meeting  the  year  ensuing, 
506 ;  second  continental  congress,  514  ;  ad- 
dress to  the  inhabitants  of  England  and 
Ireland,  515;  Peyton  Randolph  the  first 
president,  519  ;  he  vacates,  and  John  Han- 
cock is  elected  as  his  successor,  519 ;   its 


first  title,  "  The  Twelve  Confederated  Colo- 
nies," 519  ;  by  the  accession  of  Georgia, 
the  title  "The  Thirteen  States  of  North 
America"  is  adopted,  519. 

Connecticut,  settlement  of,  i.  171  ;  attack  on 
its  charter,  ii.  19  ;  charges  against,  21 ;  evil 
consequences  of  the  war  with  Canada,  39. 

Connecticut  and  New  Haven  are  united  by  a 
charter  of  Charles  II.,  173. 

Connecticut  resists  the  oppression  of  the  go- 
vernment, 266;  distinguished  by  her  prompt 
action  on  the  threatened  attack  upon  New 
England  by  Count  Frontignac,  284 ;  fur- 
nishes her  contingent  of  5000  men  for  the 
war  in  Canada,  285  ;  population  of  in  1700, 
30,000;  in  1753, 100,000;  in  1756, 131,805; 
prosperity  of,  147 ;  responds  cheerfully  to 
the  requisition  made  to  co-operate  with  the 
English  troops  against  the  Indians,  332 ; 
state  of  in  1765,342;  population  145,500, 
338. 

Conway,  Secretary,  expresses  a  desire  to  see 
the  stamp  act  repealed,  ii.  406. 

Cooke,  John,  his  intrigues  in  Maryland,  i.  327; 
forms  a  Protestant  Association,  331 ;  is  in- 
dicted for  treason  and  bla.sphemy,  and  flies 
the  province,  335. 

Cornbury,  Lord,  his  odious  administration, 
ii.  12 ;  persecutes  the  Quakers  in  New  Jer- 
sey, 22. 

Cornwallis,  Colonel  Edward,  governor  and 
commander-in-chief  in  Nova  Scotia,  ii.  191. 

Colton,  John,  retires  to  New  England,  i.  165; 
popularity  of  his  religious  works,  288. 

,  John,  son  of  the  celebrated  Colton, 


removes  from  Plymouth  to  Charleston,  and 
is  successful  as  a  minister,  i.  388. 

Cranfield,  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  be- 
comes embroiled  with  the  colonists,  i.  245  ; 
insurrection  against  suppressed,  245  ;  is  re- 
called, 245. 

Craven,  Charles,  governor  of  Carolina,  popu- 
larity and  success  of  his  administration, 
i.  388. 

Craven,  governor  of  South  Carolina,  distin- 
guished  for  his  humanity  and  valour,  ii.  46; 
his  energetic  conduct  in  the  Yamassee 
war,  49. 

Craven,  Lord,  obtains,  with  others,  a  charter 
for  Carolina,  i.  343  ;  succeeds  the  Duke  of 
Albemarle  as  palatine,  357. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  believed  to  have  visited 
New  England,  i.  184,  note;  his  elevation 
to  power  beneficial  to  the  New  England 
States,  206  ;  his  project  for  transferring  the 
New  England  settlers  to  Jamaica,  ii.  207. 

Coxe,  Daniel,  proposes  a  scheme  of  a  federal 
league,  ii.  199 ;  it  proves  the  germ  of  sub- 
sequent action,  199. 

Crosby,  Colonel  William,  governor  of  New 
York,  an  officer  of  talent,  but  of  arbitrary 
principles,  i.  143;  proceeding  against  Zen- 
ger,  printer  of  the  New  York  Weekly 
Journal,  144;  he  is  acquitted,  145;  Cros- 
by's death,  146. 

Crown  Point,  French  fort  at,  ii.  81 ;  expedi- 
tion  against,  249. 

Culpepper,  Lord,  governor  of  Virginia,  i.  106; 


606 


INDEX 


returns  to  England,  107  ;  is  put  in  confine, 
ment  for  returning  without  leave,  107 ; 
excites  commotions  at  Astley  river,  364;  is 
despatched  to  England  to  offer  submission, 
365  ;  is  arrested  in  the  Downs,  brought  to 
trial,  and  acquitted  by  the  influence  of 
Shaftesbury,  366. 

Dale,  Sir  Thomas,  is  appointed  to  the  com- 
mand of  the  colony  in  Virginia  during  the 
absence  of  Lord  Delaware,  i.  60. 

Dalzell,  Captain,  his  project  to  surprise  the 
Indians,  but  himself  falls  a  victim  to  their 
artful  manoeuvres,  ii.  328. 

Danforth,  deputy  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
obstructs  the  appointment  of  deputies,  i.  249. 

Davenant,  Sir  William,  the  poet,  his  expedi- 
tion  to  found  a  new  colony  in  Virginia,  i. 
85 ;  is  taken  prisoner,  and  owes  his  life  to 
the  friendship  of  Milton,  85. 

Delaware,  the  territory  composing  this  State 
is  dismembered  from  Maryland,  i.  328; 
situation  of  in  1720;  Lord  Baltimore  makes 
an  effort  to  regain  it,  but  failing,  concludes 
an  agreement  with  the  heirs  of  Penn,  ii.  99. 

Delaware,  Lord,  is  appointed  governor  and 
captain-general  of  the  colony  of  Virginia  at 
Jamestown,  i.  52;  his  administration,  56; 
is  appointed  governor  of  Virginia,  57  ;  his 
wise  administration,  60 ;  returns  to  Eng- 
land, 61 ;  anarchy  and  famine  at  James- 
town, 59. 

Demere,  Captain,  defends  Fort  Loudoun  against 
the  Cherokees,  305 ;  is  captured  by  the  In- 
dians, and  afterwards  ransomed,  305. 

Denison,  Captain,  distinguishes  himself  in 
the  war  of  Philip,  i.  242. 

Denny,  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  concludes  a 
treaty  of  friendship  with  the  Indians,  ii. 
283. 

Dickinson,  advocates  the  cause  of  American 
liberty,  ii,  459. 

Dissenters,  laws  against  in  Carolina,  i.  391. 

Dobbs,  Arthur,  governor  of  North  Carolina, 
his  instructions  to  enlarge  the  royal  prero- 
gative provoke  resistance,  i.  237. 

Douglass,  William,  of  Boston,  a  profound 
mathematician,  ii.  216. 

Dramatic  performances,  the  first  in  the  British 
colonies,  were  at  Williamsburg,  in  Vir- 
ginia, ii.  91 ;  first  in  New  England,  ii. 
207 ;  create  a  disturbance,  and  lead  to  an 
act  of  the  legislature  against  theatrical  en- 
tertainments, 207. 

Drummond,  a  man  of  prudence  and  ability, 
appointed  first  governor  of  Carolina,  i.  345. 

Dudley,  Joseph,  governor  of  Massachusetts, 
his  arbitrary  administration,  i.  13 ;  is  ar- 
rested in  a  popular  outbreak;  and  conveyed 
a  prisoner  to  England,  13;  is  reinstated, 
14 ;  his  efforts  to  extend  the  royal  preroga- 
tive, 15 ;  superseded  in  Massachusetts,  43  ; 
is  appointed  chief  justice  of  New  York, 
269 ;  condemns  to  death  Leisler,  who  ex- 
cited the  movement  against  King  William, 
270. 

Dummer,  William,  governor  of  Massachu- 
setts, ii.  71 ;  his  prudent  and  liberal  ad- 
ministration, 75. 


Duquesne,  Fort,  is  abandoned,  and  falls  into 
the  hands  of  the  English,  281. 

Dutch,  lands  assigned  to  Dutch  emigrants,  i. 
361 ;  West  India  Company,  399 ;  conten- 
tions with  the  English,  401 ;  mutual  jealou- 
sies of  the  Dutch  and  English,  405  ;  feeble 
policy  of  the  Dutch  Company,  409 ;  Stuy- 
vesant,  noble  spirit  of,  413 ;  reconquest  of 
New  York  by  the  Dutch,  421. 

Dyer,  Mary,  a  Quakeress,  is  put  to  death  for 
her  religion  by  the  New  England  laws,  i. 
217. 

Earthquake  in  New  England  in  1727,  ii.  94. 

Eastchurch,  is  appointed  governor  of  Albe- 
marle, i.  363. 

Education,  promoted  in  New  England,  i.  290. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  president  of  Princeton 
college,  his  talents  and  character,  ii.  153. 

Effingham,  Lord,  governor  of  Virginia,  i.  107; 
his  tyranny  and  rapacity,  108;  his  con- 
tinuance in  office  irritates  the  colonists,  ii.  4. 

Elizabeth,  of  England,  spirit  of  maritime  ad- 
venture under,  i.  32 ;  coasts  of  Labrador 
and  Greenland  explored  by  Martin  Fro- 
bisher,  32 ;  Sir  Francis  Drake's  expedition, 
33 ;  grants  a  patent  of  discovery  to  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  37 ;  is  an  accomplished 
smoker,  40,  note. 

Eliot,  John,  his  missionary  labours  among  the 
Indians,  i.  199  ;  his  Indian  Grammar,  199  ; 
publishes  a  treatise  against  monarchical  go- 
vernment, 221 ;  is  cited  to  answer  for  the 
same,  and  obtains  forgiveness,  221,  note, 

Endicott,  governor  of  New  England,  makes  a 
treaty  with  France  in  relation  to  Acadia,  or 
Nova  Scotia,  i.  195  ;  puts  an  end  to  flogging 
for  religious  opinions,  218. 

England,  Henry  VII.  neglects  Cabot's  disco- 
veries in  America,  i.  31 ;  maritime  adven- 
tures under  Elizabeth,  33  ;  project  of  a  co- 
lony under  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  37  ;  co- 
lony at  Roanoke  in  Virginia,  39 ;  farther 
attempts  at  colonization,  41 ;  Goswold's  voy- 
age, 43 ;  the  London  and  Plymouth  compa- 
nies, 45  ;  colonial  code  of  James  I.,  47 ;  ex- 
ploration of  the  Chesapeake,  53 ;  colony  at 
Jamestown,  57  ;  Lord  Delaware  sent  as  go. 
vernor  to  Virginia,  61 ;  disasters  of  the  Lon- 
don  Company,  75 ;  dissolves  itself,  77 ; 
James  assumes  the  government  of  Virginia, 
82 ;  royal  cause,  in  the  troubles  of  Charles  I., 
espoused  by  Virginia,  85  ;  navigation  sys- 
tem, 87;  navigation  act,  91;  impolicy  of 
the  exclusive  system,  93 ;  navigation  act 
a  grievance,  95 ;  effects  upon  America  of 
the  revolution  under  Cromwell,  109  ;  policy 
and  religious  views  of  the  Stuarts,  139 ; 
Charles  I.  transfers  the  Massachusetts  char- 
ter, 161;  royal  letter  to  Massachusetts, 
229;  petition  of  Massachusetts  to  the  king, 
231 ;  cession  of  Acadia  to  France,  237  ; 
royal  governor  of  New  Hampshire,  245 ; 
laws  of  England  become  to  be  considered 
imperative  in  America,  247;  sale  of  the  ter- 
ritory of  New  Jersey  by  the  Duke  of  York 
to  Berkeley  &  Carteret,  461 ;  William  Penn 
solicits  a  grant  of  land  from  the  crown,  499  ; 
charter  of  Pennsylvania,  501 ;  revolution  of 


INDEX 


607 


1688  disappoints  the  Americans,  ii.  1; 
Queen  Anne's  war,  17;  expedition  against 
Port  Royal  and  Acadia,  25  ;  projected  inva- 
sion of  Canada,  27  ;  capture  of  Port  Royal 
and  Acadia,  29  ;  expedition  against  Canada, 
31  ;  disastrous  results  of  the  expedition,  33 ; 
peace  of  Utrecht,  37  ;  evil  consequences  of 
the  war,  39 ;  war  with  France  resumed, 
163 ;  siege  and  capture  of  Louisburg,  171 ; 
emigration  of  Scotch  Highlanders,  177  ;  pre- 
parations for  invading  Canada,  179  ;  disper- 
sion of  a  formidable  French  fleet,  181 ;  ra- 
vages of  the  French  and  Indians,  183 ;  trea- 
ty of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  1 89  ;  French  preten- 
sions  in  the  Ohio  Valley,  227 ;  Washing- 
ton's mission  there,  229 ;  Braddock's  ex- 
pedition,  243 ;  his  defeat,  245 ;  war  declared 
anew  between  France  and  England,  257  ; 
French  successes  at  Oswego,  259  ;  continued 
success,  265  ;  siege  of  Louisburg,  277  ;  re- 
pulse  at  Ticonderoga,  279 ;  reduction  of 
Fort  Duquesne,  281  ;  battle  of  Niagara,  287 ; 
siege  of  Quebec,  289  ;  battle  of  the  heights 
of  Abraham,  293 ;  death  and  character  of 
General  Wolfe,  295  ;  a  disposition  shown  to 
restore  Canada  to  the  French,  297  ;  progress 
of  hostilities,  300  ;  entire  conquest  of  Cana- 
da, 302 ;  treaty  of  Paris,  319 ;  projected 
schemes  of  taxation,  347  ;  of  establishing  an 
Episcopal  hierarchy,  349  ;  the  British  troops 
become  unpopular,  351 ;  project  of  a  system 
of  commercial  restrictions,  365  ;  of  a  domes- 
tic tax,  371 ;  of  stamp  duties,  373  ;  Governor 
Hutchinson  incurs  the  odium  of  introducing 
these  measures,  379  ;  parliamentary  debates 
on  the  stamp  act,  383 ;  passage  of,  385 ; 
Franklin  is  examined  at  the  bar  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  407 ;  repeal  of  the 
stamp  act,  411  ;  act  imposing  a  duty  on  tea, 
423  ;  proceedings  in  the  British  parliament 
respecting  the  resistance  to  this  act,  439 ; 
British  and  American  troops,  collision  be- 
tween them,  453  ;  partial  repeal  of  the  tea- 
duty  act,  455  ;  project  of  an  Episcopal  hie- 
rarchy removed,  457 ;  attempts  to  enforce 
the  modified  tea-duty  act,  473 ;  question  of 
conquering  America,  479 ;  the  Boston  port 
bill  is  passed,  483  ;  meets  with  determined 
obstruction,  491 ;  acts  passed  laying  restric 
tions  on  trade,  503 ;  orders  issued  to  secure 
the  military  stores  of  the  government,  505 ; 
affair  of  Lexington  disastrous  to  the  British, 
507 ;  their  loss  at  Bunker's  Hill,  511 ;  Lord 
Dunmore  is  urged  to  rigorous  proceedings, 
521 ;  cruisers  are  sent  to  sweep  the  coasts, 
523 ;  Richard  Penn's  examination  at  the  bar 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  525 ;  the  British 
evacuate  Boston,  541 ;  defections  from  the 
British  service,  547  ;  America  declares  her- 
self independent  of  the  mother  country, 
553. 
Episcopacy,  scheme  of  an  Episcopal  establish- 
ment in  America,  ii.  194 ;  suggested  by 
Seeker,  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  194; 
Cutler,  rector  of  Yale  College,  and  several 
other  clergymen,  retract  Presbyterianism, 
and  support  the  project,  195 ;  renewed  at- 
tempts, 349,  457. 


Ewing,  John,  of  Maryland,  his  lectures  on  na- 
tural philosophy,  ii.  481. 

Faubord,  a  Quaker,  seeks  to  imitate  the  Sacri- 
fice  of  Abraham,  but  is  prevented,  i.  215. 

Feudal,  Josias,  a  profligate  adventurer,  raises 
an  insurrection  in  Maryland,  i.  317;  gains 
the  confidence  of  Lord  Baltimore,  who  sur- 
renders the  administration  into  his  hands, 
318;  his  treachery,  318;  re-excites  commo- 
tions, 326 ;  is  prosecuted  for  seditious  prac- 
tices,  and  banished,  327. 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  of  Spain,  espouse  the 
plans  of  Columbus,  i.  26. 

Five  Nations,  i.  429 ;  treaty  with,  433 ;  renewal 
of  treaty  with,  443. 

Fothergill,  Dr.,  labours  to  adjust  the  differences 
between  England  and  America,  ii.  500. 

Fox,  George,  the  founder  of  the  Society  of 
Friends,  i.  210. 

France,  war  between  France  and  England,  i. 
267 ;  Acadia  wrested  from  her,  267 ;  war 
with  England,  ii.  17  ;  loss  of  Port  Royal  and 
Acadia,  29 ;  Canada  invaded,  31 ;  the  English 
repulsed  with  great  loss,  33  ;  preparations  for 
invading  British  America,  125 ;  meet  with  a 
warm  reception,  163  ;  lose  the  stronghold  of 
Louisburg,  171 ;  Canada  invaded,  179  ;  its 
fleet  dispersed,  181  ;  successes  of,  in  con- 
nection with  the  Indians,  183;  treaty  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  189  ;  pretensions  of  France 
in  the  Ohio  Valley,  227 ;  mission  of  Wash- 
ington to  their  head-quarters,  229  ;  they  de- 
feat Braddock,  245  ;  war  declared  anew  be- 
tween France  and  England,  257 ;  the  French 
arms  victorious  at  Oswego,  259  ;  continued 
successes  of  the  French,  265 ;  siege  of  Louis- 
burg, 277 ;  are  repulsed  at  Ticonderoga,  279  ; 
lose  Fort  Duquesne,  281  ;  loss  at  the  battle 
of  Niagara,  287 ;  siege  of  Quebec,  289  ;  their  » 
severe  defeat  in  the  battle  of  the  heights  of 
Abraham,  292  ;  their  commander-in-chief, 
Montcalm,  killed,  297  ;  progress  of  hostili- 
ties, 300  ;  entire  loss  of  Canada,  302  ;  treaty 
of  Paris,  319  ;  send  emissaries  into  America, 
De  Kalb,  427  ;  America  negotiates  with 
France,  535. 

Franklin,  Josiah,  father  of  the  philosopher,  his 
method  of  attracting  herring  into  a  river 
they  had  never  before  visited,  ii.  207. 

Franklin,  Benjamm,  his  origin  and  early  his 
tory,  ii.  156 ;  is  elected  Colonel  of  the  Phila 
delphia  regiment,  but  prefers  serving  as  a 
private,  159  ;  his  mission  to  England,  273 ; 
political  views  of  Pitt  and  Franklin,  275 ; 
preserves  his  popularity,  though  advocating 
the  policy  of  the  stamp  act,  397 ;  advocates 
the  cause  of  American  liberty,  ii.  459 ;  is 
dismissed  from  the  office  of  postmaster-ge- 
neral of  America,  478;  as  agent  for  the  pro- 
vinces of  America,  presents  a  petition  to  the 
parliament,  499. 

Frontignac,  Count,  governor  of  Canada,  at. 
tacks  the  settlements  of  New  England,  i. 
267. 

Gage,  General,  replaces  Hutchison  as  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  royal  forces  in  North 
America,  ii.  487;  renders  himself  generally 
odious,  490. 


608 


INDEX 


Gage,  General,  shut  up  in  Boston,  ii.  509. 

Gates,  Sir  Thomas,  obtains  a  patent  for  terri- 
tories in  North  America,  i.  32  ;  is  appointed 
temporary  governor  of  the  colony  in  Vir- 
ginia, 53. 

Georgia,  unpeopled  and  defenceless  state  of 
the  southern  frontier  of  Carolina,  109  ;  colo- 
nization  of  Georgia  projected.  111;  royal 
charter  of  Georgia,  113;  treaty  with  the 
Creeks,  115;  fundamental  laws  of  Georgia, 
117;  emigration  of  Scotch  Highlanders, 
121 ;  hostile  preparations  of  the  French,  125 ; 
difficulties  with  Spain,  127  ;  intrigues  of  the 
Spaniards,  129 ;  Oglethorpe's  invasion  of 
Florida,  131 ;  unhappy  results  of  the  inva- 
sion, 133 ;  Spanish  invasion  of  Georgia,  135  ; 
triumph  of  Oglethorpe,  137 ;  a  provincial 
constitution  established,  140 ;  John  Reynolds 
the  first  governor,  140 ;  character  of  the  in- 
habitants,  142 ;  a  race  of  vagrant  men  named 
Crackers^  142 ;  fourteen  hundred  Apala- 
chian  Indians  are  transplanted  by  Governor 
Moore  of  Carolina  to  the  territory  after- 
wards known  by  this  name,  i.  388 ;  a  con- 
vention  held  with  the  Creeks  and  Cherokees, 
for  the  cession  of  their  lands,  ii.  482  ;  a  con- 
vention  declares  its  adherence  to  the  Ame- 
rican  cause,  522 ;  Sir  James  Wright,  the 
governor,  is  arrested  and  imprisoned,  523  ; 
progress  of  the  cause  of  independence,  533 ; 
declaration  of,  553.    .? 

Germaine,  Lord  George  Sackville,  his  strenu- 
ous opposition  to  the  British  measures 
against  America,  ii.  485. 

German  mercenaries,  ii.  545. 

Glover,  the  author  of  Leonidas,  his  eloquent 
appeal  in  behalf  of  America,  ii.  504. 

Godfrey,  Thomas,  of  Philadelphia,  the  Pascal 
of  America,  inventor  of  the  American  or- 
rery, ii.  216. 

Godolphin,  Sir  William,  concludes  a  treaty 
with  Spain,  in  which  rights  of  England  to 
territories  sold  in  America  by  the  Spanish 
monarch  are  recognized,  i.  359. 

GofFe,  General,  one  of  King  Charles's  judges, 
escapes  to  America,  i.  219 ;  order  for  his 
apprehension,  is  pursued  as  a  regicide,  222 ; 
finds  an  asylum  in  New  Haven,  and  ends 
his  days  there,  226,  note. 

Gookin,  governor  of  Pennsylvania,  disputes 
between  him  and  the  assembly,  ii.  50. 

Gordon,  Samuel,  his  fanaticism,  i.  181. 

Gorges,  Sir  Ferdinand,  governor  of  New  Eng- 
land, i.  183 ;  procures  a  royal  patent  for  the 
State  of  Maine,  244. 

Gosnold,  Bartholomew,  project  for  colonizing 
North  America,  i.  43 ;  is  the  first  navigator 
who  reaches  America  by  a  northwest  course, 
43  ;  names  the  two  islands,  Martha's  Vine- 
yard and  Elizabeth's  Island,  44 ;  lands  on 
the  region  now  forming  the  State  of  Massa- 
chusetts,  and  returns  to  England,  44;  as- 
sists  in  the  foundation  of  Jamestown,  49 ; 
falls  a  victim  there  to  privations  and  dis- 
ease, 49. 

Granville,  Lord,  fills  the  office  of  palatine  in 
Carolina,  i.  390;  his  enmity  to  dissenters, 
390. 


Grant,  Captain,  his  intrepid  conduct  in  the 
Indian  war  of  1762,  ii.  328. 

Grenville,  Sir  Richard,  commands  a  squadron 
fitted  out  for  the  West  Indies,  i.  23;  his 
character  for  valour  and  honourable  enter- 
prise, 23 ;  lands  at  Roanoke  and  makes  a 
settlement,  24;  his  followers  reduced  to 
distress,  and  carried  back  by  Drake  to 
England,  25 ;  second  expedition  to  Vir- 
ginia,  26. 

Guilford,  town  of,  settled  by  Davenport,  Eaton, 
and  others,  i.  172. 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  vessels  fitted  out  by  mer- 
chants of  Bristol,  at  his  instigation,  to  verify 
the  discoveries  of  Gosnold,  i.  44;  obtains  a 
patent  for  territories  in  North  America,  45. 

Hallowell,  comptroller  of  the  customs  in  Bos- 
ton, his  house  broken  into,  and  furniture 
demolished,  ii.  394. 

Hamilton,  Duke  of,  his  claims  in  Connecticut, 
i.  232. 

Hampden,  the  patriot,  believed  to  have  visited 
New  England,  i.  184,  note. 

Hancock,  J.,  succeeds  Randolph,  of  Virginia, 
as  president  of  the  first  Congress,  a  free 
pardon  oflfered  to  the  revolutionists,  except- 
ing Samuel  Adams  and  John  Hancock,  510. 

Harvard  College  founded,  i.  1 82. 

Harvey,  Sir  John,  governor  of  Virginia,  i.  81  ; 
his  tyrannical  conduct,  82 ;  is  recalled,  83. 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  the  first  Englishman  to 
introduce  the  slave-trade,  i.  34;  voyages 
undertaken  by  him  for  that  purpose,  35,  &c. 

Heath,  Sir  Robert,  obtains  a  patent  for  Caro- 
lina, but  neglecting  to  fulfil  its  conditions, 
it  is  revoked,  i.  343. 

Henry  VII.  of  England,  propositions  made  to 
him  by  Columbus,  for  a  voyage  of  discovery 
to  the  West,  i.  26 ;  neglects  the  discoveries 
of  Cabot,  29. 

Henry  VIII.,  during  his  reign  the  coast  of 
Brazil  is  visited  by  English  merchants,  i. 
35 ;  trade  entered  into  with  the  Portuguese 
colonial  settlements,  36. 

Hobby,  Sir  Charles,  his  intrigues  in  Massa 
chusetts,  ii.  15. 

Holmes,  the  Baptist,  persecuted  in  New  Eng- 
land  for  his  faith,  i.  208 ;  receives  thirty 
lashes  for  his  obstinacy,  209. 

Holmes,  Sir  Henry,  despatched  with  an  expe- 
dition to  suppress  the  buccaneers,  i,  375. 

Hooker,  founds  a  colony  on  the  Connecticut, 
i.  171 ;  popularity  of  his  religious  works, 
288. 

Howe,  Lord,  labours  to  adjust  the  difficulties 
between  England  and  America,  ii.  500. 

Hughes,  the  stamp  distributor  for  Pennsylva- 
nia, refuses  to  resign,  and  is  supported  by 
liie  Baptists  and  Quakers,  and  by  the  parti- 
sans  of  the  English  church,  ii.  397. 

Huguenots,  driven  from  France  by  the  revo- 
cation of  the  edict  of  Nantes,  i.  376 ;  a  large 
number  settle  in  Carolina,  377 ;  jealousy  in 
regard  to  them,  383. 

Hunter,  governor,  disputes  between  him  and 
the  New  York  assembly,  ii.  35. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  her  fanaticism,  i.  177;  is 
exiled,  180. 


INDEX. 


G09 


Hutchinson,  governor,  his  house  broken  into, 
and    his  valuable    books   and   manuscripts 
destroyed,  ii.  394;  receives  a  royal  salary, 
469  ;    it   is   declared   an  infraction  of  the 
charter,  470;  disclosures  of  his  letters,  475; 
his  triumph  is  short,  he  is  recalled,  478. 
Hutchinson,  a  historian  of  merit,  ii.  352. 
Immigration  into  Pennsylvania  in  1729,  six 
thousand  two   hundred    and  eight  settlers, 
principally  from  Ireland,  ii.  84 ;  a  law  en- 
titled  "  an  act  to  prevent  poor  and  impotent 
persons  from  being  imported  into  this  pro- 
vince," and  imposing  a  tax  of  five  shillings 
a  head,  discreditable  to  Pennsylvanian  sense 
and  generosity,  84 ;  this  law  repealed,  85. 
Independence,  progress  of,  ii.  531 ;  European 
interest  in  the  cause  of^  533 ;  Declaration 
of,  553. 
Indians,  insurrections  in  Virginia,  i.  97 ;  war, 
in  1703,  instigated  by  the  Spaniards  against 
Carolina,  desolating  war  between  the  Five 
Nations   and   New   England,   ii.  17;   con- 
spiracy  of  the  Coree  and  Tuscarora  tribes, 
ii.  34 ;  the  Six  Nations  are  recognized  as 
subjects   of  England,   36 ;   the   Yamassee 
tribe,  conspiracy  of,  46;  sanguinary  war  in 
Carolina,  47 ;   the   Norridgewock   Indians 
carry  on  a  furious  war  on  the  New  Eng- 
land frontiers,  72;  grievances  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, 161 ;  grand  assembly  of  the  Indian 
nations  at  Easton,  and  treaty  of  friendship 
concluded,  282 ;   war  with  the  Cherokees, 
303  ;  jealousy  of  on  the  successes  in  Ca- 
nada, 325 ;  a  report  is  spread  of  a  scheme 
formed  for  their  extirpation,  and  consequent 
excitement,  326 ;  the  Shawnee,  Seneca,  and 
Delaware   tribes   act  in   concert,   326 ;    a 
furious   incursion   is   made   into  Virginia, 
Maryland,  and  Pennsylvania,  328 ;  project 
of  Captain    Dalzell   to  surprise   them,  but 
himself  falls  a  victim  to  their  artful   ma- 
noeuvres, 328;  his  detachment,  after  severe 
loss,  brought  off  by  the  coolness  and  intre- 
pidity of  Captain  Grant,  328 ;  Pittsburg  is 
threatened,  and  relieved  by  the  intrepidity 
of  Colonel  Bouquet,  330 ;   treaty  of  peace, 
333  ;  a  deputation  of  Cherokee  chiefs  invited 
to  England,  354 ;   the  Five  Nations,  429  ; 
treaty  with,  433 ;   renewal  of  treaty  with, 
443. 
Inoculation  first  introduced  into  New  England 

by  Cotton  Mather,  in  1721,  ii.  94. 
James  I.  of  England,  his  accession  favourable 
to  colonization  in  America,  i.  43 ;  divides 
North   America   between    two   companies, 
47 ;  his  antipathy  to  tobacco,  and  treatise 
against,  65. 
Jamestown,   foundation   of,   i.  38;    is   aban- 
doned,   57;   re-established   by   Lord    Dela- 
ware,  58. 
Jay,  John,  assists  in  the  composition  of  the 
Declaration   of   Rights,   and   other   public 
acts,  ii.  494. 
Jeff'reys,  Colonel,  succeeds  Sir  William  Berke- 
ley, i.  103;  concludes  the  Indian  war,  104; 
investigates  the  cause  of  Bacon's  rebellion, 
105. 
Jesuits,  doomed  by  the  New  England  laws  to 
Vol.  II.  77 


banishment,  and  to  death  in  case  of  return, 
i.  88;  missionary  labours  of,  431. 

Johnson,  Sir  Nathaniel,  governor  of  Carolina, 
under  his  administration  the  colony  is  in- 
volved  in  a  fruitless  expedition  against  St. 
Augustine,  i.  388. 

Johnson,  Sir  Nathaniel,  governor  of  South 
Carolina,  his  vigorous  conduct,  ii.  22. 

Johnson,  William,  a  native  of  Ireland,  begins 
life  as  a  common  soldier,  ii.  248  ;  the  com- 
mand  of  the  expedition  against  Crown  Point 
entrusted  ta  him,  248;  the  address  with 
which  he  counteracts  the  Indians,  248 ; 
vigorous  measures,  but  final  abandonment 
of  the  expedition,  251 ;  routs  the  French  at 
the  battle  of  Niagara,  287 ;  Fort  Niagara 
capitulates,  287. 

Johnson,  Dr.,  advocates  the  prerogative  of 
Britain,  ii.  459. 

Keith,  Sir  William,  governor  of  Pennsylva- 
nia, his  time-serving  character,  ii.  51 ;  his 
scheme  for  taxing  America,  52,  note  ;  falls 
into  merited  contempt,  and  closes  his  life  in 
London,  in  poverty  and  obscurity,  52. 

Kennedy,  Captain,  his  vigorous  movement 
against  the  Cherokees,  ii.  310 ;  drives  them 
back,  reduces  to  ashes  their  principal  town, 
Etchoe,  and  dictates  terms  of  peace,  310. 

Knowles,  Commodore,  recruits  his  crews  by 
impressment  at  Boston,  ii.  186 ;  tumult  ift 
consequence,  187. 

Knox,  Henry,  his  services  in  the  revolutionary 
war,  ii.  516. 

Kyrk,  Sir  Richard,  an  Irishman,  is  made  go- 
vernor of  Carolina,  i.  374. 

Lane,  Captain,  is  active  in  the  settlement  of 
Virginia,  i.  23;    fails  in  the   undertaking, 
and  returns  to  England,  25. 
Law,  John,  originator  of  the  Western  or  Mis- 
sissippi Company,  ii.  63 ;  the  mania  excited 
by   the    scheme,   and    its    ruinous    conse- 
quences, 64. 
Lee,  Richard  Henry,  assists  in  the  composi- 
tion  of  the  Declaration  of  Rights,  and  other 
public  acts,  ii.  494. 
Lee,  agent  for  the  provinces  of  America,  pre 
sents  a  petition  to  the  parliament,  ii.  499. 
Leon,  Ponce  de,  discovers  Florida  on  the  Sun- 
day before  Easter  {Pascua  de  Flores),  and 
hence  its  name,  i.  340 ;  seeks  the  miracu- 
lous  Fountain  of  Youth,  340. 
Levi,    General,    who    succeeded    Montcalm, 

attempts  the  recovery  of  Quebec,  ii.  301. 
Lewis,  Colonel,  conducts  the  war  in  Virginia 
against    the    Ohio    Indians,   and    restores 
peace,  ii.  482. 
Lexington,  affair  of,  ii.  507. 
Libraries,  Library  Company  in  Philadelphia, 

i.  550,  ii.  182. 
Lincoln,  Benjamin,  is  made  secretary  of  tlie 

provincial  congress,  ii.  498. 
Littleton,  governor  of  South  Carolina,  his  at- 

j      tempts  to  accommodate    matters  with   the 

I      Cherokees,  ii.  303. 
Livingston,  Philip,  assists  in  the  composition 

I      of  the   Declaration   of  Rights,   and   otljer 

j      public  acts,  ii.  494. 

I  Locke,  John,  assists  in  drawing  up  a  consti. 


610 


INDEX. 


tution  for  Carolina,  i.  354 ;  is  created  a 
landgrave  of  Carolina,  in  recompense  for 
his  services,  357. 

Logan,  James,  a  Quaker,  secretary  of  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania,  i.  550 ;  composes 
several  works  in  Latin,  550 ;  enriches  Phi- 
ladelphia with  a  valuable  library,  and  in  his 
old  age  composes  an  admirable  translation 
of  Cicero's  I>e  Senectute. 

Logan,  the  Indian  chief,  his  affecting  ha- 
rangue, ii.  483,  note. 

London  Company  fit  out  a  squadron  for  Vir- 
ginia, i.  45 ;  dissensions  among,  81 ;  the 
company  dissolved,  85 ;  effect  of  their  dis- 
solution, 87. 

Lothrop,  Captain,  defeats  the  Narragansetts, 
i.  241. 

Loudoun,  Lord,  the  British  commander,  his 
incapacity,  ii.  262;  his  fruitless  schemes, 
263 ;  loses  Fort  William  Henry,  263 ;  ge- 
neral gloom  and  discontent,  265;  his  dis- 
pute with  Massachusetts,  267;  his  recall, 
271. 

Louisburg,  on  the  Island  of  Cape  Breton, 
built  by  the  French,  ii.  163 ;  projected  re- 
duction of,  164 ;  it  is  called  the  Gibraltar  of 
America,  164;  siege  of,  170;  capture  of, 
1 73 ;  general  rejoicing  in  the  provinces, 
175. 

Ludwell,  Colonel  Philip,  is  entrusted  with  the 
government  of  Carolina,  i.  382;  is  sus- 
pected of  courting  popularity,  and  deprived 
of  office,  384. 

Maine,  State  of,  a  royal  patent  for,  procured 
by  Gorges,  i.  244 ;  Gorges's  claims  to  New 
Hampshire  and  Maine,  244 ;  population  of 
in  1750,  10,000. 

March,  Colonel,  his  expedition  against  Port 
Royal,  ii.  24. 

Maryland,  charter  of  Maryland  obtained  from 
Charles  the  first  by  Lord  Baltimore,  i.  301 ; 
terms  of  the  charter,  303 ;  condition  of  the 
English  Catholics,  305  ;  opposition  of  Vir- 
ginia,  307  ;  legislative  code,  309  ;  discontent 
of  Virginia  quieted,  311;  Act  concerning 
religion,  313;  edicts  for  the  securitj^  of  po- 
litical  freedom,  315;  general  prosperity,  Al- 
sop's  account,  319;  severe  pressure  of  the 
navigation  Acts,  321 ;  transportation  of  fe- 
lons to  Maryland,  323 ;  charges  against 
Lord  Baltimore,  325 ;  pretensions  of  Wil- 
liam Penn,  327  ;  professions  of  regard  by 
James  II.,  329  ;  formation  of  a  Protestant 
association,  331 ;  review  of  the  proprietary 
administration,  333  ;  oppression  of  the  Ca- 
tholics, 335 ;  civil  and  domestic  state  of 
Maryland,  337  ;  situation  of  in  1714,  ii.  99  ; 
a  conspiracy  among  the  Indian  tribes,  and 
furious  incursion  made  by  them,  328 ;  the 
last  inheritor  of  the  title  of  Lord  Baltimore 
disgraces  his  descent,  and  dies  at  Naples  in 
1771,  343  ;  a  vessel  laden  with  tea  is  burned 
by  the  advice  of  Charles  Carroll,  497  ;  a  po- 
pular congress  assumes  the  functions  of  the 
provincial  assembly,  522. 
Massachusetts,  charter  of,  i.  153  ;  the  charter 
government  transferred  from  England  to 
Salem,  161 ;  settled,  152;  church  at,  157; 


transmits  relief  for  the  sufferers  by  the  great 
fire  of  London,  236 ;  embarrassments  caused 
by  the  depreciation  of  its  currency,  148  ; 
boundary  questions,  149  ;  the  Land  bank, 
pernicious  effects  of,  150 ;  its  letters  patent 
annulled,  254 ;  furnishes  her  contingent  of 
6,500  men  for  the  war  in  Canada,  285  ; 
despatches  300  more  to  Quebec,  where  they 
served  as  pioneers,  298 ;  departure  of  Pow- 
nell,  the  last  governor  she  was  to  receive 
from  England,  306  ;  honours  bestowed  upon 
him  at  his  departure,  307  ;  politic  appoint- 
ments in,  ii.  9  ;  popular  administration  of 
Lord  Bellamont,  11 ;  Joseph  Dudley's  efforts 
to  extend  the  royal  prerogative,  15  ;  Queen 
Anne's  war,  17 ;  Dudley  superseded,  43 ; 
joint-stock  company  in  London  for  purchase 
and  cultivation  of  waste  lands  in  Massa- 
chusetts, 65;  administration  of  Shute,  65; 
violent  opposition  to,  67  ;  intrigues  of  Ras- 
les,  69 ;  lieutenant-governor  Dummer,  71 ; 
war  with  the  Eastern  Indians,  73  ;  explana- 
tory  charter,  75  ;*  Burnet  governor,  77  ;  Bel- 
cher governor,  79  ;  boundary  question,  149  ; 
intrigues  against  Belcher,  151  ;  preparations 
for  invading  Canada,  179 ;  formidable  French 
fleet,  its  dispersion,  181 ;  ravages  of  the 
French  and  Indians,  182 ;  naval  impress- 
ment, 185;  tumult  in  Boston,  187  ;  treaty 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  189  ;  bill  abolishing 
American  charters,  193 ;  German  emi- 
grants, 211 ;  recall  of  Shirley,  261  ;  Lou- 
doun's dispute  with  Massachusetts,  267; 
state  of  parties,  269  ;  Bernard,  governor, 
307 ;  discontents,  313 ;  requisition  to  co- 
operate with  the  English  troops  against  the 
Indians,  332  ;  evasion  of  the  call,  332;  state 
of  in  1765,337;  population  241,000,  338; 
Society  for  promoting  Christian  knowledge 
among  the  Indians,  349  ;  ferment  caused  by 
the  passage  of  the  Stamp  Act,  385  ;  declara- 
tion of  rights,  401  ;  non-importation  agree- 
ment, 403 ;  the  Stamp  Act  disobeyed,  405  ; 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  411 ;  resentment 
against  the  abettors  of,  421 ;  non-importa- 
tion agreement  renewed,  429  ;  circular  let- 
ter, 431 ;  rigorous  enforcement  by  England 
of  the  trade  laws,  433  ;  refusal  to  rescind  the 
circular,  435  ;  convention,  437  ;  violent  pro- 
ceedings in  the  British  Parliament,  439 ; 
resolutions  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly, 
443 ;  Governor  Hutchinson,  469  ;  commit- 
tees of  correspondence,  471 ;  attempts  to  en- 
force the  tea-duty  Act,  473 ;  disclosure  of 
Hutchinson's  letters,  475  ;  innovation  on  the 
Massachusetts  charter,  485  ;  effects  of  the 
recent  Acts,  487  ;  defensive  measures,  497; 
Governor  Gage  suspends  the  meeting  of  the 
assembly  at  Salem,  497 ;  the  legality  of  the 
measure  denied,  and  a  provincial  congress 
meets  at  Concord,  and  elects  Hancock  pre- 
sident,  497  ;  Gage  warns  them  to  desist  from 
their  proceedings,  497 ;  they  adjourn  to 
Cambridge,  497  ;  appoint  a  council  of  safety, 
and  form  the  minute-men  corps,  498 ;  elect 
Benjamin  Lincoln  as  their  secretary,  498; 
send  delegates  to  different  States,  and  ad- 
journ, 498;  proceedings  in  the  Ti-=*=  '-  P-' 


INDEX. 


611 


liamenl,  499 ;  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  urges  re- 
sistance,  501 ;  Acts  restraining  trade,  503; 
attempted  seizure  of  military  stores  at  Sa- 
lem, 505  ;  ravages  of  British  cruisers,  523  ; 
declaration  of  independence,  553;  popula- 
tion of  Massachusetts  in  1731,  122,600;  in 
1742,  164,000 ;  and  in  1753,  220,000. 
Makin,  Thomas,  a  Quaker,  one  of  the  earliest 
•     settlers  of  Pennsylvania,  composes  a  Latin 
poem  of  merit,  Deacriptio  PennsylvanuB,  i. 
550. 
Mather,  Increase,  is  sent  to  England  to  lay 
before  the  government  the  grievances  of 
Rhode  Island,  i.  262  ;  a  day  of  thanksgiving 
appointed  for  his  return,  272. 
Mather,  Colton,  his  disapprobation  of  the  se- 
verities to  the  Indians,  i.  287 ;  popularity  of 
his  religious  and  other  works,  288. 
Matthews,  the  last  governor  of  Virginia  ap- 

pointed  by  Cromwell,  i.  89, 
Maverick,  Samuel,  sent  as  one  of  the  commis- 
sioners for  the  reduction  of  New  York,  ii. 
^29. 
Mayhew  translates  the  Bible  into  one  of  the 
native  Indian  languages,  i.  201. 

• ,    a    popular    preacher    of  Boston, 

preaches  against  the  Stamp  Act,  ii.  394. 
Maynard,  Lieutenant,  distinguishes   himself 
against   the   pirates   off  the  Carolinas,  ii. 
56. 
Milford,  town  of,  settled  by  Davenport,  Eaton, 

and  others,  i.  172. 
Miller,  appointed  collector  in  Carolina,  i.  363. 
Monk,    Duke    of   Albemarle,    obtains,   with 
others,  a  charter  for  Carolina,  i.  343 ;  is  in- 
stalled in  the  office  of  palatine,  355. 
Montcalm,  the  French  commander,  lays  siege 
to  Fort  William  Henry,  ii.  263 ;  carries  it, 
265  ;  is  mortally  wounded,  296 ;  his  charac- 
ter, 296;   Senezargus,  the  second  in  com- 
mand at  the  battle  of  Quebec,  is  killed,  ii. 
294. 
Montgomery,  governor  of  New  York,  his  in- 

dolent  administration,  ii.  81. 
Montgomery,  Colonel,  his   vigorous   conduct 
in  the  Cherokee  war,  ii.  304  ;  relieves  Fort 
Prince  George  from  the  blockade  of  the  In- 
dians, 304  ;  clears  the  Dismal  Swamp  of  the 
enemy,  304. 
Moore,  James,  governor  of  Carolina,  i.  388 ; 
under  his  administration  the  colony  is  ha- 
rassed with  Indian  wars,  388 ;  he  defeats 
the  tribes  inhabiting   the   region  between 
the  Alatamaha  and  Savannah,  388. 
Moreton,  Joseph,  appointed  governor  of  Caro- 
lina, i.  371 ;  assembles  a  parliament,  373  ; 
is  deposed  from  office,  374  ;  displeases  the 
colonists,  and  is  replaced  by  James  Colle- 
ton, 379. 
Moravians,  their   introduction  into  America, 
character,  and  institutions,  ii.  112;  their  ori- 
gin, 358;  their  missionary  labours,  359. 
Morison,  Captain,  is  killed  in  the  battle  with 
the   Cherokees  in  the  Dismal   Swamp,   ii. 
304. 
Murray,  Lord  John,  his  gallant  conduct,  and 
that  of  his  Highland  regiment,  at  the  battle 
of  Ticonderoga,  ii.  280. 


Murray,  general,  opposes  the  French  in  their 

efforts  to  recapture  Quebec,  ii.  301. 
Mutiny  Act,  the  British,  is  extended  by  par- 
liament to  North  America,  ii.  240 ;  excites 
general  indignation  in  the  provinces,  240. 
Narragansets,  character  of,  i.  173;  treatment 
of,  175 ;  make  a  treaty  of  peace  with  the 
colonists,  193 ;  conspiracy  of,  239. 
Navigation  act,  its  impolicy,  i.  91 ;  is  felt  as 

a  grievance,  95. 
New  England  States,  attempts  of  the  Plymouth 
Company  to  colonize  the  northern  coasts  of 
America,  i.  121 ;  Popham  establishes  a  co- 
lony at  Fort  St.  George,  122;  suiTerings 
and  return  of  the  colonists,  123 ;  Captain 
Smith's  voyage  and  survey  of  the  country, 
which  is  named  New  England,  123 ;  emi- 
gration to  America  determined  on,  142 ;  a 
congregation  of  Independents  retire  to  Hol- 
land, 141 ;  they  resolve  to  settle  in  Ame- 
rica, 191 ;  their  negotiation  with  king 
James,  142 ;  they  arrive  in  Massachusetts, 
and  found  New  Plymouth,  144;  hardships 
and  virtues  of  the  colonists,  145 ;  their 
civil  institutions,  146 ;  charter  of  the  Ply- 
mouth Company,  147 ;  plantations  by  Wes- 
ton  and  Gorges,  148 ;  settlement  of  Salem, 
152;  charter  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  153; 
second  emigration  to  Salem,  156;  church 
at  Salem,  157 ;  intolerance  of  the  settlers, 
159 ;  demonstration  of  royal  favour  to  the 
colony,  160;  the  charter  government  trans- 
ferred from  England  to  Massachusetts,  161 ; 
active  emigration,  163  ;  the  foundations  of 
Boston,  Charlestown,  Dorchester,  Roxbury, 
and  other  societies  laid,  163;  settlement 
of  Connecticut,  171 ;  foundations  of  New 
Haven,  Guilford,  Milford,  Stamford,  and 
Branford  laid,  172 ;  the  Pequod  war,  173 ; 
treatment  of  the  Indians,  175 ;  colonization 
of  Rhode  Island,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Maine,  181 ;  jealousy  and  fluctuating  con- 
duct of  the  king,  183 ;  restraints  on  emigra- 
tion, 183;  surrender  of  the  charter  required, 
185 ;  measures  adopted  against  the  liberties 
of  Massachusetts  interrupted  by  the  civil 
wars  in  England,  186;  domestic  state  of 
New  England,  187;  laws,  188;  manners, 
189 ;  embraces  the  cause  of  the  parliament, 
191 ;  plot  of  the  Narraganset  Indians,  192; 
the  New  England  confederacy,  193;  new 
ordinance  for  the  colonies,  194 ;  coinage  of 
money  by  Massachusetts,  195 ;  impeach, 
ment  of  governor  Winthrop,  197;  presby- 
terian  malcontents,  198;  attempts  to  con- 
vert and  civilize  the  Indians,  199 ;  discords 
in  the  confederacy,  203 ;  surrender  of  char- 
ter a  second  time  demanded,  204,  Twvour 
of  Cromwell  to  New  England,  205 .  his 
proposition  to  the  colonists  of  transplanting 
them  to  Jamaica,  207 ;  persecution  of  the 
Anabaptists  in  Massachusetts,  209  ;  con- 
duct and  sufierings  of  the  Quakers,  211; 
effects  of  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II., 
219  ;  address  of  Massachusetts  to  the  king, 
220;  alarm  of  the  colonists,  220;  their 
assertion  of  their  rights,  221;  the  king's 
message,  223;  how  far  complied  with,  224; 


612 


INDEX. 


royal   charter   of   incorporation   to   Rhode 
Island  and  Providence,  225  ;   and  to  Con- 
necticut and  New  Haven,  226  ;  apprehen- 
sions of  royal  displeasure,  and  petition  to 
the  king,  226;   rejected,  228;   policy  pur- 
sued by  the  royal  commissioners,  229  ;  their 
disputes  with  the  government  of  Massachu- 
setts, 229 ;   and   recall   to   England,   230 ; 
measures  for   conciliating   the   king,  231 ; 
cession    of   Acadia   to   the    French,   237; 
prosperity  of  New  England,  238;    Indian 
conspiracy,  239  ;   Philip's   war,  241 ;   war 
with  the  Eastern  Indians,  242  ;  renewal  of 
disputes  with  the  crown,  242 ;  invasion  of 
Connecticut   by   Andros,   243 ;    royal    go- 
vernor of  New  Hampshire,  245 ;   progress 
of  the  dispute   between  the  king  and  the 
colony,  246 ;  state  of  parties  in  Massachu- 
setts, 247  ;  surrender  of  the  charter  of  Mas- 
sachusetts demanded  by  the  king,  251 ;  re- 
fused by  the  colonists,  250 ;  writs  of  Quo 
Warranto  issued  against  the  colony,  251 ; 
firmness  of  the   people,   252;   the   charter 
adjudged  to  be  forfeited,  253 ;  designs  and 
death  of  Charles  II.,  255 ;  government  of 
Massachusetts  under  a  temporary  commis- 
sion from  James  II.,  255 ;  Andros  appointed 
governor  of  New  England,  257  ;  surrender 
of  Rhode  Island  charter,  259  ;  effort  to  pre- 
serve the  charter  of  Connecticut,  260 ;  op- 
pressive government  of  Andros,  261 ;  colo- 
nial policy  of  the  king,  262 ;  Sir  William 
Phips,  263;  movement  against  Andros,  265; 
insurrection   in    Boston,  261 ;   Andros   de- 
posed  and  the  ancient  government  restored, 
266;   war  with   the   French  and   Indians, 
267 ;  Sir  William  Phips  conquers  Acadia, 
267  ;  ineffectual  expedition  against  Quebec, 
268 ;   disastrous   results  of  the   war,  268 ; 
impeachment  of  Andros  by  the  colony  dis- 
countenanced   by   the    English    ministers, 
269  ;  the  king  refuses  to  restore  the  ancient 
constitution  of  Massachusetts,  279  ;   tenor 
of  the  new  charter,  271 ;  administration  of 
Sir  William  Phips,  273 ;  the  New  England 
witchcraft    delusion,    275 ;    departure    of 
Phips,  282 ;  war  with  the  French  and  In- 
dians,  283;   treaty  of  peace   of  Ryswick, 
285  ;  moral  and  political  state  of  New  Eng- 
land, 286 ;  character  of  the  early  settlers, 
287  ;  early  histories  of  New  England,  289  ; 
general  diffusion  of  knowledge,  291 ;  popu- 
lation, 292 ;   political   condition  and  senti- 
ments, 293  ;  state  of  religion,  296;  society 
and  manners,  297 ;  rewards  of  public  ser- 
vice, 298;  slavery,  299;  population  in  1673 
amounted  to  120,000;  progress  of  the  war 
in,  ii.  23 ;   expedition  against  Port  Royal, 
25  ;  projected  invasion  of  Canada,  27  ;  con- 
quest of  Port  Royal  and  Acadia,  29  ;  disas- 
trous  results    of  the   expedition,   33 ;   evil 
consequences  of  the  war,  39  ;  bill  to  abolish 
the  New  England  charters,  ii.  45  ;  intrigues 
of  Rasles,  69  ;  lieutenant-governor  Dummer, 
71;   war  with    the    Eastern    Indians,   73; 
state  of,  93  ;  comparison  of  New  England 
and  Canada,  97;  intrigues  against  Belcher, 
151;    scheme   of   an    Episcopal   establish- 


ment, 195  ;  state  of  in  1750,  207  ;  war  with 
France,  invasion  of  Canada,  270;  the  ho- 
nour of  Britain  and  safety  of  America  ab- 
sorb all  party  jealousies,  271 ;  determina- 
tion to  resist  the  common  enemy,  271  j 
Massachusetts  raises  7000  men,  271  ;  Con- 
necticut, 5000 ;  New  Hampshire,  9000,, 
271 ;  are  ready  to  take  the  field  in  May, 
'  271  ;  requisition  to  co-operate  with  the 
English  troops  against  the  Indians,  332 ; 
evasion  of  the  call,  332  ;  treaty  of  peace 
with  the  Indians,  333 ;  state  of  in  1750, 
339  ;  in  1765,  341 ;  has  550  congregational 
churches,  341  ;  confused  counsels,  375  ;  fer- 
ment caused  by  the  passage  of  the  stamp 
act,  385;  non-importation  agreement,  403  ; 
the  stamp  act  set  at  defiance,  405 ;  affray 
with  the  English  troops,  453;  the  Boston 
Port  Bill,  483 ;  the  indignation  which  ii 
calls  forth,  489  ;  determined  obstruction  of 
the  measure,  491 ;  progress  of  the  public  dis- 
content,  510  ;  attempted  seizure  of  military 
stores  at  Salem,  505;  battle  of  Bunkei»'s 
Hill,  511 ;  the  coasts  ravaged  by  British 
cruisers,  523 ;  the  British  evacuate  Boston, 
541  ;  progress  of  the  cause  of  liberty,  542  ; 
Declaration  of  Independence,  553. 
New  Hampshire,  a  royal  governor  appointed 
over,  i.  245 ;  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts 
over  it  is  annulled,  245 ;  reverts  spontaneously 
to  its  old  jurisdiction,  245;  improving  state 
of,  in  1750,  ii.  339  ;  violent  disputes  with 
New  York,  arising  from  rival  pretensions  to 
the  government,  340;  state  of  in  1765,  337  ; 
population,  52,700 ;  institution  of  Dart- 
mouth college,  445 ;  furnishes  three  regi- 
ments for  the  revolutionary  war,  508 ; 
governor  Wentworth  accelerates  the  ad- 
vance of  the  revolution  by  vacating  his  post, 
521  ;  progress  of  independence,  531 ;  decla- 
ration of,  553 ;  population  of  in  1700, 10,000 
in  1749,  30,000. 
New  Jersey,  sale  of  the  territory  by  the  Duke 
of  York  to  Berkeley  and  Carteret,  i.  461  ; 
Carteret  assumes  the  government,  465; 
fraudulent  views  of  the  Duke  of  York,  467; 
the  Quakers,  469  ;  sale  of  to  Fenwick  and 
Byllinge,  473  ;  constitution  of  West  Jersey, 
475  ;  pretensions  of  th^  Duke  of  York,  477; 
first  assembly  of  West  Jersey,  479  ;  domes- 
tic state  of  East  Jersey,  481  ;  incitements 
to  emigration,  483 ;  surrender  of  the  East 
Jersey  patent,  485 ;  constitution  of  New 
Jersey,  4h7  ;  civil  and  domestic  state  of  N. 
Jersey,  489;  situation  of  in  1700,  ii.  105; 
Princeton  college  founded,  105;  population 
in  1700,  15,000 ;  in  1738,  47,367  ;  Governor 
Franklin  remaining  firm  to  the  British  pre- 
rogative, is  deposed  and  imprisoned,  522  ; 
Aaron  Ogden,  with  a  detachment  of  militia, 
embarks  in  a  coasting  vessel,  and  captures  a 
large  British  ship,  with  stores  for  the  troops 
at  Boston,  525;  progress  of  the  cause  of  in- 
dependence, 533  ;  declaration  of,  553. 
Newfoundland;  is  taken  by  a  French  squadron, 

i.  313;  retaken  by  Lord  ColviUe,  313. 
New  Haven,  settled  by  Davenport,  Eaton,  and 
others,  i.  172. 


INDEX. 


6ia 


New  Haven  and  Connecticut  are  united  by  a 
charter  of  Charles  II.,  173. 

New  Inverness,  in  Georgia,  founded  by  a  co- 
lony of  Highlanders,  ii.  121. 

New  Plymouth,  resumes  its  old  form  of  go- 
vernment, 266. 

Newport,  library  established  in,  ii.  182. 

,  Captain,  commands  the  first  squa- 
dron fitted  out  for  North  America  by  the 
London  Company,  i.  36 ;  lands  on  the  pro- 
montory which  he  names  Cape  Henry,  in 
honour  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  38 ;  founds 
Jamestown,  the  oldest  existing  institution 
of  the  English  in  America,  38;  returns  to 
England,  39 ;  commands  a  squadron  to 
Virginia,  and  governs  the  colony  till  the 
arrival  of  Lord  Delaware,  53. 

Newspapers,  the  first  established  in  Mary- 
land, in  1745,  ii.  101 ;  in  Connecticut,  in 
1755,  i.  342;  in  Virginia,  ii.  91. 

New  York,  Hudson's  voyage  of  discovery,  i. 
397;  Dutch  West  India  Company,  399; 
contentions  with  the  English,  401;  Swe- 
dish settlement  in  Delaware,  403 ;  mutual 
jealousies  of  the  Dutch  and  English,  405 ; 
conquest  of  the  Swedes  in  Delaware,  407  ; 
feeble  policy  of  the  Dutch  Company,  409  ; 
hostile  designs  of  Charles  II.,  411;  noble 
spirit  of  Stuyvesant,  413 ;  capitulation  of 
New  Amsterdam,  415 ;  administration  of 
Nichols,  417  ;  reconquest  of  New  York  by 
the  Dutch,  421  ;  arbitrary  administration 
of  Andros,  423 ;  a  legislative  assembly 
granted,  425  ;  Colonel  Dongan's  adminis- 
tration, 427 ;  the  Five  Indian  Nations,  429 ; 
missionary  labours  of  the  Jesuits,  431  ; 
treaty  with  the  Five  Nations,  433  ;  New 
York  annexed  to  New  England,  435 ;  ge- 
neral disatfection  in  New  York,  437  ;  Leis- 
ler's  usurpation,  439  ;  scheme  for  the  inva- 
sion of  Canada,  441 ;  renewal  of  the  treaty 
with  the  Five  Nations,  443 ;  spirit  of  the 
Connecticut  people,  445  ;  temper  of  Fletch- 
er's adnjinist»ation,  447 ;  Lord  Bellamont 
appointed  governor,  449 ;  Captain  Kidd, 
451  ;  factions  in  New  York,  453;  adminis- 
tration of  Lord  Cornbury,  455;  civil  and 
domestic  state  of  New  York,  457 ;  Hunter 
and  the  New  York  assembly,  ii.  35 ;  peace 
of  Utrecht,  37;  trade  with  Canada,  ii.  61  ; 
the  French  erect  a  fort  at  Crown  Point,  81 ; 
state  of  in  1720,  103;  feeble  and  negligent 
administration  of  Montgomery,  143;  his 
successor  Colonel  William  Cosby,  an  arbi- 
trary and  corrupt  governor,  143 ;  Zenger, 
conductor  of  the  New  York  Weekly  Jour- 
nal, proceedings  aguinst,  144 ;  is  defended 
by  Andrew  Hamilton  of  Philadelphia,  145 ; 
is  acquitted,  and  presented  with  .the  free- 
dom of  the  city,  146;  state  of  in  1750,203; 
expedition  against  Crown  Point,  249  ;  aban- 
donment of  the  project,  251 ;  war  declared 
between  France  and  England,  257  ;  French 
success  at  Oswego,  259  ;  Loudoun's  fruit- 
less schemes,  363;  successes  of  the  French, 
265 ;  Fort  William  Henry  falls  into  their 
hands,  266 ;  siege  of  Louisburg,  277 ;  re- 

•    pulse  at  Ticonderoga,   279 ;  rediictioix  of 


Fort  Duquesne,  281 ;  battle  of  Niagara,  287; 
termination  of  the  war  with  Frande,  318; 
treaty  of  Paris,  319  ;  general  rejoicings, 
321 ;  Indian  jealousies,  325  ;  general  Indian 
war,  327;  state  of  in  1765,  344;  population, 
110,000;  a  society  for  the  promotion  of 
arts,  agriculture,  and  economy,  established, 
345 ;  ferment  excited  by  the  stamp  act, 
385 ;  New  York  manifesto,  387 ;  conven- 
tion,  397 ;  political  clubs,  399 ;  non-im- 
portation agreement,  403;  the  stamp  act 
disobeyed,  405 ;  repeal  of  the  stamp  act, 
411 ;  resentment  at  the  abettors  of,  421 ;  act 
suspending  the  New  York  assembly,  425 ; 
non-importation  agreement  renewed,  429  ; 
capture  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point, 
509  ;  ascendancy  of  the  American  arms  in 
the  councils  of  the  province,  518;  decree  of 
Congress  representing  the  Thirteen  States, 
for  maintaining  in  New  York  a  body  of 
5000  forces, 519 ;  ravages  by  British  cruisers, 
523  ;  invasion  of  Canada,  525  ;  progress  of 
independence,  531  ;  declaration  of,  553  ; 
population  in  1700,  30,000  ;  in  1732,  60,000; 
ii.  102  ;  public  schools  founded  by  the  legis- 
lature, 103. 

Nescambouit,  an  Indian  chief,  his  reception 
at  the  French  court,  ii.  24. 

Niagara,  battle  of,  ii.  287 ;  surrender  of  Fort 
Niagara,  287. 

Nichols,  Colonel,  is  sent  as  one  of  the  com- 
missioners for  the  reduction  of  New  York, 
i.  229  ;  conquers  the  Dutch  settlement  of 
Nova  Belgia,  or  New  Netherlands,  360. 

Nicholson,  Francis,  his  ambitious  schemes  in 
Virginia,  ii.  5;  is  advanced  to  the  presi- 
dency, 6. 

Nicholson,  his  return  with  increased  powers 
gives  general  discontent,  61. 

Nicholson,  Sir  Francis,  governor  of  S.  Caro- 
lina, his  spirited  and  judicious  administra- 
tion, ii.  82;  cultivates  the  friendship  of  the 
Creeks  and  Cherokees,  82. 

Non-importation  agreed  upon  by  the  mer- 
chants of  Boston,  ii.  403;  and  afterwards 
of  Philadelphia,  403. 

Nova  Scotia,  British  dominion  in,  ii.  191 ;  hos- 
tilities in,  240 ;  is  wholly  reduced  under  the 
dominion  of  Britain,  241 ;  French  neutrals, 
241  ;  Beau  Sejour,  the  principal  French  fort 
in  Chignecto,  is  conjpelled  to  surrender, 
241  ;  the  other  French  forts  reducod,  241. 

Ogden,  a  delegate  from  New  Jersey,  for  refus- 
ing to  adopt  extreme  measures,  is  hanged 
and  burnt  in  effigy,  ii.  3J8. 

Oglethorpe  emigrates  to  Georgia,  ii,  114  ;  lays 
the  foundation  of  Savann:ih,  115;  his  con- 
ference  with  the  Creeks,  115;  brings  with 
him  the  Wesleys  from  England,  121 ;  his 
misunderstanding  with  them,  123 ;  esta- 
blishes forts  Augusta  and  Fredericn,  124; 
is  ordered  by  a  commissioner  from  Spain  to 
evacuate  the  territory,  125  ;  difficulties  with 
Spain,  127  ;  invades  Florida,  131 ;  unhappy 
results  of  the  invasion,  133;  Spanish  inva- 
sion of  CJeorgia,  135:  triumph  of  Ogletho.-})e, 
137 ;  dies  at  tlie  age  of  one  hundred  and 
four,  138,  note. 


614 


NDEX. 


Ohio  Company,  the,  ii.  213.         ' 

Oliver,  the  brother-in-law  to  Hutchinson,  the 
distributor  of  stamps,  is  hung  in  effigy,  ii. 
392 ;  stamp  office  burnt,  393. 

Osborne,  Sir  Danvers,  governor  of  New  York, 
ii.  238  ;  his  instructions  inveighing  against 
the  provincial  assembly,  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  assembly,  and  foment  the  growing 
indignation,  238. 

Otis,  an  able  lawyer  in  Boston,  incites  the 
popular  discontent,  ii.  314  ;  is  elected  to  the 
provincial  assembly,  315. 

Otis,  James,  advocates  in  his  writings  the 
cause  of  American  liberty,  ii.  459  ;  his  life 
terminates  in  insanity,  caused  by  his  exer- 
tions in  behalf  of  his  country,  459. 

Owen,  Dr.  John,  an  eminent  scholar  and  the- 
ologian, i.  228 ;  is  invited  to  the  presidency 
of  Harvard  College,  and  arrested  at  the  mo- 
ment of  departure,  228. 

Paine,  Thomas,  advocates  the  cause  of  Ameri- 
can liberty,  ii.  453. 

Pemmaquid,  fort,  erected  on  the  Merrimack, 
i.  273;  its  importance,  273. 

Penn,  William,  birth  and  character  of,  i.  493 ; 
solicits  a  grant  of  territory,  and  obtains  the 
charter  of  Pennsylvania,  501  ;  preliminary 
terms  to  settlers,  503  ;  Penn's  first  form  of 
government,  507 ;  grant  of  Delaware  to 
Penn,  509  ;  first  assembly  of  Pennsylvania, 
511 ;  controversy  with  Lord  Baltimore  re- 
specting the  Delaware  grant,  513 ;  Penn's 
treaty  with  the  Indians,  515  ;  second  assem- 
bly of  Pennsylvania,  517  ;  Penn  returns  to 
England,  519  ;  his  favour  at  the  Court  of 
James  II.  521  ;  his  letter  of  complaint,  523; 
conduct  of  Penn  at  the  revolution  in  1688, 
527  ;  adverse  circumstances  of  Penn,  533  ; 
his  third  frame  of  government,  535 ;  second 
visit  of  Penn  to  his  domain,  537 ;  his  efforts 
in  favour  of  slaves  and  of  the  Indians,  539  ; 
fourth  form  of  government,  541 ;  Penn's 
final  return  to  England,  543 ;  complaints 
and  accusations  against  him,  545. 

Penn,  Thomas,  son  of  the  founder,  arrives 
from  England,  in  Pennsylvania,  ii.  88 ;  his 
cordial  reception,  85;  was  little  fitted  to 
sustain  his  hereditary  honours,  85. 

Penn,  John,  arrival  of,  ii.  85 ;  obtains  a  still 
more  affectionate  reception,  86. 

Pennsylvania,  the  territory  granted  to  William 
Penn,  i.  492 ;  terms  of  his  charter,  501 ;  first 
settlers,  503 ;  Penn's  first  frame  of  govern- 
ment, 507  ;  first  assembly  of  Pennsylvania, 
511  ;  Penn's  treaty  with  the  Indians,  515 ; 
second  assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  517  ;  ru- 
moured conspiracy  of  the  Indians,  525 ; 
schism  in  the  colony  under  George  Keith, 
529  ;  Penn's  second  frame  of  government, 
535  ;  his  third  frame  of  government,  541 ; 
civil  condition  of  Pennsylvania  and  Dela- 
ware, 547 ;  domestic  state  of,  549  ;  Gookin 
and  the  Quakers,  ii.  49  ;  Sir  William  Keith's 
administration,  51 ;  Thomas  and  John  Penn, 
85;  state  of,  in  1720,  106;  parties  in,  157; 
military  organization,  159 ;  Indian  griev- 
ances, 1 61 ;  war  with  France,  1 63 ;  project- 
ed reduction  of  Loi^isburg,  165;  prepara- 


tions for  the  expedition,  169  ;  siege  of  Louis- 
burg,  171 ;  capture  of,  173 ;  general  rejoicing 
in  the  provinces,  175 ;  state  of  in  1750,  201; 
unsuccessful  attack  upon  Fort  Duquesne, 
230 ;  Braddock's  expedition,  243  ;  his  defeat, 
245 ;  Morris  and  the  Pennsylvania  assem- 
bly, 253 ;  resignation  of  civil  power  by  the 
Quakers,  255 ;  war  declared  between  France 
and  England,  257  ;  successes  of  the  French, 
265 ;  Franklin's  mission  to  England,  273 ; 
political  views  of  Pitt  and  Franklin,  275 ; 
Franklin's  second  mission  to  England,  335 
a  conspiracy  among  the  Indjan  tribes,  and 
terrible  incursion  made  by  tnem,  328 ;  are 
repulsed  by  Colonel  Bouquet,  329  ;  horrible 
retaliation  upon  the  Indians,  and  massacre 
of  them,  361 ;  ferment  caused  by  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Stamp  Act,  385;  non-importa- 
tion agreement,  403 ;  refusal  of  Quakers  to 
submit  to  the  Stamp  Act,  404 ;  the  Stamp 
Act  disobeyed,  405;  Franklin's  examination 
at  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Commons,  407  ; 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  411 ;  resentment 
against  the  abettors  of,  421;  non-importa- 
tion agreement  renewed,  429 ;  rigorous  en- 
forcement  by  England  of  the  trade  laws, 
433 ;  the  day  of  the  first  operation  of  the 
Boston  port  bill  is  observed  as  a  day  of 
mourning,  488;  first  continental  congress 
assembled  at  Philadelphia,  493 ;  proceedings 
of,  495 ;  address  of,  to  the  British  people, 
515  ;  Penn  examined  at  the  bar  of  the  House 
of  Lords,  525 ;  progress  of  independence, 
531 ;  the  Germans  of  Philadelphia  form 
themselves  into  a  company  of  veterans,  and 
give  the  command  to  a  man  nearly  a  hun- 
dred years  of  age,  531 ;  population  in  the 
year  1750,  230,000 ;  in  1760,  266,500. 

Penobscots,  remnant  of  the  tribe,  confess  their 
rebellion  and  surrender,  i.  306. 

Pepperell,  Colonel  Wm.,  command  of  expedi- 
tion against  Louisburg  given  to  him,  ii. 
169;  his  gallant  conduct  in  the  capture  of 
this  stronghold,  173;  is  rewarded  with  the 
title  of  baronet,  174. 

Pequods,  character  of,  i.  173 ;  treatment  of| 
175. 

Percy,  George,  a  brother  of  the  Earl  of  North- 
umberland, sails  for  North  America  in  the 
first  squadron  fitted  out  by  the  London 
company,  i.  36. 

Philadelphia,  founded  by  William  Penn,  i. 
516;  first  continental  congress  assembles 
there,  ii.  493  ;  Declaration  of  Independence 
signed  there,  553. 

Philip,  a  chief  of  the  Narragansets,  i.  239 ; 
forms  a  plot  against  the  colonists,  239;  the 
war  named  after  him,  '  Philip's  war,'  breaks 
out,  240;  devastating  effects  in  Massachu- 
setts and  Plymouth  States,  241 ;  Philip  is 
killed  by  one  of  his  own  tribe,  241. 

Phip,  Sir  William,  his  project  of  recovering 
treasures  from  wrecks  of  Spanish  vessels, 
263  ;  is  patronized  by  the  king,  but  his  first 
attempt  is  unsuccessful,  263 ;  is  subsequent- 
ly successful,  264 ;  is  appointed  sheriff  of 
New  England,  264  ;  opposes  the  tyranny  of 
Andros,  but  is  compelled  to  quit  the  pro* 


INDEX. 


615 


vinces,  264 ;  attacks  Canada,  unfortunate 
issue  of  the  expedition,  268 ;  returns  to 
England,  269  ;  defeats  the  malignity  of  his 
accusers,  282  ;  prepares  to  return,  but  dies, 
282  ;  the  only  American  knighted,  299. 

Pickering,  Colonel,  opposes  the  seizure  of  mi- 
litary stores  in  Salem,  his  energetic  conduct 
in  this  first  military  enterprise  of  the  revo- 
lutionary war,  ii.  506. 

Piracy,  the  coast  of  the  Carolinas  infested 
with,  ii.  53. 

Pitt,  appointed  prime  minister,  ii.  271 ;  deter- 
mines to  send  a  powerful  armament  against 
the  French  in  America,  271. 

Plymouth  is  forcibly  annexed  to  Massachu- 
setts,  i.  270. 

Plymouth  Company,  fit  out  a  squadron  for 
Virginia,  i.  45. 

Plymouth  Company,  build  Fort  George,  122 ; 
further  attempts  at  colonization,  123. 

Plymouth  Colony,  sufierings  of,  i.  145 ;  char- 
ter of,  147. 

Pocahontas,  favourite  daughter  of  Powhatan, 
chief  of  the  Virginian  Indians,  i.  51 ;  inter- 
cedes  and  saves  the  life  of  Captain  Smith, 
61 ;  marries  Rolfe,  63 ;  her  honourable  re- 
ception in  England,  70. 

Population  of  New  England,  in  1691,  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand,  i.  291  ;  Boston,  in 
1699,  ten  thousand,  292;  in  1720,  twenty 
thousand,  292;  of  Pennsylvania,  in  1749, 
two  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  ;  in  1755, 
two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  ;  of  Massa- 
chusetts, in  1763,  two  hundred  and  forty-one 
thousand,  338 ;  Connecticut,  one  hundred 
and  forty-five  thousand  five  hundred,  338 ; 
Rhode  Island,  forty  thousand,  338;  New 
Hampshire,  fifty-two  thousand  seven  hun- 
dred, 338. 

Port  Royal  Island,  settled  by  a  colony  of 
Scotsmen,  under  Lord  Cardross,  i.  372  ;  are 
dislodged  by  the  Spaniards,  372 ;  expedition 
against,  ii.  25  ;  conquest  of,  29  ;  recaptured 
W  the  French,  and  its  re-annexation  to 
France  ratified  by  the  treaty  of  Ryswick, 
283. 

Porter,  Judge  of  the  admiralty  court  in  North 
Carolina,  his  corrupt  and  brutal  manners, 
ii.  84 ;  is  impeached  and  dismissed,  84. 

Potato,  introduced  into  Europe  by  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  i.  42. 

Powhatan,  his  conspiracy  against  the  colony, 
i.  71 ;  massacre  of  the  colonists,  73. 

Pownal,  Governor,  his  repulse  of  the  French 
on  the  frontiers  of  New  England,  ii.  282 ; 
receives  the  approbation  of  the  government, 
.282. 

Prescott,  Colonel,  his  patriotic  services  on  the 
outbreak  of  the  revolution,  ii.  511. 

Price,  Dr.,  advocates  the  cause  of  American 
liberty,  ii.  459. 

Prideaux,  General,  invests  Fort  Niagara,  ii. 
286  ;  loses  his  life  by  the  bvu-stinff  of  a  co- 
horn,  286. 

Priestley,  Dr.,  advocates  the  cause  of  Ameri- 
can liberty,  ii.  459. 

Price,  Thomas,  of  Boston,  the  historian,  ii. 
216. 


Printing-press  established  at  Cambridge,  i. 
237  ;  license  refused  to  print  Thomas  A. 
Kempis's  "  Imitation,"  238 ;  the  first  print- 
ing-press  established  in  Carolina,  in  1730, 
i.  393  ;  first  introduced  into  Virginia,  in 
1729,  and  first  Virginian  newspaper  ap- 
peared at  Williamsburg,  in  1736,  ii-  91; 
first  introduced  into  Maryland,  in  1726,  ii. 
99  ;  introduced  into  South  Carolina,  in  1730, 
and  a  newspaper  established  in  1734,  ii. 
101. 

Puritanism,  rise  of,  i.  127 ;  act  of  uniformity, 
129  ;  measures  for  enforcing,  131 ;  liberal 
principles  of  the  puritans,  133;  persecution 
of,  137 ;  policy  and  religious  views  of  James 
I.,  139 ;  religious  views  of  John  Robinson, 
141 ;  determination  of  a  party  of  puritans  to 
seek  an  asylum  in  the  new  world,  142 ;  Ro- 
binson's  exhortation  to  them,  143  ;  the  Ply- 
mouth  colony,  145. 

Purrysburg,  in  S.  Carolina,  founded  by  Purry, 
a  native  of  Switzerland,  and  his  followers, 
ii.  83. 

Putnam,  Israel,  is  colonel  in  one  of  the  regi- 
ments furnished  by  Connecticut  for  the  war 
in  Canada,  ii.  285;  distinguishes  himself  at 
Lake  Cham  plain,  leaves  the  plough  to  serve 
his  country,  ii.  508. 

Quakers,  their  origin,  i.  210  ;  their  peculiari- 
ties, 212 ;  persecution  of  in  the  New  Eng- 
land States,  214;  condemned  to  the  loss  of 
an  ear,  214;  their  fanaticism,  215 ;  perse- 
cuted in  New  Jersey  by  Lord  Cornbury,  ii. 
22;  heavy  penalty  against  their  introduction 
into  Virginia,  90;  intolerant  laws  against, 
112  ;  their  resignation  of  civil  power,  255; 
in  1760,  formed  a  fifth  part  of  the  popula- 
tion of  Pennsylvania,  344  ;  conduct  of,  549 ; 
emancipation  of  slaves  by,  551 ;  many  traced 
their  lineage  to  the  most  ancient  nobility  in 
England,  550 ;  their  patriarchal  hospitality, 
550. 

Quebec,  siege  of,  ii.  289 ;  battle  of  the  heights 
of  Abraham,  293;  death  and  character  of 
General  Wolfe,  295 ;  efforts  to  recapture 
Quebec,  301. 

Quelch,  the  pirate,  and  his  accomplices,  tried 
in  Boston  and  executed,  ii,  53. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  his  efibrts  in  the  cause  of  in- 
dependence, ii.  501. 

Quo  Warranto,  writ  so  called,  i.  248;  recourse 
to  had  by  Charles  II.  in  the  case  of  Massa- 
chusetts,  251. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  his  adventures,  i.  36; 
obtains  a  patent  for  a  colony  in  America, 
37  ;  an  active  promoter  of  the  colonization 
of  Virginia,  38;  failure  of  first  colony  there 
and  second  attempt,  41 ;  assigns  his  patent 
to  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  43 ;  brings  into  fa- 
shion the  smoking  of  tobacco,  40,  note  ;  in- 
troduces the  potato  into  England,  42. 

Raleigh,  Gilbert,  brother  of  Sir  Walter,  ob- 
tains a  patent  for  discovery,  i.  37 ;  joins  his 
brother  in  fitting  out  an  expedition  to  Ame- 
rica, 37 ;  perishes  by  shipwreck  off  Cape 
Breton,  38. 

Randolph  complains  to  his  government  that 
the  navigation  Act  is  disregarded,  246;  is 


616 


INDEX. 


.    appointed  collector  of  the  customs  in  Bos- 
ton, 248 ;  visits  England,  252  ;  returns  with 
the  writ  Quo  Warranto,  253. 
Rasles,  Sebastian,  the  Jesuit,  his  accomplish, 
ments,  ii.  68  ;  instigates  the  Indians  against 
the  colonists,  69  ;   he  is  forced  to  fly,  71 ; 
is  killed  in  an  incursion  of  the  New  Eng- 
land  officers,  73. 
Rauch,  a   Moravian   missionary,  his   labours 
among  the  Indians  in  Connecticut  and  New 
York,  ii.  356. 
Rhode  Island,  purchased  of  the  Indians  for  a 
trifle,  i.  180 ;  surrender  of  its  charter,  259  ; 
affair   of   the   Gasper,   an    armed    British 
schooner,  467  ;  is  boarded  by  Brown,  a  mer- 
chant,  and  Whipple,  a  shipmaster,  and  set 
fire  to,  468  ;  population  of  in  1730,  17,935  ; 
in  1748,  32,773;  in  1753,  35,000;  state  of 
in  1765,  337;  population,  40,000,  338. 
Robinson,   John,   religious  views  of,   i.  141 ; 
exhortation  to  the  emigrants  on  their  pre- 
paring to  quit  for  America,  143. 
Rogers,  Commodore,   gallantly    repulses   the 
Spanish  fleet  from  New  Providence,  ii.  60. 

• ,  John,  establishes  a  sect  of  wild  en- 

thusiasts,    called    Rogerenes,    or    Singing 
Quakers,  ii.  95. 
Rolfe,  marries  Pocahontas,  i.  63. 
Ryswick,  treaty  of,  establishing  peace  between 

Britain  and  France,  i.  285. 
Salem,  citizens  of,  present  a  patriotic  remon- 
strance against  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  488  ; 
the  Massachusetts  Assembly  is  adjourned 
from  Boston  to  Salem,  489  ;  expediency  of 
a  general  congress  of  deputies  from  the 
States  agreed  upon,  490. 
Sassachus,  principal  sachem  of  the  Pequods, 

his  great  influence,  i.  174. 
Savannah,  foundation  laid  by  Oglethorpe,  ii. 

115. 
Say  and  Seal,  Lord,  projects  a  settlement  in 

Connecticut,  i.  171. 
Sayle,  Colonel  William,  conducts  the  expedi- 
tion for  founding  a  colony  at  Port  Royal, 
i.  356. 
Schuyler,  Colonel,  his  vigorous   measures  in 

New  England,  ii.  25. 
Shakers,  origin  of  the  sect  so  called,  ii.  480. 
Sherwood,  a  Quaker,  agent  for  Rhode  Island, 
makes  a  strong  remonstrance  against   the 
policy  of  England  in  regard  to  taxes,   ii. 
380. 
Shirley,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  projects 
the  reduction  of  Louisburg,  ii.  164;   plan 
proposed  to  the  general  court  of  Massachu- 
setts under  the  seal  of  an  oath  of  secresy, 
166;    passed    by   a   majority   of  a   single 
voice,  167;   the   command   of  the   expedi- 
tion  given  to  Colonel   William  Pepperell, 
169  ;  capture  of  Louisburg,  173  ;  his  recall, 
261. 
Shutes,  governor  of  Massachusetts,  violent  op- 
position to,  ii.  67 ;  his  vindictive  measures 
at  the  court  of  London,  74. 
Slave-trade,  introduced   into  England    under 
Elizabeth,  i.  35  ;  policy  of  importing  slaves 
into  America,  ii.  297. 
Smith,  Captain  John,  is  commissioned  by  the 


London  Company  to  form  a  settlement  in 
America,  i.  47 ;  his  superior  talents  and 
address,  48 ;  fortifies  Jamestown,  50 ;  is 
taken  prisoner  by  the  Indians,  50 ;  his  life 
saved  by  Pocahontas,  daughter  of  Powha- 
tan the  Indian  chief,  51  ;  prevents  the  de- 
sertion of  the  colony,  51 ;  explores  the  Bay 
of  Chesapeake,  53  ;  his  administration,  55 ; 
excites  jealousy,  and  is  superseded,  56 ; 
Lord  Delaware  appointed  governor,  57 ; 
Smith  returns  to  England,  58. 
Smith,  Thomas,  raised  to  the  dignity  of  land- 
grave of  Carolina,  i.  384;  introduces  the 
cultivation  of  rice,  385. 
Smith,  Adam,  advocates   the   prerogative  of 

Britain,  ii.  459. 
Somers,  Sir  George,  obtains  a  patent  for  ter- 
ritories   in   North    America,   i   32 ;   is  ap- 
pointed  temporary  governor  of  the  colony 
in  Virginia,  53. 
Sotftel,  Seth,  is  appointed  governor  of  Caro- 
lina, but  is  captured  on  his  voyage  by  the 
Algerines,   i.  367 ;   reaches   Carolina,   and 
gives  early  proof  of  the  badness  of  his  cha- 
racter, 368;   excites  public  indignation,  is 
deposed,    and    imprisoned,    368 ;    sent    to 
England,  and  sentenced  to  one  year's  ba- 
nishment,  368;    obtains   letters   of  recall, 
but  is  again  deposed,  382. 
Southampton,  Earl  of,  equips   an   expedition 

for  North  America,  i.  44. 
Spain,  Spanish  discoveries  and   conquests  in 
America,  i.  31 ;  intrigues  of  the  Spaniards 
in  Florida,  359  ;  difficulties  with,  127  ;  their 
schemes  of  invasion,  130  ;  invade  Florida, 
131 ;  result  disastrous  to  the  colonists,  133 ; 
invade  Georgia,  135;   are  opposed  by  Go- 
vernor Oglethorpe,  and  repulsed  with  great 
loss,  137. 
Spottiswoode,  governor  of  Virginia,  conducts 
an  expedition  to  explore   the  Appalachian 
chain,  ii.  42. 
Stamp  duties  proposed,  ii.  373;  parliamentary 
debates  on,  383  ;  passage  of  the  stamp  act, 
385;  repeal  of,  411. 
Stamford,    town    of,    settled    by    Davenport 

Eaton,  and  others,  i.  172. 
Stark,   John,   a   native   of  New   Hampshire, 
energetic  conduct  in  arousing  his  country, 
men,  ii.  508. 
Stevens,  Samuel,  succeeds  Drummond  as  go- 
vernor   of  Carolina,   i.  348 ;    dies,   and   ia 
succeeded  by  Cartwright,  i.  363. 
Stith,  his  history  of  Virginia,  i.  116. 
Story,   the    deputy    registrar   of  Boston,   his 
bouse  broken  open,  and  ali  his  papers  de- 
stroyed, ii.  394. 
Stoughton,  Captain,  defeats   the   Pequods,  i. 
174;  succeeds  Sir  William  Phips  as  lieu- 
tenant-governor, 283  ;  prepares  to  resist  the 
attack  of  Count  Frontignac,  284. 
Stuart,  Captain,  is   generously   ransomed   in 
the  Cherokee  war  by  an  Indian  chief  named 
the  Little  Carpenter,  and  conducted  in  safety 
to  Virginia,"  ii.  305,  note. 
Sullivan,  John,  his  intrepid    conduct  in  sur- 
prising  the  castle  of  Portsmouth  and  carry- 
ing  off  the  powder,  ii.  498. 


INDEX 


617 


Sweden,  Swedes  form  a  settlement  on  the 
Delaware,  i.  403 ;  conquests  of,  in  Dela. 
ware,  407. 

Tar,  early  and  extensive  manufacture  of  in 
New  Hampshire,  i.  294;  taxes  paid  in  this 
article,  294. 

Taxation,  schemes  of,  on  the  part  of  Britain, 
ii.  347  ;  project  of  a  domestic  tax,  371  ; 
proposed  stamp  duties,  373  ;  views  of  inter- 
nal and  external  taxation,  377  ;  colonial  pe- 
titions against  the  proposed  tax,  381 ;  par- 
liamentary debates  on  the  stamp  duties, 
383;  passage  of  the  stamp  act,  385;  repeal 
of  the  stamp  act,  411 ;  act  imposing  duties 
on  tea,  423  ;  partial  repeal  of,  455. 

Tea  duty  act,  attempt  to  enforce  it,  ii.  473; 
resisted  in  Boston  and  other  quarters,  474. 

Tennison,  archbishop  of  Canterbury,  is  active 
in  furnishing  religious  instruction  to  the 
inhabitants  of  Charleston,  &c.,  i.  3S9. 

Theach,  John,  called  Blackbeard,  his  adven- 
tures  and  death,  ii.  56. 

Thompson,  Benjamin,  a  native  of  Massachu- 
setts, embraces  the  cause  of  the  parent  state, 
and  receives  the  honour  of  knighthood,  ii. 
353;  better  known  as  Count  Rumford,  a 
title  which  he  received  from  the  Elector  of 
Bavaria,  353. 

Ticonderoga,  unsuccessful  attack  upon,  ii. 
279  ;  Lord  Howe  falls  at  the  first  fire,  279 ; 
dreadfiil  slaughter  at,  280. 

Titular  honours,  dislike  of  by  Americans,  ii. 
299. 

Tobacco  first  brought  into  England  by  Cap- 
tain  Lane  and  his  associates,  i.  25 ;  is  pa- 
tronized by  Sir  W.  Raleigh,  and  grows  into 
fashion  in  Europe,  26. 

Tomochichi,  his  conference  with  governor 
Oglethorpe,  ii.  115;  himself  and  his  queen 
accompany  Oglethorpe  to  England,  where 
they  are  presented  to  the  king,  and  his  elo- 
quence on  the  occasion,  116. 

Tories,  appellation  given  to  all  functionaries 
and  others  who  supported  the  British  pre- 
tensions, ii.  390. 

Townsend,  Colonel,  a  gallant  officer,  is  killed 
by  a  cannon-ball  in  reconnoitering  fort 
Ticonderoga,  ii.  286. 

Townsend,  General,  takes  the  command  after 
the  death  of  Wolfe,  ii.  296. 

Trade  Laws,  rigorous  enforcement  of,  ii.  433. 

Trott,  Chief  Justice  of  South  Carolina,  a  man 
of  talent,  but  unprincipled,  ii.  57;  his  in- 
trigues, 57. 

Tryon,  Governor  of  N.  York,  seeks  shelter  on 
board  a  British  ship-of-war,  ii.  519. 

Utrecht,  peace  of,  ii.  37. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  joins  the  New  England  co- 
lony, i.  170. 

Vaudreuil,  Governor  of  Canada,  proposition  of 
neutrality  between  Canada  and  New  Eng- 
land, ii.  23 ;  makes  a  last  stand  in  defence 
of  Canada,  302. 

Vaughan,  George,  a  citizen  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, recommends  the  extension  of  the  Bri- 
tish  land-tax  to  New  England,  ii.  45;  is 
made  deputy -governor  of  the  province,  but 
shortly  after  dismissed,  46. 
Vol.  II.  78 


Verazzaii,  an  Italian  navigator,  attempts  dis- 
coveries in  America,  i.  341. 

Vermont,  origin  of,  ii.  209. 

Vetch,  Colonel,  his  effective  command  in  the 
conquest  of  Acadia  and  Port  Royal,  ii.  29. 

Villabon,  Governor  of  a  French  settlement  on 
St.  John's  river,  tampers  with  the  Norridge- 
wock  Indians,  and  encroaches  upon  the  Bri- 
tish settlements,  ii.  12. 

Virginia,  so  named  in  honour  of  Queen  Eli? 
abeth,  i.  38;  first  settlement  at  Roanoke,  39 
misfortunes  of  the  colonists,  40 ;  their  re- 
turn, 41  ;  further  attempts  at  colonization, 
41 ;  terminate  unsuccessfully,  42  ;  Gosnold's 
voyage,  43  ;  its  effects,  44 ;  the  London  and 
Plymouth  companies,  45 ;  tenor  of  their 
charters,  46  ;  colonial  code  of  James  I.,  47 ; 
the  first  body  of  colonists  embarked  by  the 
London  company,  48 ;  arrive  in  the  Bay  of 
Chesapeake,  and  found  Jamestown,  48 ;  dis- 
sensions of  the  colonists,  48  ;  hostility  of  the 
Indians,  49  ;  distress  and  disorder  of  the  co- 
lony,  49  ;  energetic  character  and  important 
services  of  Captain  Smith,  49  ;  he  is  taken 
prisoner  by  the  Indians,  50 ;  is  rescued  from 
destruction  by  Pocahontas,  51 ;  his  influence 
over  the  Indians,  52;  he  preserves  the  colo- 
ny, 52  ;  he  explores  the  Bay  of  Chesapeake, 
53 ;  elected  president  of  the  colony,  54 ; 
his  effective  administration,  55 ;  intrigues 
against  him,  56 ;  Lord  Delaware  appointed 
governor,  57 ;  Newport,  Gates,  and  Somers, 
sent  to  preside  till  Lord  Delaware's  arrival, 
57;  are  wrecked  on  the  coast  of  Bermudas, 
57 ;  Captain  Smith  returns  to  England,  58 ; 
anarchy  and  famine  at  Jamestown,  59 ; 
Gates  and  Somers  arrive  from  Bermudas, 
60 ;  abandonment  of  the  colony  determined 
upon,  60 ;  prevented  by  the  arrival  of  Lord 
Delaware,  61 ;  his  wise  administration,  61 ; 
his  return  to  England,  61 ;  Sir  Thomas 
Dale's  administration,  61 ;  martial  law  esta- 
blished, 62  ;  expeditions  against  Port  Royal 
and  New  York,  65  ;  cultivation  of  tobacco, 
65;  first  assembly  of  representatives  con- 
vened in  Virginia,  67  ;  new  constitution  of 
the  colony,  68  ;  introduction  of  negro  slave- 
ry, 68;  migration  of  young  women  from 
England  to  the  colony,  69 ;  Indian  con- 
spiracy, 71 ;  massacre  of  the  colonists,  73; 
dispute  between  the  king  and  the  colony, 
73 ;  dissensions  of  the  London  company,  75 ; 
the  company  dissolved,  77 ;  effect  of  the 
same,  78 ;  the  king  assumes  the  government 
of  the  colony,  80 ;  his  death,  80 ;  Charles  I 
pursues  his  father's  arbitrary  policy,  80 ;  ty- 
rannical government  of  Sir  John  Harvey, 
81 ;  Sir  William  Berkeley  appointed  go- 
vernor, 83 ;  the  provincial  liberties  restored, 
84 ;  Virginia  espouses  the  royal  cause,  85 ; 
subdued  by  the  long  parliament,  86 ;  re- 
straints imposed  on  the  trade  of  the  colony, 
87 ;  revolt  of  the  colony,  89 ;  Sir  William 
Berkeley  resumes  the  government,  89  ;  re- 
storation of  Charles  II.,  89  ;  the  navigu.iion 
Act,  91 ;  its  impolicy,  92 ;  discontent  and 
distress  of  the  colonists,  94 ;  naturalization 
of  aliens,  96;  progress  of  the  provincial  dis- 
2a» 


616 


INDEX 


content,  97;  Indian  hostilities,  97;  insur- 
rections,  98 ;  Bacon's  rebellion,  99  ;  death 
of  Bacon,  101  ;  rigorous  punishment  of  the 
rebels,  102  ;  restoration  of  tranquillity,  103  ; 
bill  of  attainder  passed  by  the  colonial  as- 
sembly against  Sir  Wm.  Berkeley,  105  ;  he 
is  superseded  by  Colonel  Jeffreys,  106 ;  ty- 
ranny and  rapacity  of  Effingham,  the  new 
governor,  107 ;  dispute  with  the  assembly, 
108  ;  effects  of  the  British  revolution  on  the 
colonies,  109  ;  complaints  of  the  colonies 
against  their  governors  discouraged  by 
King  William,  110  ;  civil  and  domestic  state 
of  Virginia,  111;  population,  112;  laws, 
113;  literature,  115;  manners,  118;  is  dis- 
appointed in  William  III.,  who  connives  at 
the  tyranny  of  Lord  Effingham,  ii.  3;  Ni- 
cholson's ambitious  schemes,  7;  the  Tra- 
montane order,  or  Knights  of  the  Golden 
Horseshoe,  ii.  43 ;  printing  first  introduced 
in  1729,  and  first  Virginian  newspaper  ap- 
peared at  Williamsburg,  in  1736,  ii.  91 ; 
Earl  of  Orkney,  his  government,  41 ;  state 
of,  91 ;  the  Ohio  company,  213;  French  pre- 
tensions in  the  Ohio  valley,  227 ;  mission 
of  Washington  to  the  French,  229  ;  stockade 
fort  erected  by  him  at  Great  Meadows,  230 ; 
unsuccessful  attack  upon  Fort  Duquesne, 
230 ;  quarrel  with  New  York,  237 ;  Brad- 
dock's  expedition,  243 ;  his  defeat,  245 ;  ra- 
vages of  the  Virginia  frontier,  247 ;  war 
with  the  Cherokees,  303 ;  conclusion  of  the 
war,  309  ;  treaty  of  Paris,  319  ;  enthusiastic 
rejoicings,  321 ;  Patrick  Henry,  323 ;  Indian 
jealousies,  325  ;  general  Indian  war,  327 ; 
treaty  of  peace,  333 ;  state  of  Virginia  in 
1764,  337  ;  resolution  of  the  assembly,  389  ; 
renewed  resolutions,  441 ;  a  war  with  the 
Ohio  Indians,  peace  restored,  482 ;  Hamp- 
den-Sidney  college  established,  ii.  481 ;  a 
deep  impression  produced  by  Jefferson's 
"Summary  view  of  the  rights  of  British 
America,"  487  ;  the  Earl  of  Dunraore  suc- 
ceeds the  popular  Lord  Botetourt,  and  dis- 
solves the  provincial  assembly,  488 ;  previ- 
ous to  their  separation,  the  members  recom- 
mend all  the  American  States  to  meet  an- 
nually  in  general  congress,  488 ;  the  day  of 
the  first  operation  of  the  Boston  port  bill,  is 
kept  as  a  day  of  humiliation  and  prayer, 
488 ;  convention  declares  that  they  bore  true 
faith  to  the  king,  and  would  disband  when 
the  liberties  of  Arnerica  were  restored,  520  ; 
violent  proceedings  of  Lord  Dunmore,  521 ; 
George  Wythe  exerts  himself  in  the  public 
cause,  521. 

Wadsworth,  Captain,  seizes  the  charter  of 
Rhode  Island,  when  its  surrender  was  de- 
manded by  the  government,  and  conceals  it 
in  an  old  oak,  i.  261, 

Waddell,  Colonel,  his  vigorous  conduct  against 
the  Cherokees,  ii.  3U3. 

Warner,  Setli,  assists  in  the  seizure  of  Crown 
Point,  ii.  510. 

Warren,  Commodore,  assists  in  the  capture  of 
Louisburg,  ii.  170 ;  his  services  rewarded 
with  the  title  of  baronet,  174. 


Warren,  Dr.  Joseph,  author  of  the  famous 
SuffiDlk  resolution,  ii.  492;  he  falls  in  the 
battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  492. 

Washington,  his  mission,  in  his  nineteenth 
year,  from  Governor  Dinwiddle  to  the  com- 
mander of  the  French  Fort  on  the  river  Le 
Boeuf,  ii.  229  ;  performs  his  mission  with 
vigour  and  ability,  229 ;  erects  a  stockade 
fort  at  the  Great  Meadows,  230 ;  projects 
the  construction  of  forts  at  points  selected, 
231 ;  advances  towards  the  new  French 
fort  Duquesne,  230  ;  the  expedition  unsuc- 
cessful, but  Washington  obtains  a  vote 
of  thanks  for  his  zeal,  230  ;  resents  the  ex- 
tension of  the  British  Mutiny  Act  to  Ame- 
rica, 249 ;  his  skill  and  presence  of  mind 
on  occasion  of  Braddock's  defeat,  246  ;  the 
command  of  the  Virginian  forces  given  to 
nim,  247  ;  in  the  predatory  warfare  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio,  qualifies  himself  for  the 
arduous  task  reserved  for  him,  247  ;  Wash- 
ington declared  commander-in-chief  of  the 
revolutionary  war,  516  ;  takes  up  his  head- 
quarters in  New  York,  544. 

W^eisser,  Conrad,  is  despatched  to  treat  with 
the  Six  Nations,  ii.  356. 

Wesley,  John,  accompanies  Governor  Ogle- 
thorpe to  Georgia,  ii.  121  ;  builds  the  town 
of  Ebenezer,  122  ;  his  rigid  manners  dis- 
please the  colonists,  123;  he  leaves  for  Eng- 
land, 124, 

West,  Joseph,  appointed  temporary  governor 
of  Carolina,  i.  357. 

West,  Governor,  convokes  a  parliament  at 
Charleston,  ii.  371 ;  incurs  displeasure  by 
selling  Indian  captives,  371. 

West,  Benjamin,  his  origin,  ii.  352  ;  goes  to 
Rome  and  rises  to  the  head  of  his  profes- 
sion, 353. 

Weston  attempts  to  settle  a  rival  colony  in 
New  England,  i.  148 ;  its  failure,  and  misery 
consequent  on  the  same,  149. 

Wbeatly,  General,  one  of  King  Charles's 
judges,  escapes  to  America,  i.  219. 

Whigs,  the  title  assumed  by  the  partisans  of 
American  liberty,  ii.  390. 

Whipple,  a  ship-master,  boards  with  a  party 
in  whale-boats  the  Gasper  war-schooner, 
and  sets  her  on  fire,  ii.  467. 

White,  Captain,  forms  a  settlement  on  Chesa- 
peake Bay,  i.  41 ;  is  appointed  governor  of 
the  city  of  Raleigh  in  Virginia,  42. 

Whitfield,  George,  visits  America,  ii.  121 ;  a 
remarkable  revival  of  religion  follows  his 
labours,  175. 

Wilkinson,  Henry,  appointed  governor  of  the 
northern  portion  of  Carolina,  i.  367. 

Williams,  Roger,  emigrates  to  New  England, 
i.  166;  theological  discussions,  166;  he  is 
banished  from  the  colony,  168. 

Wilmington,  Swedish  church  there,  one  of  the 
oldest  in  North  America,  i.  550. 

Winthrop,   governor,   his    impeachment   and    , 
defence,  i.  197. 

,  John,  a  native  of  Boston,  a  profound    * 

mathematician,  ii.  216;   his  friendly  rela- 
tions with  Charles,  ii.  226 ;  professor  of  Har- 


INDEX. 


619 


vard 
252. 


College,  an  astronomer  of  merit,  ii. 


Witchcraft  delusion,  the,  in  Massachusetts, 
i.  274 ;  its  origin,  275 ;  spread  of  the  delu- 
sion, 276 ;  trial  and  execution  of  the  ac- 
cused, 277;  nineteen  hanged  and  one  pressed 
to  death,  279 ;  charges  preferred  against 
Lady  Phips  and  some  of  the  nearest  rela- 
tions of  Dt.  Increase  Mather,  279 ;  an  as- 
sembly of  divines  convoked  by  the  governor, 
who  recommended  the  rigorous  prosecution 
of  persons  accused  of  witchcraft,  279  ;  Sir 
William  Phips  reprieves  the  three  persons 
last  convicted,  280  ;  house  of  assembly  ap- 
points a  general  fast  and  supplication  for 
the  pardon  of  errors  committed,  280;  Paris, 
the  minister,  who  had  b'een  the  first  to  insti- 
gate these  proceedings,  becomes  an  object 
of  public  indignation,  resigns  his  charge, 
and  quits  Salem,  281. 

Witherspoon,  Dr.,  advocates  the  cause  of 
American  liberty,  ii.  459. 

Wolfe,  General,  issues  a  proclamation  to  the 
Canadians,  ii.  289 ;  carries  the  Heights  of 
Abraham,  293;  battle  of  Quebec,  294; 
death  and  character,  295. 


WoUaston,  Captain,  attempts  the  establish- 
ment of  a  colony  in  New  England,  i.  149 ; 
its  failure,  149. 

Wolves,  New  England  long  infested  with,  i. 
295  ;  bounties  for  their  destruction,  295. 

Wooster,  David,  projects  the  taking  of  Ticon 
deroga  and  Crown  Point,  ii.  509. 

Wright,  Sir  James,  holds  a  convention  with 
the  Creeks  and  Cherokees,  for  the  cession 
of  their  lands,  ii.  482. 

Wythe,  George,  one  of  the  foremost  of 
the  Virginians  in  the  public  cause,  ii. 
521. 

Yale  College  founded,  i.  291. 

Yeamans,  Sir  John,  settles  with  emigrants 
from  Barbadoes  on  the  southern  bank 
of  Cape  Fear,  i.  348  ;  his  authority  ex- 
tended, 357 ;  is  accused  of  mismanagement 
362. 

Yeardly,  Sir  George,  assumes  the  administra- 
tion of  Virginia,  i.  66  ;  made  governor,  81. 

Yearmans,  drives  off  the  Spaniards  who  in- 
vade  Carolina,  i.  360. 

Zinzendorf,  protector  and  bishop  of  the  Mo- 
ravians, sends  a  colony  to  Georgia,  ii. 
119. 


THE      END. 


CATALOGUE 


OF 

BLANCHARD  AND  LEA'S  PUBLICATIONS: 

JULY,  1851. 

SPENCE'S  EQUITY  JURISDICTION- (Now  Complete.) 

VOLUME  II.  JUST  ISSUED. 

EQUITABLE  JURISDICTION  O^THE  COURT  OF  CHANCERY. 

BY  GEORGE  SPENCE,  Esq.,  Queen's  Counsel. 

VOLUME    I.  .r.w>{M(i 

COMPRISING  ITS  RISE,  PROGRESS,  AND  FINAL  ESTABLISHMENT. 
To  which  is  prefixed,  with  a  view  to  the  elucidation  of  the  main  subject,  a  concise  account  of  the 
Leading  Doctrines  of  the  Common  Law,  and  of  the  Course  of  Procedure  in  the  Courts  of 
Common  Law,  with  regard  to  Civil  Rights;  with   an  attempt  to  trace  them  to 
their  sources  j  and  in  which  the  various  Alterations  made  by  the  Legis- 
lature down  to  the  present  day  are  noticed. 
VOLUME    II. 
COMPRISING    EQUITABLE   ESTATES    AND    INTERESTS;    THEIR   NATURES, 
QUALITIES  AND  INCIDENTS. 
In  which  is  incorporated,  so  far  as  relates  to  these  subjects,  the  substance  of"  Maddock's  Treatise 
on  the  Principles  and  Practice  of  the  High  Court  of  Chancery." 

The  whole  forming  two  very  large  octavo  volumes,  of  over  Sixteen  Hundred  large  pages,  strongly 

bound  in  the  best  law  sheep. 

In  the  first  volume,  the  History  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  has  been  brought  down  to  the  time 
when  its  modern  jurisdiction  was  established,  and  the  various  heads  under  w^ich  its  jurisdiction 
may  be  classed,  were  there  stated.  The  object  of  the  second  volume  is  to  illustrate  the  principles 
upon  which  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Courts  of  Chancery  is  now  exercised,  in  regard  to  what  are,  for 
the  purposes  of  this  work,  designated  as  "  Equitable  Estates  and  Interests." 

Some  three  years  ago,  we  had  occasion  to  notice  the  first  volume  of  this  work.  (4  West.  Law.  Jour.  96.) 
We  then  said,  "The  second  volume  will  treat  the  subject  of  Chancery  jurisdiclion  practically  as  it  is  now 
exercised;  and,  jodginj  from  what  we  have  now  seen,  we  should  think  the  whole  work  would  prove  to  be 
by  far  the  most  learned  and  elaborate  work  yet  written  upon  the  subject."  This  prediction  has  been  fully 
realized  by  the  appearance  of  the  second  volume.  It  seems  to  exhaust  the  learning  connected  with  all  the 
suhjectsof  which  it  treats.  The«e  sufficiently  appear  from  the  title-page.  The  leading  ca?e8  are  so  fully 
anaiy/ed,  a.s  almost  to  supersede  the  necessity  of  consulting  the  reports.—  Wf^tern  Law  Journal,  April  165U. 

Tlius  he  has  given  us  the  most  perfect  and  faithful  history  of  the  English  Law,  especially  in  remote  ages, 
which  has  ever  been  offered  to  the  legal  profession.  Reeves  is  undoubtedly  more  fu  land  particular  in  minute 
details,  but  the  present  is  the  only  work  to  which  we  can  have  recourse  for  a  satisfactory  and  philosophical 
acquaintance  with  the  growth  of  English  jurisprudence.  To  the  professional  lawyer,  no  recommendation  is 
necessary  to  gain  favor  for  a  production  which  will  elucidate  much  that  is  dark  m  the  history  and  practice 
♦♦♦'  the  law,  and  lurnish  him  with  the  history  and  growth  of  the  courts  in  which  he  practices,  and  the  princi- 
ples which  it  is  his  duty  to  expound.  We  will  now  leave  this  inestimable  woik,  with  a  general  commenda- 
tion and  a  hearty  concurrence  with  the  eulogy  pronounced  by  the  London  Jurists  trusting,  less  on  account 
of  its  own  meri's,  than  for  the  credit  of  the  profession  in  Virginia,  that  lawyers  at  least  will  not  neglect  to 
study  its  pages  most  diligently.— iJicAwonti  WTi'g'.  i  ^j*/ 

From  Pro/.  Simnn  Greenleaf.  ^^      .        ^.. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  works  on  English  Law  issued  from  the  American  press,  and  I  earnestly  hope 
that  your  enterprise  will  be  liberally  rewarded  by  the  patronage  of  the  profession. 


ADDISON    ON_CONTRACTS. 

A  TREA.TISE  ON  THE  LAW  OF  CONTRACTS  AND  RIGHTS  AND  LIABILITIES  EX  CON- 
TRACTU. By  C.  G.  AoDistkN,  Esq.,  of  the  Inner  Temple,  Barrister  at  Law.  In  one  volume,  octavo,  hand- 
somely bound  in  law  sheep. 

In  this  treatise  upon  the  most  constantly  and  frequently  administered  branch  of  law,  the  author  has  collected, 
arranged,  and  developed  in  an  intelligible  and  popular  form,  the  rules  and  principles  of  the  Law  of  Contracts, 
and  has  supported,  illustrated,  or  exemplified  them  by  references  to  nearly  four  thousand  adjudged  cases. 
It  comprises  the  Rights  and  Liabilities  of  Seller  and  Purchaser;  Landlord  and  Tenant;  Letter  and  Hirer  of 
Chattels;  Borrower  and  Lender;  Workman  and  Employer;  Master,  Servant,  and  Apprentice;  Principal, 
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\  — 

::,;:/ :f.h;{i:5Xv^i  HILL    ONJTRUSTEES. 

A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON  THE  LAW  RELATING  TOTRUSTEE=«;  their  powers  duties,  pri^i- 
leges,  and  liabilities.     By  James  Hill,  E.sq.,  of  the  Iiuier  Temple.  Barrister  at  Law.    Edited  by  Fkawcis  J. 
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UIL.L.IARD    0]¥   REAL.    ESTATE— (Lately  Issued.) 

THE   AMERICAN   LAW~OF  REAL  PROPERTY. 

»G /^  V' t  ?v.  i  Second  edition,  revised,  corrected,  and  enlarged.   J  /^I^^li-L 
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Law  of  Real  Estate  which  has  any  applicability  in  this  country  ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  embodies 
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TAYLOR'S  MEDICAL  JURISPRUDENCE— New  Edition,  Just  Issued. 

A  PRACTICAL  TREATISE  ON    MEDICAL  JURISPRUDENCE     By  Alfred  S.  Taylor.     With  nu- 
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A   NEW   LAW  DICTIONARY, 

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practice  of  the  courts,  and  in  the  parliamentary  proceedings  of  the  House  of  Lords  and  Commons;  to  which 
is  added,  an  outline  of  an  action  at  law  and  of  a  suit  in  equity.  By  Henry  James  Holthouse.  Esq.,  of  the 
Inner  Temple,  Special  Pleader.  Edited  from  the  second  and  enlarged  London  edition,  with  numerous 
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600  pages,  double  columns,  handsomely  bound  in  law  sheep. 
Its  object  principally  is  to  impress  accurately  and  distinctly  upon  the  mind  the  meaning  of  the  technical 

terms  of  the  law,  and  as  such  can  hardly  fail  to  be  generally  useful.— Penmi/^fama  Law  Journal. 

WHEATON'S    INTERNATIONAL    LAW. 

ELEMENTS  OF  INTERNATIONAL  LAW.      By  Henry  Wheaton,  LL.  D.,  Minister  of  the 
United  States  at  the  Court  of  Russia,  &c.     Third  edition,  revised  and  corrected.     In  one  large 
and  beautiful  octavo  volume  of  650  pages,  extra  cloth,  or  fine  law  sheep. 
Mr.  Wheaton's  work  is  indispensable  to  every  diplomatist,  statesman,  and  lawyer,  and  necessary  indeed 

to  all  public  men.    To  every  philosophic  and  lil)eral  mind,  the  study  must  be  an  attractive,  and  in  the  hand* 

of  our  author  it  is  a  delightful  one. — North  American. 

.:-■>.  /A'cl.ii.  ■ .i:ih-    i 

''"*   '*'  '^  A*=  NEW    WORK    ON    COURTS    MARTIAL,      '^'^■;l 

A  TREATISE  ON  AMERICAN  MILITARY  LAW,  AND  THE  PRACTICE  OF  COURTS- 
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Lieutenant  United  States  Artillery.     In  one  octavo  volume,  extra  cloth,  or  law  sheep. 

This  work  stands  relatively  to  American  Military  Law  in  the  same  position  that  Blackstone's  Commenta- 
ries^ stand  to  Common  Law.—  JJ.  S.  Gazette. 

CAMPBELL'S    LORD    CHANCELLORS.  , 

LIVES  OF  THE  LORD  CHANCELLORS  AND  KEEPERS  OF  THE  GREAT  SEAL  OF  ENGLAND, 
from  the  earliest  times  to  the  Reign  of  King  George  IV.  By  John  Lokd  Campbell,  A.  M.,F.R.S.E.  Com- 
plete in  seven  very  neat  volumes,  crown  octavo,  extra  cloth. 


CAMPBELL'S  CHIEF  JUSTICES— (Now  Ready.)  t% 

LIVES  OF  THE  CHIEF  JUSTICES  OF  ENGLAND,  from  the  Norman  Conquest  to  the   Death  of  Lord 
Mansfield.    In  two  handsome  crown  octavo  volumes,  extra  cloth.    (To  match  the  "  Chancellors.") 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  NEW  T\JBLICA.T10NS.— (History  and  Biography.)     3 

«.-  ■ 

CAMPBEIil^'S  CHIEF  JUSTICES— (Xow  Ready.) 

CHIEF  JUSTICFXor  ENGLAND, 

From  the  Norman  Conquest  to  the  Death  of  Lord  Mansfield. 
BY  LORD  CHIEF  JUSTICE  CAMPBELL. 

In  two  very  neat  vols.,  crown  8vo.,  extra  cloth,  !^'     IT  i>'  "/' 

To  match  the  "Lives  of  the  Ohancellors, "  of  the  same  author. 
In  this  work  the  author  has  displayed  the  same  patient  investigation  of  historical  facts,  depth  of 
research,  and  quick  appreciation  of  character  which  have  rendered  his  previous  volumes  so  de- 
servedly popular.  Though  the  "  Lives  of  the  Chancellors"  embrace  a  long  line  of  illustrious  per- 
sonages intimately  connected  with  the  history  of  England,  they  leave  something  still  to  be  filled  up 
to  complete  the  picture,  and  it  is  this  that  the  author  has  attempted  in  the  present  work.  Although 
it  naturally  presents  greater  interest  to  lawyers  than  to  the  rest  of  the  public,  still  the  vast  amount 
of  curious  personal  details  concerning  the  eminent  men  whose  biographies  it  contains,  the  lively 
sketches  of  interesting  periods  of  history,  and  the  graphic  and  vivid  style  of  the  author,  render  it 
a  work  of  great  attraction  for  the  student  of  history  and  general  reader. 

The  followiii":  eminent  men  are  the  subjects  of  this  work  : — 

Odo  first  Chief  Justiciar.— William  FitzOsborne.— William  de  Warrene.— Richard  de  Benefacta. — 
William  de  Canlefo.—Flambard.— Roger,  Bishop  of  Salisbury.— Ralph  Basset. — Prince  Henry.— Richard  de 
Luci.— Robert.  Earl  of  Leicester— Ranulphus  de  Glanville  — Hugh  Pusar.— William  Longchamp.— Walter 
Hubert— Geoffrey  Fiiz  Peter.— Peter  de  Rupibus.— Hubert  de  Burgh  — Siephen  de  Segrave  —  Hujjh  le  Des- 
pencer.— Philip  Basset — Henry  de  Bracton. —Ralph  de  Hengham  — De  Wayland—De  Thornton.— Roger 
le  Brabancon.— Henry  le  Scrope.— Henry  de  Staunton— Sir  Robert  Parnyng.— Sir  AVilliam  de  Thorpe. — 
Sir  William  Share?hall.— Sir  Henry  Green.- Sir  John  Ktiyvet.— Sir  John  de  Cavendish —Sir  Robert  Tre- 
sillian.— Sir  Robert  Belknappe.— Sir  William  Thimyng- Sir  William  Gascoigne— Sir  William  Hank  ford. 
—Sir  John  Foriescue— Sir  John  Markham.— Sir  Thomas  Billing.— Sir  John  Hussey.— Sir  John  Fineux. — 
Sir  John  Fitzjames  — Sir  Edward  Montague.— Sir  James  Dyer.— Sir  Robert  Cadyii— Sir  Christopher  Wray. 
—Sir  John  Popham.— Sir  Thomas  Fleming.— Sir  Edward  Coke  -  Sir  Henry  Moniagu.—  Sir  James  Ley.— Sir 
Randolph  Crewe.— Sir  Nicholas  Hyde— Sir  Thomas  Richardson.— Sir  John  Brampston  — S  r  Robert  Heath. 
—Rolle.— Glynn. — Newdegate.  — Oliver  St.  John  — Bradshawe.— Sir  Robert  Foster.— Sir  Robert  Hyde.—Sir 
John  Kelynge— Sir  Matthew  Hale.— Sir  Richard  Raynsford — Scroggs.— Sir  Francis  Pemberton.— Sir  Ed- 
mund Saunders.— Jeffreys.— Sir  Edward  Herbert.— Sir  Robert  Wright.- Sir  John  Holt -Sir  Thomas  Parker. 
—Sir  John  Pratt.— Lord  Raymond— Lord  Hard wicke.— Sir  William  Lee.— Sir  Dudley  Ryder.— Sir  John 
Willes.— Wilmot.— Lord  Mansfield. 

Although  the  period  of  history  embraced  by  these  volumes  had  been  previously  traversed  by  the  recent 
work  of  the  noble  and  learned  author,  and  a  great  portion  of  its  most  exciting  incidents,  especially  those  of 
a  constitutional  nature,  there  narrated,  yet  in  "The  Lives  of  the  Chief  Jusiices'  there  is  a  fund  both  of  inter- 
esting information  and  valuable  matter,  which  renders  the  book  well  worthy  of  perusal  by  every  one  who 
desires  to  obtain  an  acquaintance  with  the  constitutional  history  of  his  country,  or  aspires  to  the  rank  of 
either  a  statesman  or  a  lawyer.  Few  lawyers  of  Lord  Campbell's  eminence  could  have  produced  such  a 
work  as  he  has  put  forth.  None  but  lawyers  of  his  experience  and  acquirements  could  have  compiled  a 
work  combining  the  same  interest  as  a  narration,  to  the  public  generally,  with  the  same  amount  of  practical 
information,  for  professional  aspirants  more  particularly.— .Br/mnma. 


CAMPBELL'S    LORD    CHANCELLORS. 

LIVES  OF  THE  LORD  CHANCELLORS 

AND 

KEEPERS  OF  THE  GREAT  SEAL  OF  ENGLAND,  , 

FROM 

,.,..„.    THE  EARLIEST  TIMES  TO  THE  REIGN  OF  KING  GEORGE  IY..f.„..i  / 

^ufj-^f  BY  JOHN  LORD  CAMPBELL,  A.  M.,  F.  R.  S.  E.        :—'«,->' 

'inrai  Complete  in  seven  handsome  crown  octavo  volumes,  extra  cloth. 

,•-,.;    Volumes  Four  and  Five,  and  Six  and  Seven  may  still  be  had  separate  to  complete  sets. 

Of  the  solid  merit  of  the  work  our  judgment  may  be  gathered  from  what  has  already  been  said.  We  will 
add,  that  from  its  infinite  fund  of  anecdote,  and  happy  variety  of  style,  the  book  addresses  itself  with  equal 
claims  to  the  mere  greneral  reader,  as  to  the  legal  or  historical  inquirer;  and  while  we  avoid  the  stereotyped 
commonplace  of  affirming  that  no  library  can  be  complete  without  it,  we  feel  constrained  to  afford  it  a  higher 
Uibule  by  pronouncing  it  entitled  to  a  distinguished  place  on  the  shelves  of  every  scholar  who  is  fortunate 
enough  to  possess  it.—  Frazer^s  Magazine. 

A  work  which  will  take  its  place"  in  our  libraries  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  valuable  contributions  to 
the  literature  of  the  present  A-a.Y ■— Athenceum. 

A  work  which  we  shall  regard  as  both  an  ornament  and  an  honor  to  our  library.  A  history  of  the  Lord 
Chancellors  of  England  from  the  institution  of  the  office,  is  necessarily  a  history  of  the  Constitution,  the 
Court,  and  the  Jurisprudence  of  the  Kingdom,  and  these  volumes  teem  with  a  world  of  collateral  matter  of 
the  liveliest  character  for  the  general  reader,  as  well  as  with  much  of  the  deepest  interest  for  the  profes- 
sional or  philosophical  xmnA.—  Saturday  Courier. 

The  brilliant  success  of  this  work  in  England  is  by  no  means  greater  than  its  merits.  It  is  certainly  the 
most  brilliant  contribution  to  Engli.sh  history  made  within  our  recollection;  it  has  the  charm  and  freedom  p 
Biography  combined  with  the  elaborate  and  careful  comprehensiveness  of  History.— JV.  Y.  Tribune..        ''■  ' 


MEMOIRS  OF  THE  REIGN  OF  GEORGE  IF,  from  hi?  Accession  to  the  death  of  Queen  Caroline,  y- 
John  Lord  Hervey.    Edited,  from  the  original  MSS.,  by  the  Right  Hon.  John  Wilson  Croker.    la' 
handsome  royal  12mo.  volumes,  extra  cloth.  ^ 

WaLPOLE'S  memoirs  of  THE  REIGN  OF  GEORGE  III,  now  first  published  from  the  origina' 
In  two  handsome  octavo  volumes,  extra  cloth. 


4  BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  TVBUCATl01^S.~(mstory  and  BiograpJiy.) 

IMPORTANT    NEW    WORK,    Nearly  Ready. 

HISTORY  GF  NORMANRY  AND  OF  ENGLAND. 

•    ■  '  '  BY  SIR  FRANCIS  PALGRAVE,  •  i-i  -'' 

r^-  ifT     Author  of  "Rise  and  Progress  of  ihe  English  Commonwealth,'' &c.        , -j' '     ,,        rf 

In  handsome  crown  octavo. 
"Xearly  Ready,  Vol.  I.  The  General  Relations  of  Mediaeval  Europe;  the  Carlovingian  Empire, 
and  the  Danish  Expeditions  in  the  Gauls,  until  the  establishment  of  Rollo. 

Vols.  II.  and  III.  are  in  a  state  of  forward  preparation,  and  will  shortly  follow. 

A  WEW  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM  PENW.    (Wow  Ready.) 

WICLilAM  PENN, 

AN  HISTORICAL  BIOGRAPHY,  FROM  NEW  SOURCES ; 
With  an  extra  Chapter  on  the  "Macaulay  Charges." 

BY  W.  HEPWORTH  DIXON,  ,  ^,,;,;  ,^,.,^,  ,  , 

Author  of  "John  Howard  and  the  Prison  World  of  Europe,"  &c.  ^''.'^    • 

In  one  very  neat  volume,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth. 

The  volnme  before  us  dematids  especial  notice  for  two  reasons — iii  the  first  place,  it  is  an  elaborate  bio- 
graphy of  William  Penn,  exhibiting  great  research,  and  bringing  logeiher  a  large  amount  of  curious  and 
original  information  ;  in  the  second,  it  makes  an  undeniable  exposure  of  blunder.*  committed  by  Mr.  Macau- 
lay  in  reference  to  its  hero,  which  will  go  far  to  compromise  his  character  as  a  historian.  This  latter  sub- 
ject is  of  much  interest  and  innportanee,  as  Mr.  Dixon  discusses  Mr  Macaulay's  charges  against  Penn,  and 
reinsiates  the  character  of  the  latter  on  that  moral  elevation  from  which  it  had  been  most  unjustly  and  care- 
lessly overthrown.  The  task  is  by  no  means  a  pleasant  one;  because,  whatever  the  charm  of  Mr.  Macau- 
lay's  narrative,  much  of  the  credit  due  to  his  statements  of  facts,  and  of  reliance  on  his  examination  of  au- 
thorities, are  destroyed  by  this  chapter  of  Mr.  Dixon's  work. 

As  a  biography  the  work  has  claims  of  no  common  order.  Within  the  compass  of  a  single  volume  Mr. 
Dixon  has  compressed  a  great  variety  of  facts,  many  original,  and  all  skilfully  arranged  eo  as  to  produce  an 
auihentic  moral  portrait  of  his  hero.  The  literary  merits  of  the  volume  include  great  research,  and  a  narra- 
tive at  once  consecutive  and  vivid  The  author  has  had  access  to  a  variety  of  unpublished  material— to  the 
letters  of  Penn  and  his  immediate  family,  and  to  MSS.  of  memoirs  of  several  persons,  yielding  lights  which  he 
wanted.  It  is  a  longtime  since  a  single  volume  has  been  pul»lished  with  such  aquantity  of  matter  interesting 
and  important  in  its  character.  Mr.  Dixon  compresses  his  materials  by  a  species  of  hydraulic  power. 
Mere  book-making  might  have  padded  out  this  work  into  three  or  four  volumes.  It  is  another  merit  of  the 
hook  that  its  subject  is  always  prominent,  the  writer  himself  being  kept  well  out  of  sight.  In  a  word,  we 
ean  praise  the  work  at  once  for  its  earnest  spirit,  its  wealth  of  recovered  material,  and  the  art  with  which 
the  latter  has  been  disposed. — The  AthencBum. 

On  account  of  the  very  wide  circulation  of  Mr.  Macaulay's  volumes,  containing  his  accusations 
against  William  Penn,  the  publishers  have  placed  this  work  at  a  low  price,  in  order  that  it  may 
reach  as  many  as  possible  of  those  who  may  have  been  biased  by  the  mistakes  and  misrepresenta- 
tions of  the  historian. 


CHEAPER   EDITION      LATELY    PUBLISHED. 

MEMOIRS  OF  THE  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM  WIRT. 

'*:^^      BY  JOHN  P.  KENNEDY. 

•    -r  «  .  -s  r\r'.  SECOND  EDITION,  REVISED.  -     •  ^       «    ^    '  -"f 

In  two  handsome  12mo.  volumes,  with  a  Portrait  and  fac-simile  of  a  letter  from  John  Adams. 

ALSO, 

A  liandsome  I^ibrary  Edition,  in  t-«%'0  beautifully  printed  octavo  volumes. 

The  whole  of  Mr.  Wirt's  Papers,  Correspondence,  Diaries,  &c.,  having  been  placed  in  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Kennedy,  to  be  used  in  this  work,  it  will  be  found  to  contain  much  that  is  new  and  inter- 
esting relating  to  the  political  history  of  the  times,  as  well  as  to  the  private  life  of  Mr.  Wirt. 

In  its  present  neat  and  convenient  form,  the  work  is  eminently  fitted  to  assume  the  position 
which  it  merits  as  a  book  for  every  parlor-table  and  for  every  fire-side  where  there  is  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  kindliness  and  manliness,  the  intellect  and  the  affection,  the  wit  and  liveliness 
•which  rendered  William  Wirt  at  once  so  eminent  in  the  world,  so  brilliant  in  society,  and  so 
loving  and  loved  in  the  retirement  of  his  domestic  circle.  Uniting  all  these  attractions,  it  cannot 
fail  to  find  a  place  in  every  private  and  public  library,  and  in  all  collections  of  books  for  the  use  of 
schools  and  colleges,  for  the  young  can  have  before  them  no  brighter  example  of  what  can  be  ac- 
complished by  industry  and  resolution,  than  the  life  of  William  Wirt,  as  unconsciously  related  by 
himself  in  these  volumes. 


GRAHAME'S    UNITED   STATES. 

HISTORY  OF  .THE  UNITED  STATES  FROVT  THE  PLANTATION  OF  THE  BRITISH  COT^ONIES 
TILL  THE;IR  ASSUMPTION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  Second  American  edition,  enlarged  and 
amended,  vyilh  a  Memoir  by  President  Quincy,  and  a  Portrait  of  the  Author.  In  two  large  octavo  volumes, 
extra  cloth.  

HTSTORJCAL  SKETCH  OF  THE  SECOND  WAR  BET  WEEN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
AND  GREAT  BRITAIN.  By  Charles  J.  Ingersoll,  Vol.  I.,  embracing  the  events  of  1812-13;  Vol.11,  the 
events  of  1814.    Octavo. 

HISTORY  OF  CONGRESS  UNDER  THE  ADMINISTRATION  OF  GENERAL  WASHINGTON. 
One  very  large  octavo  volume. 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  TVBLICATWSS.— {History  and  Biography.)  5 

MRS.  MARSH'S  ROMANTIC  HISTORY  OP  THE  HUGUENOTS.— (Now  Ready.) 

HISTORY  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  REFORMATION  IN  FRANCE. 

BY  MRS.  MARSH,  ^    '    *' 

Author  of  "  Two  Old  Men's  Tales,"  "  Emilia  Wyndham,"  &c. 
In  two  handsome  volumes,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth. 
"The  object  of  this  unpretendinj?  work  has  been  to  relate  a  domesiic  story,  not  to  undtrtake  a  political  his- 
tory—to display  the  virtues,  errors,  sufferings,  and  experiences  of  individual  men— rather  than  the  affairs  of 
consistories  or  the  intrigues  of  cabinets— consequent  upon  the  great  struggle  to  diffuse  the  principles  of  the 
Reformed  Religion  in  France."— Authok's  Pbefacb. 

These  two  delightful  volumes  belong  to  the  same  class  as  Miss  Pardee's  popular  works  on  Francis 
I.  and  Louis  XIV.,  and  may  be  regarded  as  companions  to  them,  having  the  same  characteristics 
of  extensive  research,  lively  style,  and  entertaining  interest,  presenting  all  the  authority  and  utility 
of  History,  without  the  dryness  and  dulness  which  was  formerly  considered  necessary  to  its  dig- 
nity. Mrs.  Marsh's  subject  is  one  which  gives  full  scope  to  her  acknowledged  powers,  and  she 
has  treated  her  romantic  and  varying  story  with  all  the  skill  that  was  to  be  expected  of  the  author 
of  the  "  Two  Old  Men's  Tales." 


STRICKLAND'S    QUEENS    OF    ENGLAND. 

LIVES  OF  THK  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND  FROM  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST  TO  THE  ACCES- 
SION OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  HANOVER.  With  Anecdotes  of  their  Courts,  now  first  puDlished  from 
Official  Records,  Private  as  well  as  Public.  New  Edition,  with  Additions  and  Corrections.  By  Agnes 
Strickland.    In  six  volumes,  crown  octavo,  beautifully  prittted.  and  bound  in  various  styles. 

Copies  of  the  duodecimo  edition  in  twelve  volumes  may  still  be  had. 
These,  volumes  have  the  fascination  of  a  romance  united  to  the  integriiy  of  history.—  Times. 
A  most  valuable  and  entertaining  work. — Chronicle. 
This  interesting  and  well  written  work,  in  which  the  severe  truth  of  history  takes  almost  the  wildnessof 

romance,  will  constitute  a  valuable  addition  to  our  biographical  literature.— itforntag-  Herald. 

THE  COURT  AND  REIGN  OF  FRANCIS  THE  FIRST.  KING  OF  FRANCE.  By  Miss  Pardoe,  author 
of  "  Louis  XIV."  &c.    In  two  very  neat  volumes,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth. 


MISS   KAVANAGH'S   WOMAN    IN   FRANCE. -(JUST   PUBLISHED.) 
WOMAN  IN  FRANCE  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.    By  Julia  Kavanagh,  author  of  "Natha- 
lie," "Madeline,"  &.c.    In  one  very  neat  volume,  royal  12rao.  ,,,^ 

PULSZKY'S   HUNGARIAN   LADY. -(JUST   PUBLISHED.) 
MEMOIRS  OF  AN  HUNGARIAN  LaDY.     By  Theresa  Pulszky.     With  an  Historical  Introduction, by 
Count  Francis  Pulszky.    In  one  volume,  royal  l'2mo.,  extra  cloth. 


MIRABEAU ;  a  Life  History.    In  Four  Books.    In  one  neat  volume,  royal  12rao.,  extra  cloth. 


HISTORY  OF  TEN  YEARS.  1830-1840.  OR  FRANCE  UNDER  LOUIS  PHILIPPE.    By  Louis  Blanc. 

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Perhaps  no  work  ever  produced  a  greater  or  mere  permanent  effect  than  this.  To  its  influence,  direct  and 
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HISTORY  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION  OF  1789.    By  Louis  Blanc,    la  one  volume,  crown  8vo., 
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PROFESSOR    RANKE'S    HISTORICAL  WORKS. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  POPES,  THEIR  CHURCH  AND  STATE  IN  THE  16TH  AND  17TH  CENTU- 
RIES    Complete  in  one  large  8vo.  volume. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  TURKISH  AND  SPANISH  EMPIRES.  IN  THE  16TH  CENTURY,  AND  BE- 
GINNING  OF  THE  17TH.    Complete  in  one  8vo.  volume,  paper.    Price  75  centp. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  REFORMATION  IN  GERMANY.    Parts  1.  II.  and  IH.    Price  $1  00. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  HUGUENOTS     A  new  Edition,  continued  to  the  Present  Time.    By  W.  S.  Brown- 
ing.   In  one  octavo  volume,  extra  cloth. 


HLSTORY  OF  THE  JESUITS,  from  the  Foundation  of  their  Society  to  its  Suppression  by  Pope  Clement 
XIV.  Their  Missions  throughout  the  World  ;  their  Educational  System  and  Literature;  with  their  Revival 
and  Present  Siate.  By  Andrew  Steinmetz,  author  of '-The  Novitiate,"  "Jesuit  in  the  Family,"  &.c.  lit 
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WRAXALL'S  HISTORICAL  MEMOIRS  OF  HIS  OWN  TIMES     In  one  octavo  volume,  extra  cloth^^" 
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MILL'S  HISTORY  OF  THE  CRUSADES,  AND  OF  CHIVALRY.    In  one  octavo  volume,  extra  cloth. 

Bte  Detail 
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SIBORNE'S  WATERLOO.    Historyofthe  War  in  France  and  Belgium  in  1815.  containing  Minute  Details, 
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NIERUHR'S  HISTORY  OF  ROME;  being  the  complete  work  from  the  foundation  of  the  city  to  the  death 
of  Coiisiantine.    In  two  large  octavo  volumes. 

MEMORANDA  OF  A  RESIDENCE  AT  THE  COURT  OF  LONDON.    By  the  Hon.  Richard  Rush.    In 
one  large  Svo.  volume. 


6  BLANCH ARD  &  LEA'S  PUBLICATIONS.— (Foyf7^M  and  Travels.) 

PRICE  ONE  DOLLAR  BY  MAIL,  FREE  OF  POSTAGE. 

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TO    THE 

DEAD  SEA  AI^I>  RIVER  JORDA]¥. 

BY   W.   F.   LYNCH,   U.  S.  N., 

Commander  of  tlie  Expedition.  '^'' 

New  and  condensed  edition,  with  a  Map,  from  actnal  Snryeys.    ""■ 

In  one  neat  royal  I2mo.  volume,  extra  cloth.  ' 

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large  impressions  of  this  edition,  notwithstanding  its  price,  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  the  intrinsic  value  and  in- 
terest of  llie  work,  and  in  presenting  this  new  and  cheaper  edition,  the  publishers  would  merely  state  that  it 
contains  all  the  substance  of  the  former  volume,  from  the  time  the  expedition  reached  Lake  Tiberias  till  its 
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try described.  In  its  present  form,  therefore,  afforded  at  about  one-third  the  price  of  the  more  costly  issue,. 
in  a  neat  and  handsome  volume,  admirably  adapted  for  parlor  or  fireside  reading  or  for  district  schools, 
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Work,  demanded  that  it  should  be  placed  in  a  form  for  more  general  circulation,  and  this  demand  is  met  in  the 
edition  we  have  before  u?.  Of  the  work  itself  nothing  need  be  said  in  its  praise,  the  judgment  of  the  public 
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out saying  that,  apart  from  the  absorbing  interest  which  belongs  to  the  subject,  the  author  has  given  it  a  charm 
in  the  easy,  flowing,  and  correct  style  in  which  the  narrative  is  written,  that  makes  the  reader  reluctant, 
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Copies  may  still  Is  had  of  the  FINE  EDITIONj^,  lov  u^ 

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With  Twenty-eight  beautiful  Plates,  and  Two  Maps, 
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larity and  immortality  at  on  ee.  It  must  be  read  to  be  appreciated;  and  it  will  be  read  extensively,  and 
valued,  both  in  this  and  other  countries.— iarfi/s  Book. 

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IMPRESSIONS  AND  EXPERIENCES  OF  TFIE  WEST  INDIES  AND  NORTH  AMERICA  IN 
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some volume,  crown  octavo,  extra  cloth. 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  PUBLICATIONS.— (Science. 


LIBRARY  OF  ILLUSTRATED  SCIENTIFIC  WORKS. 

A  series  of  beautifully  printed  volumes  on  various  branches  of  science,  by  the  most  eminent 
men  in  their  respective  departments.     The  whole  printed  in  the  handsomest  style,  and  pro- 
..   fusely  embellished  in  the  njost  efficient  manner. 

fCr'No  expeuse  has  been  or  will  be  spared  to  render  this  series  worthy  of  the  support  of  the  scientific  pub- 
He.  while  at  the  sam«  time  it  is  one  of  the  handsomest  specimens  of  typographical  and  artistic  executioa 
which  have  appeared  in  this  country. 

DE  t A  BECHE'S  GEOtOGY— (Just  Ready.)  >..a 

THE  GEOLOGICAL  OBSEEYER. 

BY  SIR  HENKY  T.  DE  LA  BECHE,  C.  B.,  F.  R.  S.,  • . 

Director  General  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  Great  Britain,  &c.  ^ 

In  one  very  large  and  handsome  octavo  volume, 

"WITH  OVER  THREE  HUNDRED  WOOD-CUTS. 

■  We  have  here  presented  to  us,  by  one  admirably  qualified  for  the  task,  the  most  complete,  compendium  of 
the  science  of  Geoiopy  ever  produced,  in  which  the  difft  rent  facts  which  fall  under  the  cojjnizauce  of  this 
branch  of  natural  science  are  arranged  under  the  ditferent  causes  by  which  they  are  produced.  From  the 
style  in  which  the  subject  is  treated,  the  work  is  calculated  not  only  for  the  use  of  the  professional  geologist, 
but  for  that  of  the  uninitiated  reader,  who  will  find  in  it  much  curious  and  interesting  information  on  the 
changes  which  '.he  surface  of  our  globe  has  undergone,  and  the  history  of  the  various  striking  appearance* 
which  it  presents.  Voluminous  as  the  work  is,  it  is  not  rendered  unreadable  from  its  bulk  owing  to  the  ju- 
dicious subdivision  of  its  contents,  and  the  copious  index  which  is  appended.— Jb/in  Bull. 

This  ample  volume  is  based  upon  a  former  work  of  the  author,  called  H  w  to  Observe  in  Geology  ;  which 
has  long  been  out  of  print,  but  in  its  day  gave  rise  to  «everal  oiher  direction*  for  observinir.  The  alieralioa 
of  ihe  tiile  is  something  more  than  a  nominal  change  ;  it  extends  ilie  book  iVom  the  individual  to  the  general 
observer,  showing  what  Ao.«  6ef«  scientifically  seen  in  the  globe,  instead  of  what  an  individual  mig^At  see. 
It  is  a  survey  of  geological  facts  throughout  the  world,  classified  according  to  their  nature.—  Sp^-ctator. 

Having  had  such  abundant  opportunities,  no  one  could  be  tbund  so  capable  of  directing  the  labors  of  the 
young  geologist,  or  to  aid  by  his  own  experience  the  studies  of  those  who  may  not  have  been  able  to  range 
so  extensively  over  the  earth's  surface.  We  strongly  recommend  Sir  Henry  De  la  Beche's  book  to  those 
who  desire  to  know  what  has  been  done,  and  to  learn  something  of  the  wide  examination  which  yet  lies 
wailing  lor  the  industrious  observer. —  The  Aikencsutn. 


CARPENTER^S  COMPARATIVE  PHYSIOLOGY— (Just  Ready.) 

princiFles  of 
GENERAL  AND  COMPARATIVE  PHYSIOLOCYj 

INTENDED  AS  AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  ,.  <;,  i"  .,,  ,^. ,;,  .J 

HUMAN   PHYSIOLOGY, 

And  as  a  Gaide  to  the  Philosophical  Pnrsnit  of  Natural  History. 
BY  WILLIAM  B.  CARPENTER,  M.D.,F.R.S., 

Author  of  "  Human  Physiology,"  •'  Vegetable  Physiology,"  &c.  &o. 

Third  Improved  and  Enlarged  Edition. 

In  one  very  large  and  handsome  octavo  volume,  with  several  hundred  beautiful  illustrations. 

This  valuable  work  will  supply  a  want  long  felt  by  the  scientific  public  of  this  country,  who 
have  had  no  accessible  treatise  to  refer  to,  presenting  in  an  intelligible  form  a  complete  and 
thorough  outline  of  this  interesting  branch  of  Natural  Science,  brought  up  to  the  most  advanced 
slate  of  modern  investigation.  The  high  reputation  of  the  author,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic, 
is  a  sufficient  guarantee  for  the  completeness  and  accuracy  of  any  work  to  which  his  name  is  pre- 
fixed; but  this  volume  comes  with  the  additional  recommendation  that  it  is  the  one  on  which  the 
author  has  bestowed  the  greatest  care,  and  on  which  he  is  desirous  to  rest  his  reputation.  Though 
forming  a  very  large  octavo  volume,  beautifully  printed,  and  most  profusely  illustrated,  the  price 
will  be  very  moderate.  i.j/  ;  '  /  a  ,'  It; 

MULLER'S    PHYSICS.  :*'"v  -    "^   ^ 

PRINCIPLES   OF   PHYSICS  AND   METEOROLOGY.     By  Professor  J.  Mueleh,  M.  D. 

Edited,  with  Additions,  by  R.  Eolesff.ld  Griffith,  M.  D.    In  one  large  and  handsome  octavo 

volume,  with  550  wood-cuts,  and  two  colored  plates. 

'•The  ?lyle  in  which  the  volume  is  published  is  in  the  hiphe't  degree  creditable  to  the  enterprise  of  the 
publishers  tt  contains  nearly  four  hundred  eiigravmgs.  executed  in  a  style  of  extraordinary  eiegatice.  We 
coinraend  the  book  lo  general  favor.  It  is  ihe  best  of  its  kind  we  have  ever  seen."— iV.  Y.  Courier  and  £?»- 
quirer. 

KNAPP'S  CHEMICAL  TECHNOLOGY.  ,.     " 

-  <•  ■'   /.'."';■■   •<  '"'Ht;  '  /  .<. 

TECHNOLOGY;  or,  Chemtstrt  Appmed  to  the  Arts  awb  to  Mawttfactures.  By  Dr.  F. 
KxAPP,  Professor  at  the  University  of  Giessen.  Edited,  with  numerous  Notes  and  Additions,  by 
Dr.  Edmuitd  Ronalds  and  Dr.  Thomas  RiCHARDgoN.  First  American  Edition,  with  Notes  and 
Additions  by  Prof.  Walter  R.  Johnson.  In  two  handsome  octavo  volumes,  printed  and  illus- 
trated in  the  highest  style  of  art,  with  about  500  wood  engravings. 
The  style  of  excellence  in  which  the  fitsi  volume  was  got  up  is  fully  preserved  in  this.    The  treatises 

themselves  are  admirable,  and  the  editing  both  by  the  English  and  American  editors,  judicious;  so  that  the 

work  maintains  itself  as  the  be«t  of  the  series  to  which  it  belongs,  and  worthy  the  attention  of  ail  interested 

in  tiie  an  of  which  it  treats.—  Franklin  Institute  Journal. 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  TVBUCATIOI^S.— (Science.) 


L.IBRARV  OF  ILLUSTRATED  SCIENTIFIC  WORKS  (Continued). 

WEISBACH'S  MECHANICS. 

PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  MECHANICS  OF  MACHINERY  AND  ENGINEERING.    By  Pro- 
fessor Julius  Weisbach.     Translated  and  Edited  by  Prof.  Gordon,  of  Glasgow.     First  Ame- 

"   rican  edition,  with  Additions  by  Prof.  Walter  R.  Johnson.    In  two  octavo  volumes,  beautifully 
printed,  with  900  illustrations  on  wood 

The  most  valuable  contribuiioii  to  praclical  science  that  has  yet  appeared  in  this  country. — Athentrnm. 
Unequalled  by  anything  of  the  kind  yet  produced  in  this  couutry — the  most  standard  book  on  mechanics, 

machinery  and  engineering  now  extant — N.  Y.  Commercial. 
In  every  way  woriiiy  of  being  recommended  to  our  readers.—  Franklin  Institute  Journal. 


MOHR,   REDWOOD,   AND  PROCTER'S  PHARMACY. 

PRACTICAL  PHARMACY:  Comprising  the  Arranj?ements,  Apparatus,  and  Manipulations  of 
the  Pharmaceutical  Shop  and  Laboratory.  By  Francis  Mohr,  Ph.  D.,  Assessor  Pharmacise  of 
the  Royal  Prussian  College  of  Medicine,  Coblentz;  and  Theophilus  Redwood,  Professor  of 
Pharmacy  in  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain.     Edited,  with  extensive  Additions,  by 

V  Prof.  William  Procter,  of  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy.  In  one  handsomely  printed 
octavo  volume,  of  670  pages,  with  over  500  engravings  on  wood. 


GRAHAM'S   CHEMISTRY- NEW   EDITION— (In  Press.) 

ELEMENTS  OF  CHEMISTRY;  including  the  Application  of  the  Science  to  the  Arts.  By 
Thomas  Graham,  F.  R.  S.,  &c.  Edited  by  Robert  Bridges,  M.  D.  Second  American,  from 
the  second  and  enlarged  London  edition.  In  two  parts,  large  8vo.,  with  several  hundred  wood- 
cuts.    (Part  I  in  press.) 

Mh  preparation^  works  on  Jttetallttrg-p ,  Food^  the  Steam  Engine,  Jttachines,  Rural 

Economy  ^  Kc,  A'e, 


INTRODUCTION  TO  PRACTICAL  CHEMISTRY,  including  Analysis.  By  John  K.  Bowman,  M.  D. 
In  one  neat  royal  12mo.  volume,  extra  clo'h,  wi>h  numerous  illustrations. 

DANA    ON  CORALS, 

ZOOPHYTES  AND  CORALS.  By  James  D.  Dana.  la  one  volume  imperial  quarto,  extra  cloth,  with 
wood-cuts. 

Also,  an  Atlas  to  the  above,  one  volume  imperial  folio,  with  sixty-one  magnificent  plates,  colored  after  na- 
ture.   Bound  in  half  morocco. 
These  splendid  volumes  form  a  portion  of  the  publications  of  the  United  Stales  Exploring  Expedition. 

As  but  very  few  copies  have  been  prepared  for  sale,  and  as  these  are  nearly  exhausted,  all  who  are  desirous 

of  enriching  their  libraries  with  this,  the  most  creditable  specimen  of  American  An  and  Science  as  yet  issued, 

will  do  well  to  procure  copies  at  once. 

THE  ETHNOGRAPHY  AND  PHILOLOGY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  EXPLORING  EXPEDI- 
TION. By  HoKATio  Hale.  Iu  one  large  imperial  quarto  volume,  beautifully  printed,  and  strongly  bound 
in  extra  cioth. 

BARON  HUMBOLDT'S  LAST  WORK. 
ASPECTS  OF  NATURE  IN  DIFFERENT  LANDS  AND  DIFFERENT  CLIMATES.    With  Scientific 
Elucidations.    By  Alexander  Von  Humboldt.    Translated  by  Mks.  Sabinb.    Second  American  edition. 
In  one  handsome  volume,  large  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth. 

CHEMISTRY  OF  THE  FOUR  SEASONS,  Spring,  Summer,  Autumn,  and  ♦Vintes.  By  Thomas  Grif- 
yiTH.    In  one  handsome  volume,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth,  with  numerous  illustrations. 

THE  MILLWRIGHT'S  GUIDE. 
THE  MILLWRIGHT'S  AND  MILLER'S  GUIDE.    By  Oliver  Evans.    Eleventh  Edition.    With  Addi- 
lions  and  Corrections  by  ihe  Professor  of  Mechanics  in  the  Franklin  Institute,  and  a  description  of  an  Im- 
proved Merchant  Flour  Mill.    By  C.  and  O.  Evans.    In  one  octavo  volume,  with  numerous  engravings. 

HUMAN  HEALTH;  or,  the  Influence  of  Atmosphere  and  Locality,  Change  of  Air  and  Climate,  Seasons, 
Food,  Clothing,  Bathmg,  Mineral  Springs.  Exercise,  Sleep.  Corporal  and  Mental  Pursuits.  &c.  Sec,  on 
Healthy  Man,  constituting  Elements  of  Hygiene.    By  Rosley  Dunglison,  M.  D.    In  one  octavo  volume. 

THE  ANCIENT  WORLD.  OR  PICTURESQUE  SKETCHES  OF  CREATION.  By  D.  T.  Anctbd,  au- 
thor of  '•  Elements  of  Geology,"  &.c.    In  one  neat  volume,  royal  12mo.,  with  numerous  illustrations. 

A  NEW  THEORY  OF  LIFE.  By  S.  T.  Coleridgk.  Now  first  published  from  the  original  MS.  In  one 
small  12mo.  volume,  cloth. 

ZOOLOGICAL  RECREATliDNS.  By  W.  T.  Broderip,  F.  R.  S.  From  the  second  London  ediUon.  One 
volume,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth. 

AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  ENTOMOLOGY;  or  Elements  of  the  Natural  History  of  Insects.  By  the  Rev. 
Wm.  KiRBY,  and  Wm.  Spence,  F.  R.  S.  From  the  sixth  Loudon  edition.  In  one  large  octavo  volume, 
with  plates,  plain  or  colored. 

THE  RACES  OF  MEN,  a  Fragment.    By  John  Knox.    In  one  royal  12mo.  volume,  extra  cloth. 

AMERICAN  ORNITHOLOGY.  By  Charles  Bonaparte,  Prince  of  Canino.  In  four  folio  volumes,  half 
bound,  with  numerous  magnificent  colored  plates. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  PHYSICAL  PHENOMENA  OF  LIVING  BEINGS.  By  Carlo  Mattkucci.  Edited 
by  Jonathan  Pereira,  M.  D.    Iu  one  royal  12mo.  volume,  extra  cloth,  with  illustrations. 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  NEW  PUBLICATIONS.— (^ciewce.)  9 

JOHNSTONS   PHYSICAL    ATLAS. 

THE    PHYSICAL    ATLAS 

OF  NATURAL  PHENOMENA.  " v^ 

FOR  THE  USE  OF  COLLEGES,  ACADEMIES,  AND  FAMILIES. 
m:«;      by  ALEXANDER  KEITH  JOHNSTON,  F.  R.  G.  S.,  F.  G.  S. 

,       _^         '     In  one  large  volume,  imperial  quarto,  handsomely  and  strongly  bound, 

' •  v.>  AVith  Twenty-six  Plates,  Engraved  and  Colored  in  the  best  style. 

.  ,,  '  Together  with   112  pages  of  Descriptive  Letterpress,  and  a  very  copious  Index. 

This  splendid  volume  will  fill  a  void  long  felt  in  this  country,  where  no  work  has 
"been  attainable  presenting  the  results  of  the  important  science  of  Physical  Geography 
in  a  distinct  and  tangible  form.  The  list  of  plates  subjoined  will  show  both  the  design 
of  the  work  and  the  manner  in  which  its  carrying  out  has  been  attempted.  The  repu- 
tation of  the  author,  and  the  universal  approbation  with  which  his  Atlas  has  been 
received,  are  sufficient  guarantees  that  no  care  has  been  spared  to  render  the  book 
complete  and  trustworthy.  The  engraving,  printing,  and  coloring  will  all  be  found 
of  the  best  and  most  accurate  description. 

As  but  a  small  edition  has  been  prepared,  the  publishers  request  all  who  may  desire 
to  procure  copies  of  the  work  to  send  orders  through  their  booksellers  without  delay. 

LIST  OF  PLATES. 

METEOROLOGY. 

1.  R«mboldl'«  System  of  Isothermal  Lines. 

2.  GeographicalDisiribution  of  the  Currents  of  Air.    ; 

3.  Hyeiographic  or  Rain  Map  of  the  World. 


GEOLOGY. 

1.  Gr<K>1ogical  Structure  of  the  Globe.     -  ^        -^    ' 

2.  Mountain  Chains  of  Europe  and  Asia. 

3.  Mountain  Chains  of  America. 

4.  Illusiravion  of  the  Glacier  System  of  the  Alps, 

(Mont  ijlanc.) 

5.  Phenomena  of  Volcanic  Action. 

Palaeontological   and    Geological  Map  of  the 
^  British  Islands.    (A  double  sheet.) 

HYDROGRAPHY. 

1.  Physical  Chart  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

2.  Physical  Chart  of  the  Indian  Ocean. 

3.  Physical  Chart  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  or  Great  Sea. 

4.  Tidal  Chart  of  the  British  Seas. 
8.  The  River  Systems  of  Europe  and  Asia. 

6.  The  River  Systems  of  America. 

Tidal  Chart  of  the  World. 


4.  Hyetographic  or  Rain  Map  of  Europe. 

NATURAL  HISTORY.  j^^,., 

1.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Plants.  - 

2.  Geographical  Distribution  of  the  Cultivated  Plants 
used  as  Food. 

3.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Quadrumana,  Eden- 
tata. Marsupial ia,  ai\d  Pachydermata. 

4.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Camivora. 

5.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Rodeniia  and  Rurai- 
nantia. 

6.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Birds. 

7.  Geographical  Distribution  of  Reptiles. 

8.  Ethnographic  Map  of  the  World. 

9.  Ethnographic  Map  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
The  book  before  us  is,  in  short,  a  graphic  encyclopaedia  of  the  sciences— an  atlas  of  human  knowledge 

done  into  maps.  It  exemplifies  the'truih  which  it  expresses— that  he  who  runs  may  read.  The  Thermal 
Laws  of  Leslie  it  enunciates  by  a  bent  line  running  across  a  map  of  Europe ;  the  abstract  researches  of 
Gauss  it  embodies  in  a  few  parallel  curves  winding  over  a  section  of  the  globe;  a  formula  of  Laplace  it 
melts  down  to  a  little  patch  of  mezzotint  shadow;  a  problem  of  the  transcendental  analysis,  which  covers 
pages  with  definite  integrrals,  it  makes  plain  to  the  eye  by  a  little  stippling  and  hatching  on  a  given  degree  of 
longitude!  All  possible  relations  of  time  and  space,  heat  and  cold,  wet  and  dry,  frost  and  snow,  volcano 
and  stori[n,  current  and  tide,plant  and  beast,  race  and  religion,  attraction  and  repulsion,  glacier  and  avalanche, 
fossil  and  mammoth,  river  and  mountain,  mine  and  forest,  air  and  cloud,  and  sea  and  sky — all  in  the  earth 
and  under  the  earth,  and  on  the  earth,  and  alM>ve  the  earth,  that  the  heart  of  man  has  conceived  or  his  head 
understood— are  brought  together  by  a  marvellous  microcosm,  and  planted  on  these  little  sheets  of  paper, 
thus  making  themselves  clear  to  every  eye.  Li  short,  we  have  a  summary  of  all  the  cross-questions  of  Na- 
ture for  twenty  centuries— and  all  the  answers  of  Nature  herself  set  down  and  speaking  to  us  voluminous 

By  mem  dans  un  mot Mr.  Johnston  is  well  known  as  a  geographer  of  great  accuracy  and  research  ; 

and  it  is  certain  that  this  work  will  add  to  his  reputation  ;  for  it  is  beautifully  engraved,  and  acuompanied 
with  explanatory  and  tabular  letterpress  of  great  value. —  London  Athenceum. 


SOMERVILLE'S    PHYSICAL   GEOGRAPHY. 

^mp*^f- . >*r .  ^;  New  Edition,  much  Improved— Just  Issued.    # ./:.^..-.     :  ,„  i,;;i 

PHYSICAL   GEOGRAPHY. 

BY   MARY   SOMERVILLE. 

Second  Jtmerican  from  the  Second  and  Revined  JLondon  JEditiou*  >  c  .} 

WITH  AMERICAN  NOTES,  GLOSSARY,  &c. 
In  one  neat  royal  12mo.  vol.,  extra  cloth,  of  over  550  pages. 

The  great  success  of  this  work,  and  its  introduction  into  many  of  our  higher  schools  and  academies,  have 
induced  the  publishers  to  prepare  a  new  and  much  improved  edition.  In  addition  to  the  corrections  and 
improvements  of  the  author  bestowed  on  the  work  in  its  passage  through  the  press  a  second  time  in  London, 
noteshave  been  introduced  to  adaptitmore  fully  to  the  physical  geography  of  this  country;  and  a  comprehensive 
glossary  has  been  added,  rendering  the  volume  more  particularly  suited  to  educational  purposes.  The 
amount  of  these  additions  may  be  understood  from  the  fact  that  not  only  has  the  size  of  the  page  been  increased, 
but  the  volume  itself  enlarged  by  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  pages. 

Our  praise  comes  lagging  in  the  rear,  and  is  well-nigh  superfluous.  But  we  are  anxious  to  recommend  to 
our  youth  the  enlarged  method  of  studying  geography  which  her  present  work  demonstrates  to  be  as  capti- 
vating as  it  is  instructive.  We  hold  siich  presents  as  Mrs  Somerville  has  bestowed  upon  the  public  to  be  of 
incalculable  value,  disseminating  more  sound  iniormation  than  all  the  literary  and  scientific  institutions  will 
accomplish  in  a  whole  cycle  of  their  existence.—i/acittpood'j  Magazine. 


10   BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  TVBLlCA.riOliS.—'jrorks  for  Colleges  and  HchooU.) 

HANDBOOKS  OF  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

BYDYONYSIUSLARDNER,LL.D.  ^ftH. 

JF'irat  Course — (Xearly  lieadyt)  ''«    Ai 

Comprising  MECHANICS,  HYDROSTATIC.-J,  HYDRAULICS,  PNEUMATICS,  SOUND,  and  OPTICS. 

In  1  large  and  handsome  royal  iiJtno.  vol  ,  with  422  illusiration?,  or  each  subject  done  up  and  sold  separately. 

Second  <7€»Mr»«— (Preparing.) 

CoMPRtsiNO  HEAT,  ELECTRICITY,  MAGNETISM,  and  ASTRONOMY. 
In  one  volume,  same  size  ajid  style  as  the  First  Course,  with  about  400  wood  cuts.    Also,  each  subject  done 

up  separately. 
The  name  of  so  di«tineuished  an  author  as  Dr.  Lardner  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  the  value  of  this  work, 
and  of  its  perfect  adaptation  to  the  purposes  for  which  it  is  designed,  as  an  elemeniary  text-book  for  schools 
and  for  ihe  private  student;  while  the  manner  in  which  it  is  printed  enables  the  purchaser  to  procure  either 
a  complete  manual  of  all  the  branches  of  N;itural  Philosophy,  or  a  separate  treatise  on  any  subject,  com- 
plete in  itself.  Notwithstanding  the  handsome  manner  in  which  it  js  printed,  and  its  very  profuse  illustra- 
tions, the  price  wid  be  exceedingly  low,  placing  it  within  the  reach  of  all. 

ELEMENTARY    CHEMISTRY; 

Theoretical  and  Practical.  By  George  Fownes,  Ph.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  &c.  Edited,  with 
Notes  and  Additions,  by  Robert  Bridges,  M.  D.  Third  American  from  a  late 
London  edition.     In  one  large  royal  12mo.  volume,  with  numerous  illustrations. 

We  know  of  no  treatise  so  well  calculated  to  aid  the  student  in  becoming  familiar  with  the  numerous  facts 
in  the  science  on  which  it  treats,  or  one  belter  calculated  as  a  text  book  for  those  attending  Chemical  Lec- 
tures. »  «  »  *  The  best  text-book  on  Chemistry  that  has  issued  from  our  press.— American  Med.  Journal. 

We  know  of  none  within  the  same  limits,  which  has  higher  claim*  to  our  confidence  as  a  college  class- 
book,  both  for  accuracy  of  detail  and  scientific  awdngement.—  Augusta  Med.  Journal, 

OUTLINES    OF   ASTRONOMY. 

By  Sir  John  F.  W.  Herschel,  F.  R.  S.,  &c.  In  one  neat  volumo,  crown  8vo.,  with 
six  plates  and  numerous  wood-cuts. 

We  now  lake  leave  of  ihis  remarkable  work  ;  which  we  hold  to  be,  beyond  a  doubt,  the  greatest  and  most 
remarkable  of  the  works  in  which  the  laws  of  astronomy  and  the  appearance  of  the  heavens  are  described 
to  those  who  are  not  mathematicians  nor  observers,  and  recalled  to  those  who  are.  It  is  the  reward  of  men 
who  can  descend  tVom  the  advancement  of  knowledge  to  care  for  its  diffusion,  that  their  works  are  essen- 
tial to  ail.  that  they  become  the  manuals  of  the  proficient  as  well  as  the  text- books  of  the  learner.— AtheneFum. 

Probably  no  book  ever  written  upon  any  science. embraces  within  so  small  a  compass  an  entire  epitome  of 
of  everything  known,  witliin  all  its  various  departments ;  practical,  theoretical,  and  physical.—  Examiner. 

ELEMENTS   OF    NATURAL    PHILOSOPHY; 

Being  an  Experimental  Introduction  to  the  Physical  Sciences.  Illustrated  with  over 
three  hundred  wood-cuts.  By  G-olding  Bird,  M.  D.,  Assistant  Physician  to  Guy's 
Hospital.     From  the  third  London  edition.     In  one  neat  volume,  royal  12mo. 

We  are  astonished  to  find  that  there  is  room  in  so  small  a  book  for  even  the  bare  recital  of  so  many  sub- 
jects. Where  everything  is  treated  succinctly,  great  judgment  and  much  time  are  needed  in  making  a 
selection  and  winnowing  the  wheat  from  the  chaff.  Dr.  Bird  has  no  need  to  plead  the  peculiarity  of  his 
position  as  a  shield  against  criticism,  so  long  as  his  book  continues  to  be  the  be-^t  epitome  in  the  English  lan- 
guage of  this  wide  range  of  physical  subjects.— iVort/i  American  Review,  April,  1851. 

ELEMENTS  OP  PHYSICS;  or  Naiurnl  Philosophy.  General  and  Medical.  Written  for  universal  use,  in 
plain  or  non-technical  language.  By  Neill  Aknott.  M.  D.  A  new  edition,  by  Isaac  Hays,  M.D.  Com- 
plete in  one  octavo  volume,  with  about  two  hundred  illustrations. 

ELEMEN  I'S  OF  OPTICS,  by  Sir  David  Brewster.  With  Notes  and  Additions  by  A.  D.  Bache,  LL.  D. 
In  one  12mo  volume,  half  bound,  with  numerous  wood-cuts 

A  TRE  Al'ISE  ON  ASTRONO.MY.  By  Sir  .John  F.  VV.  Herschel.  Edited  by  S.  C.  Walker, Esq.  In  one 
12mo  volume,  with  numerous  plates  and  cuts 

AN  ATLAS  OF  ANCIENT  GEOGRAPHY.  By  Samuel  Butler,  D.  D.,  late  Lord  Bishop  of  Lincoln.  In 
one  octavo  volume,  half  l)ouiid,  containing  twenty-one  colored  Maps  and  an  accentuated  Index. 

GEOGRAPHIA  CliASSICA;  or.  the  Application  of  Ancient  Geography  to  the  Classics.  By  Samuel  But- 
ler, D.  D.,  &c.  Fifth  American  from  the  last  London  Ekiition.  With  illustrations  by  John  Frost.  In  one 
royal  12ino.  volume,  half  bound. 

ELEMENTS  OF  UNIVERSAL  HISTORY,  on  anew  plan,  from  the  Creation  to  the  Congress  of  Vienna, 
with  a  Summary  of  the  Leading  Events  since  that  time.  By  H.  White.  Edited,  with  a  Series  of  Ques- 
tions, by  John  S.  Hakt.    In  one  large  royal  I'imo.  volume,  extra  cloth,  or  half  bound. 

BOI^MAR^S    FRE]¥CH    SERIES. 

New  editions  of  the  following  works,  by  A.  Bolmar,  forming,  in  connection  with  "  Bolmar's  Levizac,"  a 

complete  series  for  the  acquisition  of  the  French  language  :— 

A  SbjLECTION  OF  ONE  HUNDRED  PERRIN'S  FABLES,  accompat^jted  by  a  Key,  containing  the  text, 
a  literal  and  free  translation,  arranged  in  such  a  manner  as  to  poini  out  the  difference  between  the  French 
and  English  idiom.  &,«.,  in  one  vol  ISmo. 

A  COLLECTION  OF  COLLOQUIAL  PHRASES,  on  every  topic  necessary  to  maintain  conversa- 
tion. Arranged  under  different  heads,  with  numerous  remarks  on  the  peculiar  pronunciation  and  uses  of 
various  words;  the  whole  so  disposed  as  considerably  to  facilitate  the  acquisition  of  a  correct  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  French      In  one  vol.  ISmo 

LES  AVEN TURES  DE  TELEMAQUE,  PAR  FENELON,  in  one  vol.  12mo  ,  accompanied  by  a  Key  to 
the  first  eight  books,  in  one  vol.  l5imo..  containing,  like  the  Fables,  the  text,  a  literal  anu  free  translation, 
intended  as  a  sequel  to  the  Fables.     Either  volume  sold  separately. 

ALL  THE  FRENCH  VERBS,  both  regular  and  irregular,  in  a  small  volume. 

OUTLINES  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.    By  Thomas  B.  Shaw.    In  one  large  royal  12ino.  volume, 

extra  cloth. 
A  HANDBOOK  OF  EUROPEAN  LITERATURE.^  By  Mrs.  Foster.    In  one  royal  12mo.  volume.        ^.^^ 


BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  PUBLIC  ATI  ON  S—CTTorJit /or  Colleger  and  Schools.)      11 


A  ]¥Eir  I.ATIW  OICTIO]VARY  FOR  SCHOOLS— (IV  ow  Ready.) 

A  SCHOOL  DICTIONARY  oFtHE  LATIN  LANGUAGE. 

BY  DR.  J.  H.  KALTSCHMIDT. 
IN  TWO  PARTS,  LATIN-ENGLISH  AND  ENGLISH-LATIN. 

part  T,  Latin-English,  of  nearly  five  hundred  pages,  strongly  bound,  price  90  cents. 

Part  II,  English-Latin,  of  about  four  hundred  pages,  price  75  cents. 
Or  the  whole  complete   in   one  very  thick  royal  ISmo.  volume,  of  nearly  nine  hundred  closely 
printed  double  columned  pages,  strongly  bound  in  leather,  price  only  $1  25. 

While  several  valuable  and  copious  Laiiii  Lexicons  have  within  a  few  years  been  published  in  this 
country,  a  want  has  long  been  felt  and  acknowledged  of  a  good  School  Dictionabt,  which  within  reasona- 
ble compass  and  at  a  moderate  price  should  present  lo  the  student  all  the  information  requisite  for  his  pur- 
poses, as  elucidated  by  the  most  recent  investigations,  and  at  the  same  time  unincumbered  with  erudition 
useful  only  to  the  advanced  scholar,  and  increasing  the  size  and  co.*t  of  the  work  beyond  tlie  reach  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  community.  It  is  wiih  this  view  especially  that  he  present  work  has  been  prepared,  and  the 
naiTies  of  its  distinguished  authors  are  a  sufficient  guarantee  that  this  intention  has  been  skillfully  and  accu- 
rately carried  out. 

The  present  volume  has  been  compiled  by  Dr.  Kaltschmidt,  the  well  known  German  Lexicographer,  from 
the  best  Latin  Dictionaries  now  in  use  throughout  Europe,  and  has  been  carefully  revised  by  Dr  Leonhard 
Schiniiz.  Learned  discussions  and  disquisitions  could  not  be  introduced,  as  incompatible  with  the  objf-c's 
for  which  the  Dictionary  i.=  intended,  and  because  they  would  have  swelled  considerably  the  bulk  of  the 
volume  Oa  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  thought  advisable  lo  give,  as  tar  as  possible,  the  etymology  of  tach 
•word,  not  only  tracing  it  to  its  Latin  or  Greek  root,  but  to  roots  or  kindred  forms  of  words  occurring  in  the 
cognate  languages  of  the  great  Indo  Germanic  family.  This  feature,  which  distinguishes  the  present  Dic- 
tionary from  all  others,  cannot  fail  to  awakt-n  the  learner  to  the  interesting  fact  of  the  radical  identity  ot 
many  apparently  heterogeneous  languages,  and  prepare  him  at  an  early  stage  for  the  delightful  study  of  com- 
parative philology. 

The  aim  of  the  publishers  has  been  to  carry  out  the  author's  views  as  far  as  possible  by  the  form  and  ar- 
rangement of  the  volume.  The  type,  though  clear  and  well  printed,  is  small,  and  the  size  of  the  page  such 
as  to  present  an  mimense  amount  of  matter  in  the  compass  of  a  single  handsome  l8mo.  volume,  furnished  at 
a  price  tar  below  what  is  usual  with  such  works,  and  thus  placing  within  the  reach  of  the  poorest  student  a 
neat,  convenient,  and  complete  Lexicon,  embodying  the  investigations  of  the  most  distinguished  scholars  ot 
the  age. 

Although  the  first  part  of  this  work  has  been  issued  very  recently,  it  has  already  attracted  great  attention 

from  all  interested  in  education,  and  it  has  been  introduced  into  a  large  number  of  schools.    The  publishers 

subjoin  two  or  ihree  commendatory  letters  from  among  a  vast  number  with  which  they  have  been  favored. 

FroTH  Prof.  J.  Forsyth.  Jr.,  of  Princeton  University.  March  19,  IfSL 

With  the  School  Dictionary  I  am  greatly  pleased.  It  is  so  cheap,  so  convenient,  and  in  its  etymological 
features  so  peculiar,  and  withal  so  valuable,  that  on  many  a  student's  table  the  larger  and  more  costly  lexi- 
cons will  suelain  some  risk  of  being  superseded. 

From  Prof.  G.  Harrison,  University  of  Va.,  March  17.  t85L 

I  am  very  much  pleased  with  it.  I  think  it  will  meet  an  existing  want  and  be  very  popular  with  the 
school  boys.  If  the  second  part  be  executed  as  well,  I  shall  take  great  pleasure  in  recommending  the  whole 
work  to  my  friends. 

From  Prof.  G.  D.  Cleveland,  Philail  el-phi  a.  March  12, 1S51. 

You  have  done  a  very  great  service  to  the  cause  of  Classical  Education  in  publishing  the  ''School  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Latin  Language,"  by  Dr.  J.  H.  Kaltschmidt.  We  needed  something  of  the  kind  very  much. 
The  larger  dictionaries  of  Leveretl  &  Andrews  are  excellent  for  advanced  scholars,  but  I  have  found,  in  my 
exp^^rience,  that  younger  students  were  confused  by  the  multiplicity  of  definitions  and  examples  in  them, 
and  I  have  therefore  long  wanted  to  see  a  work  belter  adapted  to  their  wants  and  capacities.  This  deside- 
ratum you  have  very  happily  supplied. 

THIS  LATIN  DICTIONARY  FORMS  A  PORTION  OF 

SCHMITZ   8l   ZUMPT'S    CLASSICAL    SERIES. 

Under  which  title  Blanchakd  &  Lea  are  publishing  a  series  of  Latin  School  Books, 
edited  by  those  distinguished  scholars  and  critics,  Leonhard  Schrnitz  and  C.  G.  Zumpt. 
The  object  of  the  series  is  to  present  a  course  of  accurate  texts,  revised  in  accordance  with  the 
latest  investigations  and  MSS.,  and  the  most  approved  principles  of  modern  criticism.  These 
are  accompanied  with  notes  and  illustrations  introduced  sparingly,  avoiding  on  the  one  hand  the 
error  of  overburdening  the  work  with  commentary,  and  on  the  other  that  of  leaving  the  student 
entirely  to  his  own  resources.  The  main  object  has  been  to  awaken  the  scholar's  mind  to  a 
sense  of  the  beauties  and  peculiarities  of  his  author,  to  assist  him  where  assistance  is  necessary, 
and  to  lead  him  to  think  and  to  investigate  for  himself.  For  this  purpose  maps  and  other  en- 
gravings are  given  wherever  useful,  and  each  aitthor  is  accompanied  with  a  biographical  and 
critical  sketch.  The  form  in  which  the  voluines  are  printed  is  neat  and  convenient,  while  it 
admits  of  their  being  sold  at  prices  unprecedentedly  low,  thus  placing  them  within  the  reach  of 
many  to  whom  the  cost  of  classical  works  has  hitherto  proved  a  bar  to  this  department  of  study. 

OF    THIS    SERIES    THE    FOLT.OWINR    HAVE    APPEAUEP  : — • 

CssARis  DE  Bello  Gallico  Libri  IV.,  232  pages,  with  a  Map,  price  50  cents.      -^  v'  *;'" 

P.  ViRGiLii  Maronis  Carmina,  438  pages,  price  75  cents.  '^^  ''^'*/' 

C.  C.  Sallustii  Catilina  et  Jugurtha,  168  pages,  with  a  Map,  price  50  cents. 

ScHMiTz's  Latin  Grammar,  318  pages,  price  60  cents. 

Q.  CuRTii  RuFi  DE  Alexandri  Magni  (ivm.  suPERSUNT,  326  pages,  with  a  Map,  price  70  cents. 

M.  T.  Ciceronis  Orationes  Selects  XII.,  300  pnges,  price  60  cents. 

T.  Livii  Patavini  Historiarum  Libri  I.,  II.,  XXI.,  XXII.,  350  pages,  with  two  colored  Maps, 

price  70  cents. 
Kaltschmidt's  School  Latin  Dictionary,  in  two  parte,  Latin-English  and  English-Latin,  near 

900  pages,  double  columns,  price,  complete,  $1  25. 

In  preparation,  Schmidtz's  Introduction  to  the  Latin  Grammar,  Horace,  Ovid,  First  and   Second 

Latin  Reading  and  E.xercise  Books,  a  School  Classical  Dictionary,  &c. 

Teachers  desirous  of  examining  any  of  these  volumes  will  be  supplied  with  copies 

on  application  to  the  publishers. 


12  BLANCHARD  &  LEA'S  PUBLICATIONS.— (Picfion,  Poetry,  (^c.) 

DICKENS'  WORKS,  Various  Styles  and  Prices. 

THE  ONLY   COMPLETE   AMERICAN    EDITIONS. 

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DON  QUIXOTE  DE  LA  MANCHA.  Translated  from  the  Spanish  of  Miguel 
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BLANCHARD  &   LEA'S   TVBLICATIO^S —(Miscellaneous.)  13 

TME    ^JtrEHICJljy  8POnTSM^jy—{JVow  Ready,) 

NOTES  ON  SHOOTING ;  0~R  HINTS  TO  SPORTSMEN. 

COMPRISING 
THE  HABITS  OF  THE  GAME   BIRDS   AND    WILD  FOWL  OF  NORT^  AMERICA; 

The  Dog,  the  Gun,  the  Field,  and  the  Kitchen. 
^-  BY  E.   J.   LEWIS,    M.  D., 

'  *  Editor  of"  Youatt  on  the  Dog,"  tec. 

In  one  handsome  volume,  royal  12mo.,  extra  cloth,  with  illustrations. 

Contente.— Technical  Terms  of  Ornithology  ;  Sporting  Ternas ;  Dogs;  Art  oi  Shooting  on  the  Wing;  The 
Partridge;  Ruffed  Grouse;  Prairie  Hen;  VVoodcock  ;  English  Snipe;  Reed  Birds;  Rail;  Virginia  Rail; 
Red  Breasted  Rail;  Mud  Hen;  Short  Billed  Curlew;  Long  Billed  Curlew;  Black  Bellied  Piover;  Golden 
Plover;  Willet;  Red  Breasted  Snipe;  Wild  Fowl  Shooting;  Canvass  Back  Duck;  Present  and  Future 
Numbers  of  Ducks  on  Cht-sapeake  Bay;  Red  Headed  Duck.  Ameiican  Widgeon;  Mallard;  Black  Head; 
Blue  Winged  Teal ;  Green  Winged  Teal;  Buffei  Headed  Duck ;  Black  Duck;  Piniail  Duck;  Summer  Duck; 
Canvass  Goose;  Snow  Goose;  Brant;  Sheldrake;  American  Swan;  Trumpeter  Swan ;  American  Hare; 
Squirrel;  varieties  of  Squirrels;  Miscellaneous  Hints ;  Bursting  of  Guns;  Commodore  Stocktons  Experi- 
ments; Recoil;  Introduction  of  Gunpowder;  God  sends  meat,  who  sends  c^oks?  Hints  on  Taxidermy; 
General  Hygienic  Remarks. 

We  know  of  no  one  more  capable  of  writing  a  work  of  this  nature  than  Dr.  Lewis.  For  years  he  has  made 
Natural  History  his  study,  and  being  partial  to  the  sports  of  the  field,  the  book  may  be  looked  upon  as  spring- 
ing from  the  hands  of  a  practitioner,  whose  education  and  profession  are  peculiarly  adapted  to  aid  in  the  pro- 
duction of  such  a  work.  The  various  articles  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Lewis,  which  have  from  lime  to  lime 
appeared  in  the  columns  of  this  paper,  will  no  doubt  be  remembered  by  ihe  majority  of  our  sporting  readers, 
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Blakiston  on  Diseases  of  the  Chest,  1  vol.,  384  pp. 
Blood    and  Urine  Manuals,  by  Reese,  Griffith, 

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Churchill's  Monographs  of  the  Diseases  of  Fe- 
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Clymer  and  others  on  Fevers,  a  complete  yvQX]^ 
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Esquirol  on  Insanity,  by  Hunt,  Svo.,  496  pages. 
Meigs'  Letters  on  Diseases  of  Females,  1  vol. 

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16 


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Miller's  Practice  of  Surgery,  1  vol.  Svo.,  496  pp. 
Malgaigne's  Operative  Surgery,  by  Brittan,  with 

cuts.     (Publishing  in  the  Med.  News  and  Lib.) 
Maury's  Dental  Stirgery,  1  vol.  8vo.,  286  pages, 

many  plates  and  cuts. 
Skey's  Operative  Surgery,  1  vol.  large  Svo. ,  ma- 
ny cuts,  662  pages,  a  new  work,  (just  issued.) 
Sargent's  Minor  Surgery,  1  vol.  royal  l2mo.,  380 

pages,  128  cuts. 
Smith  on  fractures,  1  vol.  8vo.,  200  cuts,  314  pp. 

MATERIA  MEDICA  AND  THERAPEUTICS. 

Bird's  (Golding)  Therapeutics,  (preparing.) 

Christison's  and  Griffith's  Dispensatory,  1  large 
vol.  8vo.,  216  cuts,  over  1000  pages. 

Carpenter  on  Alcoholic  Liquors  in  Health  and 
Disease,  1  vol.  12mo. 

Dunglison's  Materia  Medica  and  Therapeutics, 
now  ready,  4th  ed.,  much  improved,  182  cuts, 
2  vols.  8vo.,  1850. 

Dunglison  on  New  Remedies,  6th  ed.,  much  im- 
proved, 1  vol. Svo. ,  750  pages. 

De  Jongh  on  Cod-Liver  Oil,  l2mo. 

Ellis'  Medical  Formulary,  9th  ed.,  much  improv- 
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Griffith's  Universal  Formulary,  1  large  vol.  8vo., 
560  pages. 

Griffith's  Medical  Botany,  a  new  work,  1  large 
vol.  8vo.,  704  pp.,  witifi  over  350  illustrations. 

Mayne's  Dispensatory,  1  vol.  12mo.,  330  pages. 

Mohr,  Redwood,  and  Procter's  Pharmacy,  1  vol. 
8vo.,  550  pages,  .506  cuts. 

Pereira's  Materia  Medica,  by  Carson,  3d  ed.,  2 
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Royle's  Materia  Medica  and  Therapeutics,  by 
Carson,  1  vol.  8vo.,  689  pages,  many  cuts. 

OBSTETRICS. 

Churchill's  Theory  and  Practice  of  Midwifery,  a 

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510  pp.,  many  cuts,  (now  ready.) 
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plates. 
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Ramsbotham  on  Parturition,  with  many  plates,  1 

large  vol.  imperial  Svo.,  520  pp.     5th  edition. 
Rigby's    Midwifery,  new   edition,   1   vol.   8vo., 

(just  issued,)  422  pages. 
Smith  (Tyler)  on  Parturition,!  vol.  12mo.,400pp. 

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Bowman's    Practical  Chemistry,   1    vol.    12mo., 

97  cuts,  350  pages. 
Brighamon£xcitement,&c.,  1  vol.l2mo.,204pp. 
Other  new  and  important 


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Bowman's    Medical  Chemistry,    1    vol. 
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Dunglison  on  Human  Health, 2d  ed.,8vo.,  464  pp. 

Fowne's  Elementary  Chemistry,  3d  ed.,  1   vol. 
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Graham's  Chemistry,  by  Bridges,  new  and  im- 
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Gardner's  Medical  Chemistry,  1  vol.  12mo.  400pp. 

Griffith's  Chemistry  of  the  Four  Seasons,  1  vol. 
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Knapp's  Chemical  Technology,  by  Johnson,  2 
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Simon's  Chemistry  of  Man,  Svo. ,730  pp.,  plates. 

MEDICAL  JURISPRUDENCE,  EDUCATION,  &c. 

Bartlett's  Philosophy  of  Medicine,  1  vol.  Svo. , 

312  pages. 
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8vo.,  84  pages. 
Dunglison's  Medical  Student,2ded.l2mo.,312  pp. 
Taylor's  Medical  Jurisprudence,  by  Griffith,    1 

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Taylor  on  Poisons,  by  Griffith,  1  vol .  8vo.,  688  pp. 
Traill'sMedical  Jurisprudence,  1  vol. Svo. ,234pp. 

NATURAL  SCIENCE,  &c. 

Arnott's  Physics,  1  vol    8vo.,  484  pp.,  many  cuts. 
Ansted's  Ancient  World,  Popular  Geology,  in  1 

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Bird's   Natural  Philosophy,  1  vol.  royal    12mo., 

402  pages  and  372  wood-cuts. 
Brewster's  Optics,  1  vol.  12mo.  423  pp.  many  cuts. 
Broderip's  Zoological  Recreations,  1  vol.  12mo., 

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Carpenier'sGeneral  and  Comparative  Physiology, 

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Dana  on  Zoophytes,  being  vol.  8  of  Ex.  Expedi- 
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Gregory  on   Animal    Magnetism,   1   vol.,   royal 

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De  la  Beche's  Geological  Observer,  1  large  Svo. 

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Hale's  Ethnography  and  Philology  of  the  U.  S. 

Exploring  Expedition,  in  1  large  imp.  4to.  vol. 
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Kirby  and  Spence's  Entomology,  1  vol.  Svo.,  600 

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Knox  on  Races  of  Men,  1  vol.  12mo. 
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Miiller's   Physics  and  Meteorology,  1  vol.  Svo., 

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Weisbach's  Mechanics  applied  to  Machinery  and 

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Vol.  IL,  8vo.,  400  pp.,  340  cuts. 

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Youatt's  Great  Work  on  the  Horse,  by  Skinner, 
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14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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